“Outlander” just might be on Starz until the year 2080. That’s if executive producer Maril Davis has her way.
Asked for the umpteenth time about the future of the show, Davis joked that Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan will playing the lead characters “until they’re 100.”
“We’ll keep going as long as there’s interest,” said Davis, pointing out that there’s still plenty of source material from Diana Gabaldon’s books to get through.
Focusing more in the very near future, Balfe teased what to expect from the forthcoming season during the show’s Television Critics’ Association press tour panel. The forthcoming season of the Starz show starts off from a point of marital bliss for Claire and Jamie, but as ever, things will soon take a more strenuous turn for the two love birds.
“I think that the circumstances of this season have allowed us to invest in those relationship moments, we see a lot more of the intimacy and the passion,” Balfe said, before saying that the events of this season will “put strains and pressures” on the pair relationship.
One of those pressures seems to be that Jamie is forced to don the red coat uniform of the British army. During the panel, Heughan put into context how terrible that imposition is for his character.
“His relationship to the British and what that uniform represents is pretty bad at best,” Heughan said. “The red coats really suppressed the Scots, so for him to have to wear it…goes against everything he stands for.”
Asked if she’s ever surprised that the show seems to appeal equally to both men and women, Balfe pointed to the cast members gathered, who also included Sophie Skelton and Richard Rankin, to show the balance in the male-female relationships that the series strikes.
“It’s not more of a man’s tale than it is a woman’s,” Balfe said. “We ground it in very real, honest moments and I hope that’s what people connect to.”
Earlier in the evening, Starz CEO Jeffrey Hirsch talked about the potential for “Outlander” spinoffs, expressing the hope that the network finds a way to continue the “Outlander” story.
“We think there’s a lot of opportunity in the ‘Outlander’ universe to have story extensions or spinoffs or sequels. We continue to look at that with our partners at Sony,” Hirsch said.
Season 5 find the Frasers fighting for their family and home. Jamie searches for a way to save his life in America, while hiding his personal relationship with Murtagh Fitzgibbons — the man he was ordered to kill. Claire desperately works to prevent her family from being torn apart again, but risks losing herself in the process. At the same time, Brianna Fraser and Roger Mackenzie, while reunited, are still haunted by the ghost of Stephen Bonnet.