Where do Mel and Jack stand now?
All characters on Virgin River seem to be a little cursed, but no one more than the town’s midwife and nurse practitioner Mel. She arrived in town (remember in VR time, around a year ago) grieving the recent loss of her husband and the stillbirth of their daughter. She refers to herself as somewhat of an orphan—her mother died when she was 11, and her father a decade ago—and has no other family besides her older sister Joey. In Virgin River, she meets the local bar owner and former Marine Jack, who becomes her lifeline (remember, he confesses that he’s falling in love with her after knowing her for a month).
And they’ve been through it together. Jack’s house was burned to the ground, and he was later shot and nearly killed. Things started to turn around for the couple: Mel got pregnant, Jack started building what promised to be a lucrative glamping business, and they got engaged. But that all came crashing down. Mel had an outbreak during the wildfires of season 5, and it turns out that Jack’s biggest investor was running a drug trade out of their construction site.
Although Jack’s money is now tied up in an FBI investigation over what happened on his site, when we last saw the couple, they’ve decided to make a huge financial investment. After Ava (Libby Osler) reveals that she’s selling her family’s land, where their beloved farm once stood, Mel tells Jack that she wants to purchase it, so they can live there with their children one day. This is a huge moment of growth for Mel, who was very resistant to the idea of trying to have a family with Jack again after her internship. For the first time in a long while (take that with a grain of salt in VR world), she is looking forward to, and optimistic about their future.
When the drug trade is finally busted, police officer Mike (Marco Grazzini) is shot, and taken to the hospital, where Jack’s sister Brie (Zibby Allen) stays by his bedside. They are not officially together yet, but sparks were flying at the baseball game earlier in the season when they kissed for the first time. Mike seems a lot less complicated than Brady (Benjamin Hollingsworth)—Jack’s fellow Marine who got caught up in the drug drama, risking Brie’s safety in the process. Although it is Brady who leads the police to finally catch the person at the center of it all, Brie tells him that she wished she knew that he was cooperating with the authorities. She does also say that she will always love him.
Both Brie and Brady have promised new romances on the horizon: Brie and Mike share chocolate shakes in his hospital room on their “first date,” and Brady starts hanging out with the woman whose daughter he helped rescue during the wildfires.
