OUTLANDER Season 7B coming in November!

STARZ announced yesterday that the second half of OUTLANDER Season 7 (aka 7B) will be coming in November, 2024!

My first reaction was, "November?!? So much for my nice relaxing holiday season this year!" It means that I'll be extremely busy in November, December, and possibly part of January, writing my usual detailed episode recaps and managing the Season 7 discussions on TheLitForum.com, which is the online forum where Diana Gabaldon hangs out. (You have to sign up to read or post on the forum, but it's free.) Oh, well. We went through a similar "thread explosion" when BEES came out at Thanksgiving in 2021, and we got through it.

Beyond my own personal reaction, though, it's important to acknowledge that a lot of fans are disappointed and frustrated to hear that we still have such a long time to wait! I sympathize, believe me! But I wanted to share some thoughts I had yesterday about a possible reason for the November date. Please keep in mind that most of this is my own speculation, and I could be wrong!

One of STARZ's other shows, POWER BOOK II: Ghost, will air its 4th and final season in the Friday 8pm slot on STARZ that OUTLANDER occupied last year. Here's the announcement, posted on March 14, 2024.

Note that the article says clearly that POWER BOOK II's season will air in two parts:

STARZ has canceled Power Book II: Ghost, with the show’s fourth season to serve as its last. It will be broken into two parts, premiering June 7 and September 6.

Now, I don't know how many episodes each of those parts will consist of, but it seems to me there's very likely a scheduling conflict involved here.

Let's suppose they want OUTLANDER Season 7B to air on Fridays at 8pm like last season. Well, when can they fit it in? Starting on June 7, POWER BOOK II will occupy that time slot for X episodes. Then a short break, followed by Part 2 of POWER BOOK II's final season, starting on Friday, September 6, for a further Y episodes.

It's possible that they just could not find a stretch of 8 consecutive weeks in that Friday 8pm time slot in which to show the eight episodes of OUTLANDER Season 7B, until after Part 2 of POWER BOOK II's final season is over (which I'm guessing will be sometime around late October or early November). So that may be why 7B is scheduled to start in November.

I could be wrong, of course, but I think that's plausible. I have never watched POWER or any of its spinoff series, but it clearly has quite a following, enough to spawn multiple sequels. And perhaps the people who come up with the schedules at STARZ decided to give that show priority over OUTLANDER 7B, for whatever reason.

In any case, we can't change this decision. It is what it is. We'll just have to continue to be patient. I think the final 8 episodes of Season 7 will be worth waiting for! As soon as we have any news about a specific premiere date, I'll post it here.