If the witch trial in Outlander Season 1 was one of your favorite plot lines and you’ve watched the show eager for it to resume focus on the borderline fantastical, good news: It’s likely that Season 3 will, too.
Starz’s Outlander has always straddled the line between being a sedate period piece and a full-blown fantasy. On the one hand, its basic premise is about time-travel via an ambiguously magical stone circle. But its first two seasons were far more concerned with character relationships and daily life in Scotland. This was by no means negative — quiet episodes like “The Wedding” and “The Garrison Commander” were stunning hours of television. But it does make the show difficult to pin down tonally.
Some of the story’s more fantastical elements were even chopped in the book-to-show transition, like an encounter between Claire and the Loch Ness Monster, or Jaime and Claire’s cave magic sex.
But Season 3 will have a harder time negotiating that balance and avoiding the more fantastical elements. This is because the novel Voyager is completely nuts, in a fun way. It’s got pirates and voodoo zombies — and unlike the Loch Ness monster, they aren’t in easily cuttable scenes. Rather, their segments that are integral to the plot.
Of course its possible the show could still dance around the voodoo-zombie part, but if the writers are smart, they’ll embrace taking Season 3 into a gloriously crazy new direction.
