Virgin River is going through a time jump between seasons 7 and 8.
Showrunner Patrick Sean Smith confirmed a “four-month” time jump, telling Deadline after the Thursday, March 12, season 7 premiere that the 10-episode eighth season is slated to start production in April before wrapping in August. Smith also teased that there were no plans for the show to end after season 8.
Based on Robyn Carr’s book series, Virgin River follows the lives of residents living in a small town in Northern California, including Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) and Jack (Martin Henderson). The hit series, which premiered in 2019, also stars Colin Lawrence, Annette O’Toole, Tim Matheson, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Sarah Dugdale, Zibby Allen, Marco Grazzini and Kai Bradbury.
Netflix’s hit series is seven seasons in – but it seems like way less time has passed for the residents of Virgin River. Mel signed a one-year contract with Doc (Matheson) that is somehow not yet expired, while Charmaine’s pregnancy lasted five seasons of the show.
“I’m like, ‘You guys, eventually, you’re gonna have to do a time jump because we’re just aging way too fast for a five-month span,'” Allen, who plays Brie, joked to Today in 2022. “But yeah, I think that the pregnancy thing was one of the first sort of tells because even I, when I was watching the show before I was on, was like, ‘Oh, this covers way more time in the story.’ And it really doesn’t.”
More recently, the stars tried to guess how much time passed on the show from season 1 to season 7.
“It’s been [around] six months,” Hollingsworth exclusively told Us Weekly. “It was what everyone figured out it was, which is nuts.”
Grazzini had a different suggestion, sharing with Us in a separate interview, “It’s been about a year and a half, right? Because, if you think about it, it’s been about a year and a half from season 1 because that’s when Charmaine got pregnant.”
He continued, “Now her twins are a couple months old so let’s call it nine months plus five months. Just over a year.”
Allen’s suggestion fell somewhere in the middle.
“I think it’s been a year and a half — like a year and three months,” she noted to Us. “I know the writers told us once and I just forgot.”
Season 8 will look a little different though with Grazzini and Hammersley exiting the show.
“For me, I’m just trying to look to the longevity of the show and making sure that the characters that we’re keeping have enough story engine in them to keep going,” Smith noted to Deadline. “So I can’t say there are any specific cast shakeups planned, but I think we will have to start to — as characters run their course — make some decisions and bring in some new blood.”
Virgin River is currently streaming on Netflix.
