One of the changes has fans cheering, the other raises eyebrows.

It may well be that Virgin River Season 6 will not land on Netflix until 2025 (although showrunner Patrick Sean Smith has promised to do his best to spoil fans at Christmas), so the drought is already in the air.

In this situation, the best solution is to satisfy your hunger for Mel and Jack’s heartwarming story with reruns. However, many viewers are hesitant to return to Season 5, which aired late last year, because of one particularly dark arc – Mel’s miscarriage.

In a twist that broke the hearts of absolutely everyone, Mel and Jack, who had been struggling to conceive for a long time, lost their unborn baby in Episode 6. While the storyline gave Alexandra Breckenridge a stage to showcase her best acting, it came out of the blue for many viewers.

If you were among those shocked by the turn of events, you were not too far off. It turns out that the original course of Mel’s pregnancy was very different from what we got. In fact, there were two plot changes that drastically altered the storyline.

Change 1: The Baby Was Not Originally Jack’s

Virgin River excels at paternity mysteries, and Mel’s baby was no exception. The character became pregnant after artificial insemination with frozen sperm from her late husband, Mark. And initially, the baby was supposed to be his, as Breckenridge revealed in an interview with Deadline.

‘In Season 4 originally the writers were going to have it be Mark’s baby. I was pretty upset about that,’ Breckenridge said, adding that she was very much against such a development. ‘I was very vocal about it, I said if it is his, she should probably have a miscarriage.’

Fortunately, the writers listened to the actress and Jack became a happy father-to-be. The reveal was a beautiful climactic moment for the fan-adored couple, but a few episodes later, tragedy struck. The tragedy that never should have happened.

Change 2: The Miscarriage Was Not In Initial Plans

Breckenridge told Deadline that the devastating miscarriage scene was not part of the original script. In fact, it came with Patrick Sean Smith. And everyone agreed it was a good direction to take the main characters.

‘We changed showrunners, and we have a lot of new writers. I think the original plan with our previous showrunner was to keep the pregnancy,’ the Virgin River star said. ‘We did consider it, I think we all just felt that it was an important place to take [Mel and Jack].’

Smith and Breckenridge knew fans would be upset by the twist but believed it was essential for the characters’ journey. They saw it as a more authentic and down-to-earth choice compared to a ‘miracle baby’ storyline.

Well, that may be true, but many fans would argue that they watch Virgin River for the feel-good vibes, not the realism of tragic real life. And Season 5 definitely toned down the small-town coziness with its miscarriage arc.