'Outlander' Season 7 Part 2 review: Hold on to your kilts, the Starz hit’s about to take you on a wild ride (2024)

After what feels like centuries, Outlander Season 7 is finally returning with all new episodes on Starz. Outlander Season 7 Part 1 ended last summer with Jamie (Sam Heughan), Claire (Caitriona Balfe), and Young Ian (John Bell) arriving back where it all started: Scotland. What’s so joyous about Outlander Season 7 Part 2 is just how much it feels like the show is coming home. Familiar faces we haven’t seen in years reappear to comfort or torment our favorite characters and long simmering storylines are finally resolved. However, this isn’t to say that Outlander Season 7 Part 2 moves at a cozy, comfortable pace. The first three episodes of Outlander Season 7 Part 2 move at a chaotically fast clip, challenging our heroes in ways that might very well astonish fans.

Buckle up, because the Droughtlander is over, and Outlander is about to waste no time sweeping you away on its wild, emotional, and romantic ride.

Outlander Season 7 Part 1 separated the Frasier and MacKenzie clans across oceans and centuries. After Roger (Richard Rankin) and Brianna (Sophie Skelton) discovered their newborn daughter Mandy was born with a heart defect that could only be healed with 20th century medicine, they left Claire, Jamie, and everyone else at Fraser’s Ridge behind in the 1700s. While they spent a few low key years in 1980s Scotland, working diligently to renovate Lallybroch and counter workplace sexism, their family was upended by two new supporting players. First, they discovered that Roger’s ancestor Buck MacKenzie (Diarmaid Murtagh) had time traveled into the future. Then, Brianna’s sleazy coworker, Rob Cameron (Chris Fulton), discovered that their son Jem knew where the Jacobite’s stolen gold was hidden by Jamie two centuries ago. When Rob kidnaps Jem, Roger and Buck dutifully agree to travel back in time to rescue little Jemmy.

Meanwhile, in Jamie and Claire’s timeline, the Revolutionary War had begun, drawing Jamie to fight at the Battle of Ticonderoga. When the noble Redcoat Brigadier-General Simon Fraser (Angus McFadden) dies in battle, he asks distant relation Jamie to bring his body safely home to Scotland. Young Ian decides to join the journey, leaving his loyal dog Rollo in the care of love interest Rachel Hunter (Izzy Meikle-Small). So as Outlander Season 7 Part 2 begins, Claire, Jamie, and Young Ian are in Scotland, while Rachel, her brother Denzell (Joey Phillips), Lord John Grey (David Berry), and Jamie’s secret son, William Ransome (Charles Vandervaart) are still in the colonies, on separate sides of the Revolutionary War.

Outlander Season 7 Part 2 moves so quickly through author Diana Gabaldon’s later books, reunions between the scattered characters don’t take too long to occur. The first episode of Season 7 Part 2 is literally called “Unfinished Business” and we see Claire, Jamie, and Young Ian wasting no time tying up the narrative loose ends the left back in Scotland. It is an absolute delight to return to 18th century Lallybroch, where a new actress plays Jenny — Kristen Atherton subbing in for an in-demand Laura Donnelly — but nothing else seems to have changed so much. It is peak Outlander nostalgia for those of us who first fell in love with these characters a decade ago.

After that, well, we head into heavy spoiler territory. Starz has requested that most of the major twists and turns that confront Jamie, Claire, Young Ian, Brianna, and Roger stay top secret. Frankly, I’m happy to oblige. The sheer exhilaration that awaits Outlander fans as this show travels at warp speed is something I would not want to deny them.

As always, Outlander‘s beating heart is the incandescent chemistry between Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe. Heughan’s done an incredible job evolving James Fraser into a reliable paternal figure, but the fire that defined young Jamie still burns bright. Balfe is called upon, once more, to bring the indefatigable Claire to the most pitch black emotional nadirs imaginable, and she does so with utter abandon. Elsewhere, Izzy Meikle-Small continues to bring a feisty passion to her rebellious Quaker character and Richard Rankin is tasked with something the show’s never asked of Roger before: voice overs!

Outlander fans need to know that the back half of Season 7 was well worth the enormously long wait. Your patience will be rewarded with a roller coaster of romance, surprises, and bonny old Scotland. Keep the faith and hold on to your kilts. Years of build up are finally going to reach (narrative) climax.