Why Outlander’s Sam Heughan Is Excited To Get Back To Work On Season 6

outlander season 5 starz jamie sam heughan

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Outlander wrapped up Season 5 in May with a traumatic finish for Clare (especially), Jamie and the rest of their extended family on Fraser's Ridge. While the Droughtlander is always long, obviously, we'll all be dealing with an even longer one until Season 6 (which will be based on Diana Gabaldon's book A Breath of Snow and Ashes) can get under way and into our eyeballs. But, star Sam Heughan has just revealed all the reasons he's excited to get back to work on the romantic, time-traveling hit, and fans will likely echo many of his thoughts.

Whether you tune in to Outlander for the intense action, stirring drama, delicious period details...or delicious stars and their hot, on-screen sexytimes, it's tough to wait between seasons until you can get more of it in your veins. As we all know, quarantine hasn't been easy for many of us, and the same is true for the stars of our favorite shows. PaleyFest LA recently spoke with several of those involved with Outlander, and Sam Heughan had several reasons for being more than ready to head back for filming on Season 6:

First, I will be excited there will be no more Zoom calls. We can all drink to that. I am excited to see where Jamie goes this season, but to be honest, we now have six, almost seven, years of experience behind us. We have scenes, we have characters, we have things in the books we haven’t covered. We can call back on stuff. We have seen there are other time travelers out there. It feels as though the universe is opening up a bit more for us to draw upon, as well for the writers. For the actors, we have all that experience with each other. We know how each other works now and, most of the time, we enjoy working together.

I think we can all appreciate Sam Heughan showing a little bit of annoyance at the preponderance of Zoom calls and other forms of video chatting right now. It's been many moons since several of us have sat down face-to-face with another person (whom we weren't already living with) while not wearing a mask, and the amount of interviews Heughan has probably done via video is sure to out pace the number of video meetings most people have endured in the past few months.

But, more than anything, Sam Heughan is excited about all of the possibilities which lie ahead for Outlander in Season 6. Jamie, will, of course, have to continue to help Clare heal after her ordeal at the end of the previous season, just like she helped him heal after the events of the Season 1 finale. And, while Heughan is intrigued by the challenges that Jamie will face in the new season, he also knows that they have a solid history now, both for delivering what fans of the show (and Gabaldon's books) want and in working together as a team.

As he mentioned in his interview, the production still has a lot more to adapt for the screen, should they continue to get that opportunity. Gabaldon has, so far, completed eight books in her Outlander series, with the ninth (Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone) still currently without a publication date. But, this means that they have plenty of source material on which to draw from.

Outlander the show has deviated from the books a bit (especially with regards to Murtagh) so the drama now has a lot of things to pull from when blending what happened in those novels with where the show needs to go. Five seasons have amounted to several in-story decades worth of action, intrigue, sweet moments and secrets for the writers to look back on and refer to as they plan the new season, meaning that Outlander Season 6 should be well worth the (extended) wait when it finally gets to us.

Outlander will be back on Starz at some point in the future, so be sure to stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest. In the meantime, check out what you can watch on the small screen this fall!

Adrienne Jones
Senior Content Creator

Covering The Witcher, Outlander, Virgin River, Sweet Magnolias and a slew of other streaming shows, Adrienne Jones is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend, and started in the fall of 2015. In addition to writing and editing stories on a variety of different topics, she also spends her work days trying to find new ways to write about the many romantic entanglements that fictional characters find themselves in on TV shows. She graduated from Mizzou with a degree in Photojournalism.