Part one of Virgin River's fifth season ended on so many cliff-hangers, and we've been counting down the days until the holiday episodes start airing at the end of November to find out what will happen next. (Warning now: Spoilers ahead.)
There's the question of Mel's biological father. Is it Doc? Is it someone else? Will we even find out in November? And what about Charmaine's twins? Will she finally give birth? Is Calvin actually going to be part of their lives? And how is Jack going to react? Speaking of babies, is Lizzie actually pregnant or is it a false alarm? And what about Preacher now that Kaia is about to uncover the secret surrounding Wes's fate?
Executive producer and showrunner Patrick Sean Smith promises you will get the answers to several of those questions, while indicating that part two of season five will be lighter in tone to help balance the heaviness in the first 10 episodes.
“It's just Virgin River holiday coziness times 10,” he tells Glamour exclusively. “The cast is wonderful and so talented, and the whole crew did an incredible job this season. It was a lot more than they've had to do in the past, so I don't want to try to match that intensity every season; otherwise it's just turning into Virgin River 911. At its heart, the show is about love, community, romance, second chances, and getting through life. I'm very proud of the season.”
But before we preview what's in store for the holiday episodes, Smith joined us over Zoom, now that the writers strike is over, to break down the first 10 episodes and answer all your need-to-know questions. So settle in…we have a lot to get to.
Glamour: Virgin River’s fifth season isn’t even over yet, and I feel like more happened in these first 10 episodes than in any season prior. What were the biggest challenges for you this season?
Patrick Sean Smith: There were many, with the first just being the history of the show. We have a wonderful script coordinator, Ildiko Susany, who also wrote episode nine, and everybody talks about Ildiko as the person who knows all. She's like our Siri if we're like, “Wait, when did Mel move to Virgin?” because the timeline is very unique. So my biggest challenge [coming in as showrunner] was wanting it to feel as seamless as possible. People care a lot about this show and I want to honour that. I wanted to make sure we weren't contradicting ourselves, we weren't repeating [stories], and all the characters were staying in their lanes, while still moving forward.
How much does Virgin River, the series, follow the books, especially in season five?
When Sue Tenney developed the series and pilot, she made some really smart choices of taking from all the books and then bringing the characters in the best way that told the TV story she wanted to. [Virgin River book author] Robyn Carr has been very deferential. She's like, “I write books; you do TV.” So there's always been a bit of a separation between what happens in the books and what happens in the show.
A lot of times over the season we would say, “Oh, let's do X,” and then we check the books only to see, “Oh, my gosh, that happened,” like Lizzie getting pregnant in the books. So it's always like an extra check when we start to head in that direction to know that it's also honouring the spirit of the books, but not hamstringing ourselves to only capturing what the books did. Some people have read the books and love watching the series, and some people are just watching the series. You just want to take what suits the direction that you want.
Let’s talk about the season five, part one, finale. Charmaine is still pregnant. [Laughs.]
That was a tough one. [Laughs.] In wanting it all to feel seamless, I felt like if there was a time jump, then it could just inherently feel like a reset button, and I never wanted anybody to come away with that feeling. So the challenge that goes with that is Charmaine remains as pregnant as she was for most of season four through season five.
With that said, I love Lauren Hammersley, who plays Charmaine. She's an incredible actress. You have so many strong opinions about the character and then you meet the actress and you're like, “Of course, you're the most lovely, perfect human being on the planet who's funny as hell and has just been run through the wringer as a character.” She really appreciated a little bit of a redemption for Charmaine this season, which was my creative intention because I think she was starting to wear out her welcome as a character. That's not to say she's not going to come back and create more drama, but I think it's going to be in a little bit different form.
Meanwhile, in the twist I think no one saw coming, Calvin is the father of Charmaine’s twins. But first, there’s the reveal that Calvin didn’t die in the boat explosion in season four. Of course, his body was never found, and at the time, Melissa said to Brady, “He’s no longer with us,” but never actually said he was dead. Will we find out where he’s been all this time? I would suppose the reason he came out of hiding is because Melissa’s in police custody.
We'll give some hints in the holiday episodes, and then in season six we'll explore it more deeply and it will be a bit more of its own story engine. But in terms of who was the father of Charmaine's twins, it was something that we kept talking about. We considered all the possibilities and we went down the Brady path and we went down the Mike path, but Calvin just made the most sense. He was my first instinct in the beginning just because of his history with Jack and the fact that they hate each other so much. It just made sense that if Charmaine was in a place of desperation and wanted to hurt Jack, that going to his archenemy and hooking up with him would make the most sense.
Then Ildiko even pointed out, “Oh, yes, there's one scene where Charmaine mentioned that she was going to this part of town where Calvin always [is]…or she knew this area of town.” I was like, “Perfect.” It just made sense. And then since they had never found Calvin's body in the explosion, I was just like, “He's coming back from the dead to be the baby daddy of Charmaine's twins,” which just felt soapy and delicious. It was a lot of fun to come up with that.
What would somebody like Charmaine be doing with Calvin? And have we ever seen Calvin and Charmaine exist onscreen together at the same time?
It was hinted that Charmaine had some awareness of an area or a bar that Calvin was known to frequent. So it tied her to that area incidentally, but it also felt like, “Well, that's a seed. It's not too far out of left field.” Just the circumstances of the fact that she was upset with Jack at the time and he was starting to see Mel…. It did not seem outside the realm of possibility that Charmaine would find his mortal enemy and have revenge sex.
Will we see this in flashbacks?
I don't plan to, but it's not to say we couldn't.
Why did Charmaine bother telling him he was the father of her twins, given his past and the fact that he’s so evil? Will we get answers to that?
Yeah, and [you'll begin to] understand more what was going on with the Todd situation. It's really fun to find a method to the madness of the character that you don't know if there was clear intent before, but when you can find a way to explain it, I think it's worth it.
It was just such a bananas reveal, because after the first episode, Charmaine disappears for a bit, and we still didn’t have a clue who the father was. So I was just waiting for that story to come back around. As soon as she showed up at the carnival in the finale, I was like, Okay, here we go!
Game on! I love that you caught that.
She’s not there just for kicks and giggles. Something’s going to go down, and boy did it.
It's so fun. I was like, “We need to hint [it's him] with the burned hand and hear the clicking of his cane on the asphalt.” So it was just fun.
Let’s move on to the mystery of Mel’s father. One of the letters that Joey found is signed “Champ.” Should that be a clue for us?
It's a clue in the holiday episodes, and it's the only thing that Mel really has to go off of.
How much of that storyline will be explored in the holiday episodes?
The holiday episodes are a little bit lighter, and we wanted to play a little more comedy after the weight of this season. It felt like, if we're going to give a holiday gift to the audience, let's make it a fun one. So part of what Mel and Jack are going through in those two episodes is like the scavenger hunt through Virgin River trying to track down the man who is her biological father. They're going from clue to clue.
Did we always know then that Mel and Joey are half sisters?
No, it was an idea that I had where it just felt like a good opportunity to connect Mel more to the history of the town because your main character can only be a fish out of water for so long. Getting into hinting at how Mel came to Virgin River, was there some preexisting knowledge that she wasn't aware of when she was young that planted the name of this place?
I think a lot of fans are going to assume that Doc is her father.
I think the fun of the two upcoming episodes is looking around and realising it could be anybody in Virgin River.
Have we as an audience met him yet?
I don't want to reveal.
Who can we rule out though? It can’t be Jack’s father, right? Please at least rule that out.
Right. I think Brothers and Sisters went there for an episode and it gets a little ick. So other than Jack's dad, everybody else is a suspect.
Good. So let’s talk about Lizzie, who becomes pregnant in the books, but we don’t know if that storyline will play out the same way here. I’m selfishly hoping she’s not pregnant because I love the arc of her stepping into her strengths and standing on her own two feet. So what can you preview?
I think she continues on her own two feet, but her life has thrown her a curveball. She faces this challenge of how she's potentially going to manage all these things, but what she finds is the support of the Sewing Circle, the support of Hope and Doc. Her mother also comes to visit in the holiday episodes where it's all addressed. I very much love this path to power that Lizzie has found in season five, part one, and I hope to have it continue on through part two and onward.
Also, once it felt like we had a sense of what her character's mission was, it was much easier to write for her. She felt a little amorphous, but I think that that suited where she was before when she was young and lost. It's been fun to see her find her way with Hope's support and create a mentorship between the two women.
Speaking of Hope, I live for the scenes with her, Jo Ellen, Muriel, Lydie, Connie. The conversations they had at the spa about ageing was so refreshing—mudslinging aside.
We have some incredible women on our staff, and I let them run with [those scenes] and step aside to see what they haven't seen on television before and what they would want to hear. They're all varying ages, so I felt really excited about allowing them to offer their perspective to our predominantly female audience. I was excited and proud about how those turned out and just how the women came together to shoot it. You could see their enthusiasm, even at the table read, just to have that opportunity to be real and be honest with each other. It also allows the audience to bond with them as a group of women who are supporting each other in a way that I don't think you get to see much on TV today.
It’s so true. And speaking of, let’s talk about Cameron and Muriel. I love this pairing so much. Tell me about the decision to get them together.
I think we presented them very much as a May-December romance, [but we] also don't really get deep into their age difference, which I was proud of. We had explored [talking about their age difference] and it ended up in a couple drafts until we pulled it out just because it felt unnecessary. It's just something that really wasn't what their story was about. It's about two people who are attracted to each other and unexpectedly so, but they run with it because they enjoy one another. Muriel is such a bright light—who wouldn't fall in love with her in a second? I think season four was rough with Cameron because things didn't work out with Mel. He just wanted to find love in this town, and the fact that he could find it in such a special character felt like a great opportunity. They still have obstacles ahead, but I think it's something that we're excited to explore further.
I didn’t expect Doc to be so abrupt with Muriel when she told him that she and Cameron were an item.
I think Doc is old-school, and he has a certain expectation for a level of professionalism that Cameron compromised last season. We know that Mel left the clinic because of her pregnancy but also because of the tension that existed for them. So when Muriel comes to talk to Doc, I think he just wanted to be able to control [the situation], and when professional relationships become personal, there's only so much he can do. I took it more as just Doc is a man who hasn't watched a lot of medical shows on television where it's all romance all the time and just wants to run his clinic to the best of his ability. He had just cleaned up the Mel and Cameron thing. Mel just came back and now he's getting thrown this again. My interpretation and something that I'm sure we'll touch on later is just the complexities of his relationship with Cameron and how I think he's going to have to heal some of that over time with that character.
Let’s move on to Mel’s miscarriage, which was so devastating. Did it have to happen and does it happen in the books?
It was an opportunity to not blow past something that has defined Mel's character that felt like an important topic to explore even further. So it felt like an organic way for it to come up. The past few seasons have been very defined by her trauma and his trauma, and this is a shared trauma. We now see this couple struggle their way through this loss together because it was the one thing that literally killed her last marriage. Mel and Mark could not survive the trauma of the reproductive issues that she experienced, so to see Mel and Jack in that same situation, but actually persevere and come out stronger and closer, that felt [like the most logical] reason for me to do it because I feel like that gave them so much more depth, and so much more love.
The image of seeing the blood in her underwear was so profound because it’s not something you see in this detail on TV. As much as I hated that Mel experienced a miscarriage, I was glad to see it portrayed so authentically. What were those conversations like in the writers room?
We had discussed it. The network didn't flinch at it. I think you're always wondering if there's a softer way to dramatise something that's traumatic, but at the same time, we couldn't come up with something that felt as important to show. We also wanted to be clear what was happening with her in that moment. This was an opportunity to show a woman go through a very specific experience, and if you're going to do it, do it.
Speaking of, we also saw Ava, Tara’s sister, go through a difficult process with her endometriosis.
Tara, who was played by Stacey Farber, is a fan favourite, and I was excited to work with her just because of Degrassi. We had gone down the path of telling this endometriosis story with her character, but then she booked the series regular role on the upcoming CW series The Spencer Sisters, with Leah Thompson, so we could only have her for a few days. We then used that opportunity to introduce her sister, Ava, because there was a backstory of Lilly having several daughters. And Libby Osler, who plays Ava, is awesome and is out and part of the LGBTQ+ community. I can't speak for her specifically, but it felt like an important opportunity to introduce a lesbian character dealing with reproductive issues that is more universal for all women as opposed to something directly tied to her sexual orientation.
The show's always been very female forward in dealing with female health issues and reproductive issues, and it's so unfortunately timely in a way that I think people are finally starting to talk about it more freely. While we were shooting, women would come up to me on set and say, “I really want to make sure we get this right because I have endometriosis too.” Like you said, the shame around it really needs to be shed because it's not healthy for anybody.
Will Ava stick around for the holiday episodes or be back in season six? Because now, of course, Jack and Mel are interested in buying Lilly’s farm.
Yes. I think we will see Ava back again at some point in season six.
Let’s discuss the wildfires that ripped through Virgin River this season. It wasn’t some little thing, and because of that, it was hard to watch, knowing how common these fires are nowadays.
The wildfire was one of the first things that I pitched to Netflix because I'd read about Paradise, California's fire in 2018, and Paradise is [basically] Virgin River. It's just the exact same town. There's an incredible documentary, Bring Your Own Brigade, that we watched that really showed neighbours saving neighbours. We're dealing with so much divisiveness in this world, so to see an event that can really bring people together in a profound way where heroes are becoming heroes for the sake of their neighbours regardless of who they are, it just felt like such a great way to expand on the sense of community that this town has and has portrayed from the beginning.
It was also an opportunity to see Hope lead more than just open town events. And it felt like a really organic way to dig into everybody and make them bigger versions of themselves, like Lizzie talking Lydie out of staying at her house and keeping her stuff or seeing what Mel is going through and rising above it to keep helping people.
Martin Wood, who's been a series director with the show from the beginning, did such a phenomenal job. Then you had Brie dealing with the trial at the same time. What I've wanted to do [with this show] is shake things up in a way that gives you a lot more to mine moving forward for many seasons to come.
Preacher and Kaia have an interesting road ahead of them now that Wes’s body has been found. Will we get resolution to this in the holiday episodes or is this something that’s going to play into season six?
We will get resolution as far as what this means for Preacher and get a sense of how complicated this will be for his relationship with Kaia.
How worried should we be for Preacher?
I would be worried. He's a beloved character. You always want to take your most beloved characters and put them in danger. He's such an honourable man, and it was always a loose end from before that we were like, “Is it worth going back to it?” When we were coming up with the character of Kaia and getting a sense of what their dynamic would be and who she was and what could affect them, it would have to be something big.
Kaia’s soon-to-be ex-husband, Jay, seems like a real live wire.
I think he kind of falls to the background for a little while, just so we can focus on Preacher and Kaia's relationship and then the big mystery of what's going to happen with Wes and all of that.
I liked Brie and Brady together, but I think Brie and Mike are better suited for each other. And while I’m sad for Brady, it’s nice to see this spark between him and Lark. What can you preview about these relationships?
The time jump [with the holiday episodes] helps us. When we start with the holiday episodes, we see the relationships between Brie and Mike, and Brady and Lark, have settled into each other a little bit. Zibby, who plays Brie, and Marco, who plays Mike, have done such an amazing job bringing this couple together since it's been hinted at for a couple seasons. It still feels exciting, not like, “Okay. Well, they crossed the finish line.” So we will get to see a lot of that in the holiday episodes. We also get to see more of Brady and Lark together, as well as a side of Lark that we haven't really seen yet that might be a little surprising.
When the holiday episodes air, it will be the biggest time jump on Virgin River so far, since we’re going from Labor Day to Christmastime. Will it be kind of jarring to see so much time—at least for Virgin River—has passed?
We've joked about it. We've been like, “We're jumping seven seasons of Virgin River!” With that said, I think there are many surprises still to come in the holiday episodes that then propel us into season six. It's definitely not just a two-off. It's still tied into the serialised stories.
Might we get a wedding in these holiday episodes? It feels very appropriate.
You won't get a wedding, but you may or may not get a birth or two. The two episodes are packed. They touch on all the characters' lives. It's feel good, but there are also plenty of twists and turns to get you excited about season six.
And finally, now that the strike is over and you can get back to work, where are you in terms of writing episodes for season six?
We have half of season six written, so now we just have to get back for the second half.
This feature originally appeared on Glamour US.
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