During Virgin River’s four seasons, there have been a number of enduring mysteries that the popular small town romance has needed to address. Luckily, when the drama debuted as part of the 2022 TV schedule, it eventually gave fans lots of answers to questions like who shot Jack and why, what was going to be done about drug kingpin Calvin, and where Paige went. But, the Virgin River Season 4 ending gave viewers an answer to what might be our most baffling question: Why the hell is Charmaine still pregnant? Fans had lots of problems with the answer to that question, and now the showrunner has shared his thoughts about the show’s timeline issues ahead of Virgin River Season 5.
What Are Virgin River Fans Saying About Charmaine’s Pregnancy?
Look, fandom is almost never easy, so it might be difficult to understand that the biggest issue people have with problematic Charmaine being pregnant isn’t that she’d said she was having Jack’s twins as he was trying to begin a romance with Mel (who is a better person than CharChar all around). Instead, many viewers have been frustrated throughout the past three seasons or so at how slooooowlyyyyy that pregnancy has progressed. As one fan said on Twitter:
I love me some #VirginRiver but my goodness this has to be the slowest paced show EVER! Charmaine been pregnant for 4 straight seasons and somehow only 5 months along PICK UP THE PACEJuly 22, 2022
The finale of the recently released Season 4 confirmed that all of the wild surprises, twists, arrests, shootings, stabbings, car accidents, and romantic interludes that we’ve seen in the entirety of the series have actually taken place during a five month time span. This was revealed when Mel and Jack went to help Charmaine, who was panicking over Todd and the babies, and Jack called 911, telling the operator that she was “about five months pregnant,” with fans remembering that she announced her pregnancy near the end of Season 1.
What Did Virgin River’s Showrunner Say About Season 5 And The Timeline Issues?
With fans calling to speed the show up, what does the new showrunner, Patrick Sean Smith, have to say about the timeline issues? When asked by Glamour if Virgin River Season 5 would go faster, Smith said:
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. 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.
Yeah, this is especially problematic for many who watch, when we consider the sheer amount of stuff that has happened across all four seasons, as noted by Smith’s mention of the show's many cliffhangers. Even if we just think about the Mel/Jack/Charmaine of it all and leave out the bonkersness that everyone else in town has been through (all while Charmaine is still carrying what seem to be the longest gestating twin boys to ever, well, gestate) it makes little sense that such a short time span has passed, as noted in another frustrated Twitter thread.
Smith noted that he understands where fans are coming from, but also doesn’t want to speed things up to the point where other stories can’t be fully explored:
But I had the same reaction. I got an advanced look at what Season 4 was before I was brought up to the show; the second I saw Charmaine, I was like, she is carrying twins, but she's not bigger. She's not closer. I feel viewers' pain and hear it and feel similarly, but I also don't want to upset things to the point of accelerating out of something where we already have so many great things happening right now.
We already know that Virgin River Season 5 (which is already filming) will pick up the morning after Charmaine’s fateful reveal that has star Martin Henderson “excited” for Jack. But, that doesn’t mean that we won’t see the show skip ahead at some point during the season, which would at least be good so that dumb Charmaine can finally give birth, and so that Mel won’t also have to be pregnant for three seasons.
