‘Virgin River’: The New Showrunner Is Hesitant to Speed up the Timeline
Netflix‘s Virgin River has had fans in a chokehold for several seasons. The drama series follows Mel Monroe (Alexandra Breckenridge), who moves to the small town for a fresh start. She finds herself falling for Jack Sheridan (Martin Henderson), a retired Marine who owns the town’s bar. As fun as the show is, the timeline is confusingly slow.
Virgin River Season 5 is currently being filmed, but the series’ new showrunner is hesitant to speed things up.
Inside ‘Virgin River’s peculiar timeline
Amid Charmaine’s (Lauren Hammersley) pregnancy, fans always knew something peculiar about how time moved on Virgin River. However, no one could have guessed just how slowly time was moving until Breckenridge broke things down for fans.
“Things move slowly in Virgin River,” she told Glamour. “I think Mel’s only been in Virgin River for maybe four months. It’s a hundred and some odd days; there’s a chart for it. She’s only nine weeks pregnant at this point, and Charmaine is like five months, apparently.”
Now that Greek creator Patrick Sean Smith has taken over the show as showrunner, fans had hoped he would speed things up a tad.
The new showrunner is hesitant to shakeup the timeline
Though Smith understands the concerns that fans have about the timeline, he does want to adhere to the integrity of the series. “Part of the challenge of the show is having so many cliffhangers, which are so effective in watching the show and having it feel like one long story,” he told Glamour. “With that said, it automatically compresses your timeline because you’re picking up directly into the next episode, so it does make it a challenge. I don’t want to stay so restrictive in the timeline … I want to expand it, but I also don’t feel like I want to speed things up and jump ahead, either.”
Clearly, Smith will have to do something creative to move things along in the world of Virgin River.
A time jump will be needed on ‘Virgin River’ soon
Though Smith is hesitant about changing the show’s pace and tone, we will never see the duration of Mel’s pregnancy if things continue to move this slowly. Moreover, this speed won’t allow the characters to stretch and expand further if we continue to move at a snail’s pace.
Some of the actors are even rooting for a time jump in the future. Zibby Allen, who portrays Brie in the series, says the cast talks about the timeline quite a bit.
“I’m like, ‘You guys, eventually, you’re gonna have to do a time jump because we’re just aging way too fast for a five-month span,’” she told TODAY. “But yeah, I think that the pregnancy thing was one of the first sort of tells because even I, when I was watching the show before I was on, was like, ‘Oh, this covers way more time in the story.’ And it really doesn’t.”
We wouldn’t be surprised if there is a time jump at the end of season 5.
