'Outlander' season 7's return date has finally been announced. Here's everything we know about the new episodes.

• "Outlander" aired eight episodes of season seven in 2023 before taking a lengthy midseason hiatus.

• It's now been announced that the second half of season seven will begin airing on November 22, 2024.

• Sam Heughan and Caitríona Balfe will be back alongside fan favorites from earlier seasons.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for "Outlander" season seven.

We're in one of the longest Droughtlanders to date, but there's light at the end of the tunnel. The team behind the much-loved Starz drama has announced the premiere date for the remaining episodes of season seven.

As audiences may already already know, the current season is the show's longest since season one, consisting of 16 episodes. While the first eight were released last summer, the second half will begin airing on Friday, November 22, 2024.

When viewers last saw Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitríona Balfe), they had just completed the journey back to Scotland after an unexpected sequence of events at the second battle of Saratoga. Meanwhile, Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and Roger (Richard Rankin) were faced with the prospect that their young son had been kidnapped and likely taken through the standing stones at Craigh na Dun.

From which cast members you can expect to see in the remaining episodes to details on the Diana Gabaldon books the episodes will be based on, here's everything we know about the second part of "Outlander" season seven.

The second part of "Outlander" season seven will premiere on November 22, 2024.

Season seven was given a supersized 16-episode order after season six was truncated as a result of delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

After the first half aired in 2023, audiences were told that the remaining eight episodes would be released sometime in 2024.

We now know when exactly that will be, thanks to an announcement delivered to fans on "World Outlander Day" on June 1. The annual holiday celebrates the anniversary of the publication of Diana Gabaldon's first book in the best-selling historical fantasy series.

This year, Starz, the network behind "Outlander," marked the day by sharing the news that the highly anticipated second half of season seven will premiere on Friday, November 22.

Audiences can look forward to one episode being released every week on Fridays at midnight ET on all Starz streaming and on-demand platforms. On linear, the new episodes will debut weekly at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

The new episodes will see Jamie and Claire's marriage "tested like never before," according to a synopsis.

A synopsis of the new episodes shared by Starz alongside the teaser trailer released on June 1 indicates that Jamie and Claire are not on safe ground just because they're back in Scotland.

"The perils of the Revolutionary War force them to choose between standing by those they love and fighting for the land they have made their new home," it reads.

The synopsis continues: "Meanwhile, Roger and Brianna face new enemies across time and must battle the forces that threaten to pull their family apart. As loyalties change and painful secrets come to light, Jamie and Claire's marriage is tested like never before."

"With their love binding them over oceans and centuries, can the MacKenzies and Frasers find their way back to each other?"

All of the episodes of season seven were shot between 2022 and 2023.

The 2023 actors and writers' strikes in Hollywood put a pin on almost all productions for a while and caused something of a backlog, but "Outlander" fans will be pleased to learn that the second part of season seven was filmed way ahead of time between 2022 and early 2023.

The cast and crew returned to the set in Scotland to begin filming both parts of the season back to back in April 2022 and confirmed via an announcement on Twitter that filming had concluded in February 2023.

Heughan also shared the news with his Instagram followers, alongside a photo of himself and Balfe smiling while holding a clapperboard.

"That's a WRAP!!! 220 shooting days, a whole year of Outlander," he wrote. "THANK YOU to our amazing crew who have worked so hard and to our brilliant fans…we CANNOT WAIT for you to see season 8 @outlander_starz."

The episodes will be based on the events of the seventh and eighth "Outlander" novels by Diana Gabaldon.

Since it began airing in 2014, the romance drama has roughly adapted one book a season.

However, since season six was truncated, the first part of season seven actually covered some events from Diana Gabaldon's sixth "Outlander" installment, "A Breath of Snow and Ashes," before delving into the events of the seventh book, "An Echo in the Bone."

Executive producer Maril Davis has told Business Insider that the second part of the season will continue to wrap up the events of "An Echo in the Bone" before launching into the action of the eighth book, "Written in My Own Heart's Blood."

That will allow the writers to fully dedicate the show's eighth and final season to the ninth book in the series, "Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone." While there is another book in the works,  it's unlikely that it will be published before the show ends.

Sam Heughan, Caitríona Balfe and the rest of the main cast are all expected to return for the new episodes.

"Outlander" wouldn't be "Outlander" without its two main stars, and it's impossible to think of the show continuing without them, so, of course, Heughan and Balfe will be returning.

The pair, who have both held the additional role of executive producers since season five, play 18th-century Scottish warrior Jamie Fraser and his time-hopping, devoted wife Claire Randall Fraser.

In addition, audiences can expect to see the couple's daughter, Brianna MacKenzie (Skelton), and her husband, Roger MacKenzie (Rankin), back on screen.

Given their importance to Brianna and Roger's storyline, their new acquaintance, Buck MacKenzie (Diarmaid Murtagh), and adversary, Rob Cameron (Chris Fulton), will also make an appearance.

Young Ian (John Bell), Lord John Grey (David Berry), and the recently reintroduced William Ransom (Charles Vandervaart) will also be back, Starz has confirmed.

The Hunter siblings (Izzy Meikle-Small and Joey Phillips) will also return, but Davis has hinted that we might not see so much of them, telling BI: "We've left them behind for a little bit, but we are going to come back to them."

Audiences can also look forward to seeing some fan favorites from the show's earlier seasons.

It was announced in late 2022 that several characters not seen since the show's early days will rejoin the action in the show's seventh season.

These include Dougal MacKenzie (Graham McTavish), Laoghaire Fraser (Nell Hudson), Brian Fraser (Andrew Whipp), Joan MacKimmie (Layla Burns), Ian Murray (Steven Cree), and Geillis Duncan (Lotte Verbeek).

Deadline reported that Jenny Murray, Jamie's sister will also make an appearance, but she will be played by Kristin Atherton, instead of Laura Donnelly, who originated the role.

Given that some of the returning characters are dead, audiences may be wondering how exactly they will be written back into the story. While flashbacks are possible, showrunner Matthew B. Roberts hinted at another option.

"One of the many joys of our epic story is the element of time travel which allows us to revisit some of our favorite characters in different times and places," he said in a statement to BI.

This will be the penultimate season of "Outlander" after it was announced the eighth season would be its last.

In January 2023, Starz confirmed the show would return for one final run after season seven.

"For nearly a decade, 'Outlander' has won the hearts of audiences worldwide, and we're pleased to bring Claire and Jamie's epic love story to a proper conclusion," said Kathryn Busby, Starz's original programming president, in a statement.

Like "Game of Thrones," another much-loved TV drama adapted from a long-running series of books, "Outlander" will likely end its run on television before the final novel is released.

However, fans won't have to say goodbye to "Outlander" for good, as a prequel series has been greenlighted. "Outlander: Blood of My Blood" will tell two parallel origin stories: how Jamie's parents came to meet and Claire's parents' war-time romance.

Find out everything we know so far about the prequel series, including who has been cast in the main roles as Jamie and Claire's parents, here.

Check out the teaser trailer for the second half of "Outlander" season 7

Read the original article on Business Insider