How many episodes will Outlander Season 6 now have?

Outlander Season 6 was originally going to have 12 episodes to tell the story in A Breath of Snow and Ashes. The episode count has been reduced. What is it reduced to, and why?

Filming on Outlander Season 6 has wrapped. This was surprising news when announced on World Outlander Day. After all, the show only started filming the season in January and managed to wrap by June.

We’re used to filming taking much longer, so it certainly led to a lot of questions, especially with COVID protocols in place. Well, it all came about because the episode count has been reduced.

When Outlander Season 6 was first ordered, it came with a 12-episode order. Now, the season will only have eight episodes, with the four missing episodes added to Outlander Season 7. We’re still getting the 24 episodes across the two seasons but in a different way.

Why is Outlander Season 6 only eight episodes long?

What’s with the change? We can blame everything on COVID-19.

It’s taking longer to film episodes right now. It looks like STARZ always planned to air the new season in February 2022 once a filming schedule could be set, but that was at a risk of being pushed back because of how long filming was taking. And remember, editing is needed after that!

Instead of pushing back the release date and making Droughtlander even longer, everyone found a different way to manage it all. The show reduced the episode count for the season, allowing filming to wrap early and post-production to start.

The season is arriving in early 2022, and Sam Heughan may have given the month away. It really does look like this was the plan for STARZ and the release date isn’t being moved to 2021 due to other shows that are planned for the schedule then.

Outlander Season 6 will arrive sometime in early 2022. Watch the first five seasons on STARZ.