The fifth season of Outlander came to an end last Sunday, thus beginning a Droughtlander that could last quite a long while, given that the coronavirus is preventing the cast and crew from starting in on season 6 as fast as usual.
Happily, star Richard Rankin (Roger) has a solution for that. “I’m thinking if all get together—the cast, maybe a couple of creatives—we can try and film a couple of intermission episodes of Outlander at home remotely with each other,” he told Elle. “Diana can write them, and we can make a parody of Outlander, and we can all switch parts. So we’ll do Outlander, the lockdown version. It’s like Outlander 5.5.”
You know, Sam Heughan (Jamie Fraser) recently promised fans “a little something to tide you guys over.” If this is what he was talking about, I don’t think there would be many complaints.
But really, what we’re all waiting for is season 6. When that finally gets here, we may see a different Roger. After all, he did kill a guy in season 5, after Claire Fraser is kidnapped by the vile Lionel Brown, who’s angry about the advice she’s been giving to the women in the community. “Roger taking a life is against absolutely everything he is or certainly everything he used to be—everything he values,” Rankin said. “Whether or not that’s changed and he’s not that person anymore, I suppose maybe we’ll explore that later on.
"He’s thinking of nothing else other than, when he says, ‘There’s a time for blood and it’s now…’ He means that. He doesn’t wish it, but he means it… He wouldn’t have been able to do that a season or so ago, so I think it says a lot about how far he’s come with the family and what he’s willing to do to protect that family."
For much of the season, Roger intends to head back to the 1960s with his wife Brianna and their son Jemmy, reasoning that it’s safer there rather than American in the 1700s, which…he’s got a point. “He’s being logical. He’s being a man of reason when he’s thinking that, not realizing that deep within him, he has taken Fraser’s Ridge and he’s taken Jamie and he’s taken Claire and he’s taken Marsali and Fergus to be his family,” Rankin said. “That is truly where he belongs.”
"Had Roger stopped to even think about it halfway through the season, before…they decided when he would return home, [he] would think, ‘No, this is my family. This is my anchor, and this is my home.’ And if [he] was to maintain that idea of going home, it would be purely for practical purposes of safety…That was a whole process for Roger, and I think the realization was a very happy one for him at the end…I think he thought, ‘This is where both of us belong now.’ It’s a really touching moment."
Sure, this is the time period where Roger is hanged from a tree and loses his singing voice, but your heart is where your family is, I guess.
“I look at what Roger Wakefield has been forced to become of necessity, and they appear to me to be such contrasting people,” Rankin continued. “I’m not even sure they would get along in life. What if those two people met? I’m not comparing myself to it, but do you remember Superman III where he splits and there’s a good one and a bad one? That’d be quite interesting. Get old Roger and new Roger in the same room and see what the conversation would be like.”
Here’s a preview of that scene:
Something tells me that would end up on the cutting room floor.
Speaking of deleted scenes, Rankin let us in on what sounds like a really good one:
"There’s a scene where Roger and Jamie go shopping for swords, and they have a sword fight, and Roger does remarkably well because he’s been taught by Jamie for months how to fight… We shoot too much, we can’t put everything [in]…but I was like, but why that? I’m sure there’s reasons for it, but I kind of missed that."
Something for the season 5 DVD set, perhaps?
Rankin isn’t the only cast member ruminating on the show lately. Lauren Lyle, who plays Marsali MacKimmie Fraser, recently talked to TV Line about her character’s season 5 journey, which finds her killing Lionel Brown by injecting him with hemlock. “A lot of what Marsali is about this season is protection and really having found her place and her meaning on the Ridge,” Lyle said. “She lives in a time where for women it’s not – for everyone, but especially for women – it’s not easy. It’s really rough and tough. You have to fight to stay where you are and to have your place.”
Lyle was also open to sharing what she knew about season 6, although obviously that’s not much. “We haven’t got right into the details of next season just yet,” she said. “César just texted me. Literally, I’m looking at a text from him right now, because we speak constantly and we’re always in contact. We speak, I think, on the phone almost every day, and so we’re always talking about it.”
"We love the fact that they’re one of the only couples that don’t fight that much, and we don’t argue that much. I mean, there’s stuff I can’t really talk about. I do know some stuff is going to happen with them next season that’s very much them together, so that will happen, but it’ll be a totally different situation to what you’ve seen them in before."
Any water during the Droughtlander is appreciated.
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