【Sisters Slave】

Starz recently announced that the hotly-anticipated Season 3 premiere of Outlander will hit our screens on Sisters SlaveSeptember 10 -- an agonizingly long wait, considering that we got our last glimpse of Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) way back in July 2016.

But anything worth having is worth waiting for, and that's especially true of OutlanderSeason 3, which will explore that very theme, as Claire and Jamie must defy the odds and find a way to reunite after decades apart.

Here's everything we know about OutlanderSeason 3 so far:

THE PLOT:

Fans of Diana Gabaldon's beloved series of novels know that Season 3 is based on the third book in her Outlandersaga, Voyager -- a rip-roaring adventure that spans multiple years and countries.

Here's how Starz describes the new season: The story picks up right after Claire travels through the stones to return to her life in 1948. Now pregnant with Jamie’s child, she struggles with the fallout of her sudden reappearance and its effect on her marriage to her first husband, Frank (Tobias Menzies).

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Meanwhile, in the 18th century, Jamie suffers from the aftermath of his doomed last stand at the historic battle of Culloden, as well as the loss of Claire. As the years pass, Jamie and Claire attempt to make a life apart from one another, each haunted by the memory of their lost love. The budding possibility that Claire can return to Jamie in the past breathes new hope into Claire’s heart… as well as new doubt.

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Separated by continents and centuries, Claire and Jamie must find their way back to each other. As always, adversity, mystery, and adventure await them on the path to reunion. And the question remains: When they find each other, will they be the same people who parted at the standing stones, all those years ago?

That means we'll jump back to the Battle of Culloden and its aftermath to see what became of Jamie (since Claire spent decades assuming that he had died in that infamous clash), his men, and Black Jack Randall (Menzies).

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We'll also spend some time with Claire, Frank and Bree (Sophie Skelton) throughout Bree's childhood.

The show has a lot of ground to cover before we catch up to Claire and her headstrong daughter in 1968, where the Season 2 finale ended with Claire contemplating the possibility of traveling back through time to find Jamie after 20 years apart.

THE CAST:

In addition to Balfe, Heughan, Menzies and Skelton, we'll see a number of other familiar faces returning for the new season, including Richard Rankin as Roger Wakefield, Laura Donnelly as Jenny Fraser Murray, Steven Cree as Ian Murray and Romann Berrux as Fergus, to name a few (but definitely not all).

The show has also been busy casting some new additions for the upcoming year, including an older version of Fergus, played by Cesar Domboy.

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He's not the only character getting a makeover: Australian actor David Berry has been cast in the pivotal role of Lord John Grey, a character we encountered in Season 2 as a naive (but noble) young British solider who attempted to defend Claire's honor from the Scottish barbarians John assumed were holding her captive before the Battle of Prestonpans.

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When we encounter him again, Lord John will be all grown up, and he'll be sticking around for a while. Here's how Starz describes him: "He's a steadfast and honorable British subject, torn between a finely-honed sense of familial duty and a strong moral compass of right and wrong. He is boyishly handsome with an upper class rearing — the consummate gentleman. However, a scandal from his past has relegated Lord John to an undesirable position as governor of a desolate prison in Northern Scotland."

Following his introduction in Voyager, Lord John has earned his own loyal fanbase over the years, and Gabaldon has written a series of novels and novellas centered around the dreamy and upstanding soldier. So if Starz and Sony are ever in the market for an Outlanderspinoff at some point, Berry might have plenty of career security ahead.

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Among the other newcomers for Season 3 are John Bell as Young Ian Murray, Jamie's adventurous nephew; Wil Johnson as Joe Abernathy, Claire's closest friend and coworker, whom she meets during medical school; Gary Young as Mr. Willoughby, a Chinese man with a deep knowledge of Eastern medicine who befriends Jamie; Lauren Lyle as Marsali, the 18-year-old, high-spirited daughter of Laoghaire (Nell Hudson); Hannah James and Tanya Reynolds as Geneva and Isobel Dunsany, two privileged young noblewomen who cross paths with Jamie; and Charlie Hiett as Thomas Leonard, the inexperienced, by-the-book de facto captain of a British Naval ship.

THE LOCATIONS:

Hiett is playing the captain of a ship, so it's not a spoiler to note that some of Season 3 will take place on the high seas, which probably won't sit well with Jamie, since we all know how he feels about boats...

Showrunner Ronald D. Moore was already expressing his enthusiasm for the show's nautical turn back when he was promoting Season 2. "I can't wait to get out to sea ... The technology now, between real ships like what they have in Black Sailsand CG, it’s now developed to a place where you can believe it," he told CinemaBlend. "Now you can really realize on a television budget what Pirates of the Caribbeanwas doing 8-10 years ago. Now, we can actually do better CG than that on the television front."

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Undoubtedly the biggest change for OutlanderSeason 3 is that in its final five episodes, the series will shift its production from Scotland, which has been the show's home for its first two seasons, to Cape Town, South Africa. There, it will utilize the sets and ships previously used on Starz's Black Sails to adapt Gabaldon's elaborate sea voyage scenes, with the balmy new location standing in for the Caribbean.

THE TEASER:

In April, Starz gave us our first glimpse at the new season thanks to a powerful teaser trailer, which shows the devastating aftermath of the Battle of Culloden and Jamie's quest to reunite with Claire. Check out our obsessive deep-dive analysis of the teaser to dig into all the clues we picked up in the new footage.

THE TRAILER:

In July, just before Comic-Con, Starz released the first full trailer for Season 3. Much of it focuses on Claire and Frank's strained marriage as they attempt to raise Bree, with some intriguing shots of what Jamie gets up to following the Battle of Culloden.

THE DETAILS:

Season 3 of Outlanderwill be 13 episodes in length, and will premiere on Starz on September 10 at 8 p.m.

Four new writers have also been drafted to join Moore, Matt Roberts, Toni Graphia and Anne Kenney for Season 3: Joy Blake, Karen Campbell, Shannon Goss and Luke Schelhaas.

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Because the season will be jumping around in time to cover various periods in Claire and Jamie's years apart, we'll see the duo transform from their twenties to their forties over the course of the season -- subtle but noticeable shifts which will no doubt showcase the incredible work of the hair, makeup and costume departments, as well as the consistently compelling performances of Balfe and Heughan. (Both thesps are long overdue for some awards recognition from the TV industry, but thankfully got some love from the People's Choice Awards this year, courtesy of the fans).

And if you had any doubts about Claire and Jamie's connection in or out of the bedroom in Season 3 (if so, who are you and what are you doing here?!), Balfe reassured fans during a recent Vulture interview that when the couple finally reunite, "their love is timeless and who they are inside is timeless." Duh.

In a Facebook Q&A, Heughan spilled a few more details about Claire and Jamie's eventual reunion. "It's kind of a surprise for Jamie, and within a day of her returning, all hell breaks loose and his world is turned upside down, just like every time Claire's involved," he teased.

Production on the season began in September 2016 and will conclude in June 2017, Starz confirms, and the show will make a triumphant appearance at San Diego Comic-Con this July to give fans a preview of what they can expect when Outlanderreturns to our screens this fall. So close and yet so far!

THE FUTURE:

The "droughtlander" may seem endless now, but the gargantuan effort involved in shifting an entire production to a new continent can't be overstated, especially when Voyageris such an ambitious and sprawling novel, which takes its characters through an evolution that few shows would dare to tackle. You can't rush perfection, after all.

The good news is, Outlanderhas already been renewed for Season 4 in addition to Season 3, meaning that we're guaranteed another dose of Starz and Sony's time-traveling epic in the next year or two. The show has even announced its first casting news for Season 4 -- and the new additions are adorable.

Season 4, based onDrums of Autumn, will bring the show to the halfway point of Gabaldon's currently published Outlandernovels, but the prolific author is already at work on a ninth installment and sees no end in sight yet.

The takeaway? We can look forward to plenty more adventures from Claire and Jamie on the page and the screen for years to come -- and doesn't that make the dry spell a littlemore tolerable?

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