There are still some months to go before the final season of Outlander—the long-running, time-travelling, period-romancing epic that many fans and critics agree has enjoyed a return to form in recent years —but as Jamie likes to say, “dinna fash, Sassenach.” If you’re looking for something to help wile away the hours until then—or, at least, to make you consider what hours mean, or what might have been if you’d done something differently, or if that would even affect your timeline…
… Anyway! For fans patiently waiting to see the conclusion to Outlander’s eight-season run, we’ve rounded up ten shows that explored time travel in similarly interesting ways—or at least had the most fun trying. Use the JustWatch guide below to find out where to watch them on streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
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 series that follows multiple timelines over more than a century in a rural German town, it’s beautifully shot, dramatically scored, perfectly cast and wildly ambitious. If you like the way Outlander explores dark moments in history while getting into the knotty threads of family lineages, you’ll probably get hooked on it immediately.
It’s the kind of show where the protagonist, Jonas, wears a yellow raincoat and walks around with a torch that looks like a FADO lamp, and where one character’s son turns out to be another character’s dad. Dark is twisty and convoluted, and even if it gets a bit self-serious by Season 3, it all eventually makes some kind of sense. Impressive!
Quantum Leap (1989)
The show that continually answered the age-old question: “Why haven’t I leapt yet?” Quantum Leap concerns a physicist, Sam (Scott Bakula), who discovers time travel, only to get stuck leaping between various bodies at different points in time. Again, if you like the blend of historical fact and science fiction in Outlander, you’ll have plenty of fun with this one.
To leap to the next body—which he hopes will one day be his own—Sam 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 to reflect the real-world transition of one of the show’s stars, Elliot Page).
Outlander fans will find much to appreciate in the show’s adventurous use of time travel. This arc is centred around a character named Five: a boy who travels into the future and returns as a 60-year-old man, though still in his teenage body. In the second season, the action moves to ‘60s Dallas—a recurring theme in several shows on this list, but one that never fails to fascinate.
Continuum (2012)
Released in 2012, Simon Barry’s Continuum follows the arc of many shows on this list: a promising start and a great second season before things started to get a bit loopy—but if you like when time travel shows really make the effort to tie up their loose ends, you’ll appreciate this one.
Beginning in 2077, the show follows a group of freedom fighters who effectively do a reverse Terminator: travelling back in time to 2012 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)
If you like the clash of time travel and history in Outlander, 11.22.63 will be up your alley. Adapted from the Stephen King novel, it’s one of many shows mentioned here that time-travel back to a fateful day in Dallas (the date is also depicted in a famous double episode of Quantum Leap).
11.22.63 stars a pre-cancellation James Franco as 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 feel it would be wrong not to mention the iconic ‘00s show in which a group of strangers is stranded on a mysterious island after a plane crash. If you haven’t seen it, or at least haven’t seen it in a while, it’s never a bad time to start (re)watching—and either way, those later seasons, while much criticised on release, have aged like fine wine.
Even the time-hopping bits, which are a little messy at first, eventually leave the show in a pleasant groove—with multiple timelines that lead to emotional and dramatic payoffs. And even without the time-travel, fans of Outlander will appreciate the show’s exploration of themes like destiny and free will.
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 same time as both the final seasons of Lost and Star Trek, Abrams’ move into filmmaking, 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 I think Outlander fans will easily warm to—even without the period trappings.
The smartly constructed 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 ticky topics: such as 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 titular L.A. tar pits—now that’s what I call an elevator pitch!
Outlander fans with a taste for the show’s wilder swings will find plenty of things to enjoy in La Brea, a show that doesn’t let its slightly mad premise get in the way of a gripping storyline. The story is split into two timelines, one set at the time when dinosaurs roamed the planet and the other in the present day, where a former pilot starts seeing visions of where the group ended up.
Loki (2021)
We still don’t know what will happen to Loki in the post-Jonathan Majors MCU, but something tells me Kevin Feige will find a way to bring the God of Mischief into play once again. Tom Hiddleston has been this character since 2011, but only really got to explore his softer side during Loki.
When Michael Waldron’s offbeat, finely cast, and retro-leaning series allowed Hiddleston to be truly benevolent as a consultant in the TVA, the results were often charming. In terms of time travel, the show probably has the least connective tissue to reality of anything on this list (so if you’re after some kind of plausibility, it might not be for you), but that doesn’t mean there’s not plenty of fun to be had with it.
