Warning! Spoilers Ahead for the Virgin River Season 3 finale! Look away unless you're already caught up!
As expected, the Season 3 finale of Virgin River delivered several surprises and emotional blows for both our favorite characters and the audience. While Jack and Mel quickly overcame the major hurdle caused by him being shot in the Season 2 finale, there was more drama ahead for the couple. Mel is now pregnant, but she had to tell Jack (As he was proposing to her!) that she's not sure who the father is. Here's what that massive reveal might mean for the couple, should Virgin River get Season 4.
Alright, so if you're not caught up but you're still reading this article (You do you, friend!), then you will likely want to know how Mel could have stepped out on good ol' Jack. But, of course, she didn't. After Mel told Jack she was interested in trying to have a little plaid-wearing bambina of their own, Jack broke up with her, noting that he didn't want to keep her from having what she wanted, and he wasn't sure he could handle supporting two families.
When Mel went to visit her sister in L.A., and told her what happened between her and the father of Charmaine's twins, her sister suggested Mel use the embryos she and Mark had saved and go through IVF treatments. Which she, apparently, did, because the opening moments of the finale showed that Mel is now officially preggers, but has no clue who the baby's father might be.
When speaking with Entertainment Weekly, here's what actress Alexandra Breckenridge, who plays Mel in the Virgin River cast, had to say about her decision, which probably seems rash to many:
It's a matter of her being under emotional duress. When you lose someone after having lost someone tragically, it will stimulate those feelings of loss in a big way. She's going through this emotional roller-coaster, and she makes this decision out of that place. It feels like now or never to her. When she makes that decision, I don't think it's entirely thought out.
Well, Mel's pregnancy has certainly left her and Jack in a potentially difficult place, but at least we can understand where she was coming from, especially once we consider Alexandra Breckenridge's words. It's obvious that she also thinks Mel's decision to go through IVF treatments while in L.A. was a sudden one, but the woman has been through a lot lately.
In a very short time span, Mel has lost her previous pregnancy (not to mention all of the other miscarriages she'd had before that), lost her husband in a tragic car accident, almost lost Jack when he was shot, and then that infuriating man had the nerve to break up with her after she told him she wanted to try having a child with him. Jack is Jack, so he did that for what he felt were noble reasons, but with all of that weighing on Mel when she was with her sister, the possibility of finally having a child was just too good for her to pass up.
Did she fully think it through? No. But, she was lonely and probably very annoyed at Jack, and her sister told her she wouldn't have to raise the kid alone, and would help her if she moved back to Los Angeles.
As for what the reveal could mean going forward, it seems pretty clear from the finale that Mel is also having some major regrets about going through IVF, now that she and Jack are back together and he attempted to propose to her. She'll probably continue to feel at least some of that moving forward, but what is Jack going to do, knowing that she might be carrying her deceased husband's kid and not yet another of his? Here's what showrunner Sue Tenney had to say about Jack's thought process as the couple deals with the news, and whether or not they will want to find out who the dad is:
Jack is very much a man of his word, and very much, very much in love with her. Jack and Mel, their love and their commitment to each other, that doesn't change. How he feels about her does not change. There's circumstances that happen around them — and the reactions and how they deal with those things...Do you go down that road [of finding out]? And if you do, why do you? There's a lot of complications.
OK, it sounds like Jack is truly in it with Mel for the long haul now, baby daddy drama be damned. But, it also sounds like if Virgin River does get Season 4, there will be a lot of questions surrounding whether or not they should find out who the father really is, and why it might (or might not) matter, along with how the outcome will then impact their romance. So, lots of good times ahead!
Virgin River Seasons 1 through 3 are ready to stream on Netflix, but if you need more to watch right now, check out the list of upcoming romantic TV shows heading our way soon, and see what you can watch right now with our 2021 summer TV schedule!
