Spoiler Alert! This article contains some major details for the upcoming season.
Get ready for a new beginning as the picturesque town awaits the fans to return for the highly anticipated sixth season, which is slated to commence filming in the first half of 2024, as confirmed by Virgin River showrunner Patrick Sean Smith in an exclusive interview with Deadline, published on November 30, 2023. At the start of Season 5, Smith took the reins of Netflix’s popular romantic drama by replacing Sue Tenney as showrunner and executive producer.
A few hours ago, ‘Virgin River’ Season 5 completed its entire run by premiering the final two special episodes, which were categorized as Christmas specials (Season 5 Part 2). The ending of the season with “Father Christmas” has raised many questions as to how the next chapter will continue the tale. To address all these concerns, Smith sat down with Deadline and confirmed that the sixth season isn’t the final season, and it won’t follow the same pattern, quote:
“No, I don’t know if I would do the holidays again. It’s sort of been there, done that, and I feel like we did it in a way that I wouldn’t even know where to start to explore,” said Virgin River showrunner. He adds, “I think we’re probably looking at a 10-episode season moving forward.”
Due to this, there will be changes made to the official episode as the series will return back to the formula, and it seems like the production team will be producing only 10 episodes, just like Seasons 1–3, with no more holiday specials planned in the future seasons. The crew is ditching the two episodes increase, which were seen in Seasons 4 and 5 with 12 episodes. In addition to this, the report confirmed that the Virgin River writers had finished half of the scripts for Season 6 when they went on strike in May.
“Coming back to it, we’re finishing the second half,” Smith said in the interview, in which he also jumped the gun by talking about the supposed time jump!
Smith details that the show intends to do another time jump from the holidays to when Season 6 starts, but he doesn’t confirm exactly how many months, but it won’t be a direct pickup from the holidays. On the bright side, with the time jump, we’ll finally get to see Doc’s medical trial prognosis as it has been said by Smith that we’re going to get to see Doc in a good place after all the things that have transpired with the character!
“I think with Season 6, we’re getting to see Doc and Hope in a place that we haven’t really gotten to see them before, which is healthy. It felt like an opportunity to see something different in a season where they’re both thriving and healthy. So he’ll get a good prognosis out of it, but other challenges will arise.”
Let’s move to the most crucial question, as Smith also teased that more Mel and Jack content will officially be on the way, with some villains also taking center stage. As the new season opens with the construction of the house and the barn, we’ll eventually start to see in a bigger way what Jack and Mel’s lives and futures are going to look like. Smith highly asserts that the couple is definitely in pursuit of parenthood, which will play prominently in the new season.
After all, as it was his first time being the showrunner, he understood that the fans wanted more Mel and Jack, quote:
“We have 12 series regulars, and there’s a large ensemble to service but I think, and I told Martin and Alex as much, I was like, You guys got more coming up. They’re always game, they’re incredible. So much of the focus is Mel and Jack, they are the heart of the show, so it’s not losing that and readjusting the real estate that’s given for all the characters and trying to hit it a little bit differently than I think Season 5 was where we were hitting everybody consistently all the way through.”
At last, Alexandra Breckenridge (Mel Monroe) also confirmed that the series will continue with more seasons, saying, “I keep trying to tell them they should just pick up Season 7 so we can just knock Seasons 6 and 7 and call it a day.”
While an early Season 7 renewal hasn’t yet taken place by Netflix, both Breckenridge and Smith have stated that there are no intentions to stop Virgin River after Season 6: “I’m not aware of it being the final season. Hopefully we’ll get more,” Breckenridge said. Added Smith, “There’s no plans of wrapping anything up. I think, as long as these characters are living, there are always going to be stories to tell, and that’s an incredible opportunity for any showrunner.”
This is cheerful news for all the Virgin Rivers to know that the end of the road is way ahead. Due to this, we urge the fans to start streaming the brand new Christmas episodes that dropped a few hours ago on Netflix in order to keep up with the series if you want to know how the crew and cast will move forward.
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