Outlander seasons 1, 2 coming to Netflix US — what this means
Today, studio Sony and Netflix both confirmed that on May 27, the first two seasons of the show will be available for subscribers of the premium-cable service. It’s certainly an unusual situation for a premium-cable show from a traditional network (Starz, in this case) to end up on a streaming service during its run, but studio ownership and the deal negotiated in advance may have a thing or two to do with that. It’s reminiscent in some ways of how Shameless is also on Netflix, even though new episodes are available over on Showtime.
So is this tremendous news for Outlander as a series? It’s hard to argue against it since you’re allowing viewers who may have never had an opportunity to watch the show before to have a little bit of access. They may now see it in their Netflix queue and because of that, commence a binge. Maybe they’ve heard from a friend or two that it’s great, but have never had an opportunity to purchase Starz and see it for themselves.
While we’re not sure that Starz will ever thoroughly promote the fact that Outlander is on Netflix, it could still benefit them. If the first two seasons get a lot of viewers hooked, then maybe this will convince some of them to become subscribers for at least a month or two to watch seasons 3 and 4 … and then maybe they will come back for whenever season 5 is available. Could they wait until future seasons are on Netflix to watch them there? In theory sure, but you don’t know when that’s going to happen — probably not anytime soon. This deal is really only a win-win when Starz still has a couple of seasons that aren’t on Netflix so that viewers have to subscribe to them in order to check them out.
There are a lot of international readers who may respond to this article with “oh, Outlander isn’t on Netflix already,” mostly because the show is in some territories. Like many other series all over the world these days, it has a distribution model where it has to be licensed in a lot of creative ways to make money. Netflix in the US is ultimately another way for Sony to line their pockets, and we think that Outlander being there certainly won’t hurt the show’s future in the event that Starz ever does decide they want to move on without it. It’ll give another broadcaster immediately proof that the show performs. (For the record, though, we don’t see Starz canceling Outlander anytime soon.)
What do you think about Netflix getting the first two seasons of Outlander? Be sure to share below, and stay tuned for some other news.
Photo: Starz