Virgin River will return for its fifth season, but the series still has a big problem that Netflix doesn’t know how to solve.

Virgin River has become, in recent years, one of the most popular productions on the platform.

Having premiered at the end of 2019, the series served as “comfort” for those who were stuck at home due to the pandemic,

filling the hearts of viewers with romantic and emotional stories.

Since then, four seasons have aired. And, even with an engaging plot, fans cannot close their eyes to a major problem in the series, which Netflix seems unable to resolve. We’re talking about the timeline of the series.

Virgin River is lost in its timeline

Virgin River debuted on Netflix over three years ago. But, within the universe of the series, it has only been a few months since the story began. And this is something that doesn’t make much sense.

Unfortunately, the decision by showrunner and series creator Sue Tenney to take things too slowly made everything so unfeasible that the way some things happen quickly don’t match up with others that happen slowly.

The most obvious gauge of the Virgin River timeline’s paces is, of course, Charmaine’s pregnancy. Since the first season, the series has been dragging this plot out in a boring and unnecessary way. It was in the first season that Jack left Charmaine and soon after she revealed that she was pregnant.

All this, at the same time that Mel arrived in the city. But given the fact that, even in the fourth season, Charmaine remains pregnant, this indicates that very few months have passed since Mel actually arrived in Virgin River. And this ends up bringing some inconsistencies to the rest of the plot.

Other things are happening much faster than Charmaine’s pregnancy

But, apart from Charmaine’s pregnancy, other things are happening very quickly in the city.

Let’s say we use Charmaine’s pregnancy as a parameter for everything that happened in Virgin River. If she’s five months pregnant in season four, that means the last three seasons — and all of her actions — took place within a five-month window.

This means that in 5 months, Jack broke up with (Charmaine), got with Mel, got shot, recovered, broke up with Mel, got with Mel again, and is engaged to her, and now she is six weeks pregnant. Yes, all of this, in five months.

Not to mention all of Mel and Jack’s debate about having children, and Charmaine’s turbulent relationship – her marriage – with Todd (Patrick Sabongui).

Some events that also happened in the last five months? Doc’s surprise grandson, Denny, coming to town. Lilly’s death. Hope’s absence and brain injury. The Paige-Preacher saga. These stories were so intense that they become incoherent when we know that, in fact, only five months have passed.

Netflix is unable to fix this error

And apparently, this error will remain in season 5 of Virgin River. In a recent behind-the-scenes video, we saw that Charmaine still appears with a belly in the fifth season, meaning the problem with this error will still persist.

Even though Virgin River has changed the scriptwriter for the fifth season, the slowness of time is something that should still remain.

Upon taking over from Sue Tenney, Patrick Sean Smith highlighted this problem, and indicated that he would correct it.

Smith then added, “There’s a lot going on, and it took me a while to understand what [the characters] have been through, where they’re going, and where I’d like them to go. I wanted to be as transparent as possible.”

Will Netflix one day be able to fix this? The fifth season of Virgin River premieres in 2023, however, there is still no date set.