Outlander fans have been expectantly awaiting Season 2 ever since the Season 1 finale aired. Anyone who has been paying attention to the blogosphere may already know that Jamie and Claire are heading to France this season, where they will attempt to stop historical figure Bonnie Prince Charlie from starting the Jacobite Rising. While that’s a pretty fun and exciting plot to jump on, Outlander executive producer Ronald D. Moore said at Comic-Con that he’s actually most excited for Season 3, which will take Claire and Jamie on a long journey by ship that will amp up the special effects in an exciting way.
The technology now, between real ships like what they have in Black Sails and CG, it’s now developed to a place where you can believe it. It’s no longer just the models on the water tank at Paramount, which is clearly like this big. Now you can really realize on a television budget what Pirates of the Caribbean was doing 8-10 years ago. Now, we can actually do better CG than that on the television front.
The storyline in question Moore is referring to is from Diana Gabaldon’s popular third Outlander novel, Voyager. Note: We’re about to get into really basic Book 3 spoilers, so if you want to avoid any specific book knowledge, now’s a great time to exit this article. Following the Jacobite Rising stuff written into Book 2, Voyager features Claire finally returning to Jamie’s time after traveling back to her own time just before the Battle of Culloden. When she returns to the 1700s, she meets up with Jamie in Edinburgh, and they begin a journey that takes them across the ocean and all the way to Jamaica—a journey that will apparently include one hell of a CG ship.
While Black Sails has a practical set down in South Africa, since Jamie and Claire’ Season 3 voyage will be a one-off seafaring event, it makes sense to use CG for the season, but Moore seems pretty jazzed about it.
I can’t wait to get out to sea. That’s what [I like], doing the tall ship section... I want to do the whole sea chase; that whole section is really going to be fun. I’m sure it will be really hard and I’ll regret it as soon as I start doing it, but I’m looking forward to it.
Still, the show has to do well during Season 2, first. As Moore noted during the Comic-Con press room interview, Starz has still not officially greenlighted Outlander for Season 3. On the bright side, Outlander has done very well for the subscription cable channel, and has found a sizeable audience. Since Starz is often a fan of early renewals, perhaps we’ll be hearing about Outlander Season 3 sooner than expected.
In the meantime, new episodes of Outlander are expected to hit the schedule in 2016. We’ll let you know as soon as we get Season 2 footage or a premiere date.
