Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the most recent episodes of Nashville. Feel free to come back to this article once you've caught up.
Some big changes have already come to the CMT show Nashville in the past couple of weeks, but now it looks like the series will be going through at least one more big change soon. The music drama will be going on a brief midseason hiatus after Episode 11 airs, and, when the show returns this summer, the action will skip ahead by three months from where we left our favorite country music stars. Showrunner Marshall Herskovitz talked about what fans could expect from the time jump.
There will be a hiatus after episode 11. We'll come back and it will be three months later and people are trying to move on with their lives. There's a balance struck between the new stories, some new people that come into [the characters'] lives, and the fact that they're still dealing with this incredible loss.
I know what you're thinking: But, Rayna just died. Don't we need to see how everyone keeps dealing with that? And, you'd be right. Having what amounts to the emotional heart of Nashville ripped right out from under us is too huge for the show to ignore, basically for as long as it's on the air. Which is why what Marshall Herskovitz had to say about the time jump to Entertainment Weekly should soothe some of your potential fears about what would be coming when Nashville returns from its hiatus. It sounds like they don't intend on skipping over any of the pain, confusion or anger that comes from losing someone who was so important to the show and the characters therein.
This actually sounds like a solid plan to me. For one thing, I simply cannot watch any more episodes of Nashville this season where I cry until my face hurts. Rayna's hospital bed death surrounded by her kids and Deacon, combined with the next episode where they had her funeral, were almost too much for me. And, I'm sure a lot of fans feel the same way. It was good drama, but damn, we can't have shows that heavy throughout the rest of the season.
Also, what we already know is that the next few months are going to be hella hard for Maddie, Deacon, Daphne and everyone else who cared about Rayna. I think the producers behind Nashville realize that we don't need to see how difficult the next few months are going to be in order to know what they're going to be going through. Really, it makes good sense to skip ahead a bit, and three months seems like the right amount of time for the show to get to a place where people will be getting back into their day-to-day Rayna-less rhythms, while still dealing with the shock of her death.
Apparently, the next episode will treat us to some flashbacks of Rayna, and we'll see that Deacon, especially, is dealing with some tough stuff when it comes to the untimely death of the love of his life. Charles Esten, who plays Deacon, has some thoughts on what the alcoholic musician is going through.
The question that he faces is: Did her love just make him strong enough to survive with her or did it make him strong enough to survive without her?
Whoa. That. Is. Deep. See, people? This whole Rayna dying thing is just going to give us some more good, soapy drama, and you can catch all of it when Nashville airs Thursdays on CMT.
