KEEPING UP WITH THE FRASERS

SEASON PREMIERE Sunday, March 6, 9/8c, Starz

“YOU ARE MY home now.” So said 18thcentury Scottish warrior Jamie Fraser to his time-traveler wife Claire in the first season of Outlander, Starz’s sweeping love story based on the bestselling book series by Diana Gabaldon. Since then, the couple—sensitively and passionately portrayed by actors Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe—have weathered many storms under many roofs. (And, Heughan says wryly, “Jamie’s gone from a young Highlander to a grandfather.”) They finally found a “forever home” at Fraser’s Ridge, the now-thriving settlement they established in the British colony of North Carolina. But the foundation of that carefully and lovingly constructed world is about to crack.

“Claire and Jamie have spent a long time building that community. It disintegrates,” Heughan says. The 10,000 idyllic acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains are also home to their adult daughter, Brianna Fraser MacKenzie (Sophie Skelton); sonin-law Roger (Richard Rankin); and hundreds of others, including family, friends and a continuing influx of Scottish settlers.

“Season 6 is about, what. “There’s distrust and conflict on the Ridge. It is a journey of trauma for so many.” And though this is a shortened run (just eight episodes, as opposed to the usual 12 or 13), Davis hopes to reward and thank fans for tolerating the extra long Droughtlander by launching Season 6 with a supersized installment. The nearly 90-minute episode is “intense and really packed,” she notes, and brings back a “little of the Highlands.”