Outlander season 6: Here’s hoping for less sexual assault and trauma

Looking forward to Outlander’s sixth season, we’re discussing possible plot points while hoping the show has much less sexual assault and trauma.

Trigger warning: Outlander season five contains rape and sexual assault, which are mentioned in this review.

Season five of Outlander was bleak. Sure, there were bright spots, like Brianna and Roger’s wedding, too few moments with Fergus and Marsali, and the triumphant return of Young Ian.

As a reminder, Roger was hanged and almost killed by Regulators who believed he was a Redcoat. Brianna was kidnapped by her rapist and re-traumatized. Jamie almost died from a snakebite. And in the finale, Claire was kidnapped, beaten, and gang-raped because of her ongoing efforts to help people in her role as a doctor/healer.

All of the Frasers have been raped now. Perhaps Outlander should change its name to Rapelander moving into season 6 (whenever that may be). Rape is nothing new for the time-traveling historical drama, though. As Lynnette Rice eloquently recaps for Entertainment Weekly:

"…Dr. Claire Fraser…is gang-raped by a group of men… Her rape comes one season after her daughter Brianna (Sophie Skelton) was assaulted in a pub, and three seasons after her husband Jamie (Sam Heughan) was raped by his arch-enemy, Captain Black Jack Randall.(Not included in this inauspicious tally: Claire was forced to have sex with Louis XV to free Jamie while their adopted son Fergus was raped by Black Jack in season 2, and Jamie was blackmailed to have sex with a British woman in season 3, which led to the birth of his only son, Willie.)"

(It’s horrifying that Outlander has so much assault and rape that I had honestly forgotten about a few of the incidents on that list.)

Outlander frequently relies on the George R.R. Martin defense, making claims along the lines of, “This is what it was like in the past.” Unlike Game of Thrones, Outlander is ostensibly historical fiction. However, it is also a total fantasy that includes time travel.

To be clear, no matter how much you research and document the rape, abuse, sexual violence, and trauma that you include in your book or television show when you also include dragons, witches, and time travel, you can no longer fall back on the excuse of “historical accuracy.”

(Sidebar:  if dragons and time travel are actually real, please let me know.)

If these characters live in a world where all of these fantastical elements are included, surely some of the horrifying elements could be excluded (or at least, not of the sexual assault and rape variety).

Rape and sexual assault have been convenient plot devices and tropes for far too long. In Outlander‘s early seasons, it appeared to be bucking the trend by showing something rarely seen on television, a male-on-male rape with a thoughtful portrayal of the aftermath of the assault.

(Never mind the number of times Claire had been casually assaulted before that.) For viewers like me, watching during peak Rape of Thrones, this bought a lot of goodwill for a long time.

Sadly, the season 5 finale made it clear that Outlander has fallen back on bad tropes and poor writing. Jamie’s assault, as brutal as it was to watch, made some amount of sense for the characters and plot.

Ultimately, we can remove both Brianna and Claire’s rapes and the show would be unchanged (other than a gross “Who’s the daddy?” storyline with Brianna’s). Why were these plotlines necessary? To punish the show’s main female characters? To what end?

When Outlander is at its best, it’s a swashbuckling romance brimming with political intrigue and adventure and only hints of the occasional torture porn. Sadly, it’s become the opposite–all torture porn with the occasional political adventure and far too little romance for a show as swoony as it once was.

The overarching theme of season 5 seemed to be that life is unrelentingly terrible and there’s nothing you can do about it. (Even in Claire’s “dreamscape” during the finale, her own psyche seemed to argue that Roger and Bree were no better off in the future.) After an unceasingly brutal season with few bright spots, what do Outlander fans have to look forward to?

Season 6 was ordered at the same time as season  5 and, like many other shows, had started production before having to shut down due to the coronavirus. As far as what season 6 will likely entail, so far, each season of Outlander has corresponded with a book in the Diana Gabaldon series.

However, executive producer and former showrunner Ronald D. Moore has said they are open to changing this format in future seasons. The sixth book, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, was covered in part by season five. Season six may cover the rest of the events in that novel or move along to the seventh book, An Echo in the Bone.

Either way, season 6 will likely focus in part on political unrest, as the colonies move toward the Revolutionary War. This was a bit of storytelling that got somewhat abandoned in the latter half of the fifth season.

While it’s not as intriguing as the early seasons of Outlander when Jamie and Claire were trying to change history outright with the Battle of Culloden, the politics of war are always good storytelling as Jamie and Claire meet actual historical figures and get themselves into and out of hot water.

Hopefully, the show dives into this further in season six, allowing Jamie and his militia (who we last saw seeking vengeance on Claire’s behalf) to choose whether to fight on behalf of the Republic rather than the Crown.

Additionally, there’s that pesky bit of paper that sent Brianna into the past to begin with, an obituary stating her parents would die in a fire in 1776. At this point, that’s still four years in the “future” in Outlander‘s current timeline. But we can only assume the Fraser clan will be deadset on preventing that from happening.

There is a lot more fun to be had on Outlander. There is more to explore with Young Ian’s past with the Mohawk, and there is still another baby (at least) for Marsali and Fergus to have. Also, whatever happened to Claire and Jamie’s kitten?

Overall, moving forward, I hope Outlander is done once and for all with using rape and sexual assault as cheap plot devices. The mileage varies on the execution so much on this series that it simply isn’t worth it. And, frankly, who is left to be traumatized at this point?

This isn’t to say rape and sexual assault should never be shown or written about on television. But it does seem to be increasingly clear that the Outlander showrunners and writers seem to only consider their show as a microcosm within itself, rather than a living thing that can help or harm actual survivors.

Compare Outlander to the brilliant new I May Destroy You and you’ll see a stark difference in the ways in which rape can be portrayed–gratuitously and graphically with little thought to the survivors watching or on screen, or minimally and thoughtfully with an ongoing examination into recovery.

With the unintended extended production time, hopefully, Outlander will have a chance to rectify its wrongs and give Claire, and her thousands of fans around the world, time to properly heal.

What do you hope to see in Outlander season 6? Tell us in the comments below!