‘It’s going to be a real journey,’ says the Netflix star, hinting at the challenges awaiting Mel and Jack in ‘Virgin River’ Season 8.

In true Virgin River fashion, Melinda “Mel” Monroe Sheridan (Alexandra Breckenridge) and her new husband, Jack (Martin Henderson), end Season 7 on an emotional high – and a devastating cliffhanger.

The couple’s long-awaited path to parenthood takes a frightening turn when the newborn they hope to adopt is rushed into emergency heart surgery. In the final moments, Jack boards the ambulance while Mel, still in scrubs after delivering the baby, sprints after them. When asked if she’s the baby’s nurse, she delivers a powerful reply: “No, I am his mother!”

The scene leaves fans reeling — and wondering if Mel and Jack will finally get the family that they’ve fought so hard for.

“Obviously, I can’t reveal what happens. But let’s be realistic, I don’t think the writers are going to take the baby away from Mel and Jack,” Breckenridge exclusively told Parade. “I think the fans would revolt.”

 

She says she remains hopeful the baby pulls through, especially given Mel’s painful history with miscarriage, stillbirth, and infertility. “I think it’s going to be a real journey for the two of them,” she said. “Like any new parents, they’ll have to figure out how to balance their relationship, work, and home life.”

Despite the uncertainty, Breckenridge believes Mel and Jack’s bond will carry them forward. “They’ve proven they can come together no matter what,” she said. “I imagine that continues in this new chapter on their farm.”

Still, the diagnosis of a congenital heart defect weighed heavily on the viewers and the actress herself.

“I didn’t like it because this is really putting us through the wringer. I just hope it’s going to be okay in season 8. I don’t know how Mel is going to be able to handle this, given everything she’s gone through, so we’ll have to see.”

As the mother of two — 9-year-old son Jack and 8-year-old daughter Billie — Breckenridge said the medical drama surrounding the baby’s health at the end of Season 7 evoked difficult personal memories.

“I have had a very sick child [Jack], who’s now very healthy, but I have experienced this,” she said. “Then, not only did they give me that storyline, but they also placed it exactly at the locations where I had my baby, while my other child was sick at the Children’s Hospital, so it was very loaded for me.”

She called those scenes “very surreal and very difficult for me as a mother to go back to those heavy, heavy feelings. However, ultimately it gave me the most amount of insight one could have into a situation like that, so there really wasn’t a whole lot of acting going on.”

Season 7 also deepens Mel’s connection to Marley (Rachel Drance), the birth mother who wants Mel and Jack to adopt her newborn son. Even when the adoption is unsure and Marley’s ex-boyfriend, Eamon, shows up in Virgin River, Mel keeps a level head, tending to the needs of Marley, who is her patient as well as her friend.

“I think that the thing about Mel that’s so endearing is that most of us in that situation would feel frustrated and maybe want to walk away or maybe not be as empathetic,” Breckenridge shared.

“But Mel is also a nurse, and she leads with that sensitivity towards her patients, and so Marley originally is her patient, and I think that has a lot to do with how she approaches it,” she said. “Also, Mel was pregnant and understands how it is to be a pregnant woman, and I think that that plays a part in it. This speaks volumes to how Mel treats that dynamic, which is so delicate and so sensitive.”

She said that Jack’s reaction to meeting Marley’s ex-boyfriend, who potentially could thwart the adoption process, is to become visibly upset, while Mel is trying to keep it together for both of them.

“Mel’s trying to keep it together, she’s like, ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen,’ and then she talks to her father, Everett (John Allen Nelson), about what happened with him and her mother, and it really shifts her perspective toward Marley and how she’s perceiving this situation.”

At that point, Breckenridge said, “It’s not about her and Jack anymore, it’s not about them getting their baby. In her mind, she’s like, ‘the right baby will come to me when [he or she] comes to me,’ ” she added.

According to Breckenridge, “Mel believes, if this is not my baby, it’s okay because of what happened with her parents. Her father had to let her mother go, and, therefore, let his daughter go. And it broke his heart for the rest of his life, up until suddenly they live in the same town,” she said.

“So, at the end of the day, Mel is a bleeding heart, and that’s the way she approaches everyone, with love and compassion and kindness.  No matter what she’s going through.”

 

For some lighter fare during the highly emotional season 7, Mel and Jack went on a honeymoon to the picturesque Tulum, Mexico. “I pushed for the honeymoon to feel like a relief for the characters,” she said.

“Given all they had gone through in Season 7 and prior, I felt like they really needed to be able to connect. We needed to feel that. It was about the romance, why they love each other, and why they fell in love with each other, as well as the fact that they’re still learning new things about each other, felt very important to me, not only for the characters but for the audience.”

While there were moments when Mel and Jack were seeing happy families with young children that were making them sad, Breckenridge was pushing for lightness and romance for the couple. “I really wanted it to feel hopeful for them. It should feel like a honeymoon.”

Courtesy of Netflix

One sweet aspect of Season 7 was when Mel and Jack spent time with an older couple in Mexico who talked about faith, patience, and hope, and told the honeymooners that they are already parents, they just haven’t found their children, yet.

“What they were saying was a really beautiful sentiment. The actors they found in Mexico were so good and so kind and just so thrilled to be there,” she said. “It was a hot day, we had fish rotting in the sun with flies, all of the realities of the scene outside of that magical moment that took place for them.”

“I think Mel and Jack tend to be more optimistic than not; sometimes Mel will slip back into it, sometimes Jack will, but the great thing about them as a couple is that they’re always pulling each other back up.”

When it comes to some of our other favorite characters in Virgin River, Breckenridge has firm ideas about what she wants for their future. She said a couple of seasons ago that she was Team Mike, while a lot of fans are Team Brady, referring to Ben Hollingsworth’s character.

“I felt that way because Mike (Marco Grazzini) is such a good guy, and even though she wants Brie (Zibby Allen) to be happy, I think Mel and I share the fact that we’re a little wary of Brady. His track record’s not great.  I know he’s trying, and I’m hoping for the best, but I don’t know. We don’t want Brie to get hurt.”

Spicing up the Brady-Brie relationship possibilities is the fact that Mike is not returning to the series for season 8, and Brady was in a horrible motorcycle accident.

Related: ‘Virgin River’ Fan-Favorite Breaks Silence on Unexpected Cast Exits

 

Another key character, Preacher (Colin Lawrence), has a big decision to make going forward, whether or not to stay with Jack at Jack’s bar or open his own upscale restaurant.

“I would like for Jack and Preacher to come to some kind of compromise on that situation. I don’t think that Preacher should go and start his own business,” she said. “I think that Jack’s Bar is one of the main staples of the town and the show, and to disassemble that in any way feels like you’re disassembling part of the heart of the show. To have Preacher not be a part of the bar feels really wrong to me, but I have no idea what they are going to do.”

When asked what kind of mother she thinks Mel will be, Breckenridge said, “I would assume for Mel it would be extremely hard not to become some kind of helicopter parent and to not feel overprotective,” she explained.

A self-described “safety parent,” Breckenridge said, “I think it’s going to be tough for her to try to be there, but just to be able to let go a little bit. It was certainly hard for me after my son was sick.”

 

In sum, “Personally, I thought that Season 7 was one of our best seasons.  I know that some people were perturbed that Mel and Jack keep going through ups and downs, but it is a romantic drama, so I think that’s always something to keep in mind.”

She believes Season 8 will be stellar. “I’m hoping that we delve into some more of Mel’s strengths and potential weaknesses in terms of becoming a mother and what that looks like for her,” Breckenridge said.

“We’ve been living in the fantasy of what it’ll be like for Mel to become a mother, and it all sounds really lovely and picturesque,” she said, “but I’m curious about what it looks like when it actually happens.”

Virgin River Season 7 is streaming on Netflix. Seasons 1-6 are also available to stream on Netflix. Virgin River has been renewed for Season 8 and will begin production soon.