There are still some months to go before the final season of Outlander, but as Jamie likes to say, “dinna fash, Sassenach.” We’ve got you covered with ten time travel shows to help wile away the hours—or, at least, to make you consider what hours mean, or what might have been if you’d done something differently in one of them, or if that would even affect our timeline…
… Anyway! As we patiently wait to see the conclusion of Outlander’s eight-season run, we’ve rounded up the other shows that did it best—or at least the ones that had the most fun trying–and where you can watch them all.
Dark (2017)
The paradox, quite literally, with time travel shows is that they always end up tripping over themselves. One exception to the rule is Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese’s Dark, a beautifully shot, dramatically scored, perfectly cast and wildly ambitious Netflix series that follows multiple timelines over more than a century in a rural German town.
The protagonist, Jonas, wears a yellow raincoat and walks around with a torch that looks like a FADO lamp. One character’s son turns out to be another character’s dad. It’s knotty and convoluted, and even if it gets a bit self-serious by Season 3, it all eventually makes some kind of sense.
Quantum Leap (1989)
The show that continually answered the age-old question: “Why haven’t I leapt yet?” Quantum Leap concerns a physicist, played by Scott Bakula, who discovers time travel only to get stuck leaping between various bodies at different points in time.
To leap to the next—which he hopes will one day be his own—he has to help resolve an issue in that person’s life. This leads to situations that are usually funny, occasionally historical and sometimes quite moving—it’s essentially a show about empathy, after all.
It also has Dean Stockwell in a shiny jacket, which, let’s be honest, is the real USP.
The Umbrella Academy (2019)
By the end of Season 3, The Umbrella Academy had succumbed to the fate of most superhero shows—becoming a little too bloated for comfort. Not that it took away from all the things that made it great. Fun, inclusive and willing to tackle some quite delicate topics (including a narrative arc for Viktor’s transition that reflected the real-world transition of the actor Elliot Page), the show is still a breath of fresh air.
The time travel element is centred around Five, a boy who travels into the future only to return as a 60-year-old man—although now back in his teenage body. In the second season, the action moves to ‘60s Dallas—a recurring setting in a number of the shows on this list.
Continuum (2012)
Released in 2012, Simon Barry’s Continuum followed the arc of several shows on this list: a promising start that led to a great second season before things started to get a bit convoluted.
Beginning in 2077, the show follows a group of freedom fighters who effectively do a reverse Terminator, travelling back in time to 2012 to try to prevent the world from slipping into the corporate dystopia of their own time. It might get a little loopy by the final season, but credit to Barry for sticking the landing.
11.22.63 (2016)
Another show that took a trip back to Dallas (the date is also depicted in a famous double episode of Quantum Leap) is 11.22.63, an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name. Starring a pre-cancellation James Franco, the miniseries follows an English teacher who travels back in time with the mission of stopping President Kennedy’s assassination—only to find he quite likes the idea of staying there.
Fans who enjoy Outlander’s approach to historical fiction will find much to enjoy in the show’s skewed recreation of that fateful day.
Lost (2004)
While I wouldn’t be so bold as to say that the time-travelling bits are everyone’s favourite part of Lost (if anything, the opposite is true), I would be remiss not to mention the iconic ‘00s show. And either way, those later seasons, while much criticised on release, have aged like a fine wine. If you haven’t seen the show, or at least haven’t seen it in a while, it’s never a bad time to start watching.
Fans of Outlander will feel especially at home with the show’s dissection of themes like destiny and free will, regardless of how much time-hopping is going on.
Fringe (2008)
This 2008 J.J. Abrams joint follows a team of secret governmental agents tasked with investigating pattern events. These include parallel universes, which feature heavily in Season 2. They also include time travel, most notably in the shifting timelines of Season 3 and the arrival of The Observers: future beings with the ability to move through eras and alter human history.
Released around the final seasons of Lost and Abrams’ move into filmmaking with Star Trek, it’s probably safe to say that Fringe is not the best remembered of the director’s projects from that time. It is, however, an enjoyably daft combination of temporal tampering and compelling conspiracies that fans of Outlander will easily appreciate.
Russian Doll (2019)
While Russian Doll is more in the lineage of reset-button movies like Groundhog Day and Palm Springs, it’s an absolute blast of a show, and one that Outlander fans will easily enjoy.
The plot follows a video game developer (played by the great Natasha Lyonne) who repeatedly dies and wakes up again on the day of her 36th birthday. After going through the motions many times, she begins to question the reasons why, leading to light meditations on heavy topics like philosophy, physics, and trauma.
La Brea (2021)
In David Appelbaum’s La Brea, a group of people travel back in time to 10,000 B.C. after slipping into a sinkhole in the eponymous L.A. tar pits—now that’s what you call an elevator pitch! The show is split across two timelines, one set in the era when dinosaurs roamed and the other in the present day, where a former pilot starts seeing visions of where the group ended up.
Outlander fans with a taste for the show’s wilder swings will find plenty of things to enjoy.
Loki (2021)
It’s difficult to say what will happen to Loki in the post-Jonathan Majors/Kang MCU, but something tells us Kevin Feige will find a way to incorporate the god of mischief again. Tom Hiddleston has been playing the character since 2011, but only really got to explore his softer side during his two-season run as a TVA consultant in Michael Waldron’s retro-leaning series.
In terms of time travel, Loki probably has less of an attachment to reality than anything on this list, but that certainly doesn’t mean there’s no fun to be had with it. Waldron’s offbeat approach and adventurous casting choices stand out.
Where To Watch The Best Time Travel Shows Like ‘Outlander’
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