Outlander Season 4 Review: America Isn't Easy for Jamie and Claire

Sunday will begin a new adventure for Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe) Fraser on Outlander. The star-crossed lovers have been separated by war, prison, politics and 200 years of time, but now they're attached at the hip and conquering the Americas. Here's the CliffsNotes version of what you need to know about Season 4: America is a good look on the Frasers, but it does take them a minute to get settled.

The thing about Outlander is that it is such an expansive show that redefines its genre every half-season or so, which means there's a lot for everyone to take in and not everyone is going to love every minute. The final moments of the Season 4 premiere will leave every fan (at least the ones that didn't get a heads up in the books) gasping, but otherwise it's a pretty slow start for the Frasers, which is something that couldn't be said about any other season of the show. And it should be noted that gasp is still being held after the six episodes screened for critics, which might have contributed to the frustration moving through the early episodes.

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Season 1 began by launching Claire 200 years into the past. Season 2 began with her devastating return to her own time and the audience having to guess what brought her back through the stones. Season 3 took its time reuniting the couple, but the initial episodes dealt with the grief of their separation so thoroughly and compassionately, that it was still breathtaking to watch even if there weren't giant battles or overtures to entrance the audience.

As Season 4 begins, the Frasers have recovered from their shipwreck and are gathering the money they need to return to Scotland. Where each previous season clearly laid out the type of story to expect in the upcoming season, whether it was an adventurous romance, a political thriller or a story of grief and loss, it was clearly defined. It's hard to peg down what the drive of Season 4 is until a few episodes in -- including one particular episode that will inspire a lot of think pieces about Claire's white-savior complex in the slavery era. When the Frasers officially settle on their land in the mountains of North Carolina, we settle into a frontier drama that creates new challenges and stakes for a couple we thought had been through everything life could throw at them. Outlander Season 4 is more interesting to watch when they have a purpose and a goal in mind: settling the land Jamie was given by the governor to survive until the American Revolution begins in a few years.

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It also takes the show a minute to bring Claire and Jamie's daughter Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and her boyfriend Roger Wakefield (Richard Rankin) into the fold, but they are also a huge bright spot in the season. Their introduction in Season 3 was tempered by the impatience to get to Jamie and Claire's reunion in the print shop, and every moment spent building Brianna and Roger's connection was a moment not pushing Claire toward her soulmate. In Season 4, their love story runs parallel to Jamie and Claire and the sizzling awkwardness of their love coming into bloom is enticing, and at times electrifying, to watch.

Their initial troublesome attempts to define their relationship may inspire a return to Season 1 to remember how Jamie and Claire also struggled to get on the same page. The similarities make the addition welcome to the wide swathe of Outlander's overall story rather than a distraction from our central couple. After Episode 3, you become as equally invested in whether Brianna and Roger can survive an ocean as you are in whether Jamie and Claire can manage a settlement without starting a war with their Cherokee neighbors.

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The show remains as beautifully shot as ever, even with Scotland posing as an unfamiliar landscape. Balfe and Heughan still bring an excitement and heat to a couple we've been watching for over four years now. Certain surprises throughout the season will also bring in some nostalgic Season 1 feelings, which are more than welcome at this point and remind you how good Outlander is at making you care about every character.

As the season continues, Outlander just needs to keep track of its threads (again, we're still holding our breath after the Season 4 premiere and would like to exhale soon, please). Even though Brianna and Roger's storyline is a delightful part of the new season, it needs to be balanced with Jamie and Claire's struggles in the past, but also not forgotten completely, until those threads merge. Now that Claire and Jamie are settling, the show has to work harder to create interesting challenges for them that aren't just repeating patterns from previous seasons, to keep the momentum going until the Frasers are undoubtedly caught up in the swing of war. Even if it was a bumpy beginning, Season 4 of Outlander still has us eager for more of this adventurous family's time-bending story.

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Outlander Season 4 premieres Sunday, Nov. 4 at 8/7c on Starz.