Virgin River Holiday Episodes: The Story Behind Mel’s New Hair and Her Mystery Father

Virgin River’s holiday episodes were the equivalent of a cozy blanket in front of a fireplace with spiced eggnog—a perfect combination of sugar and spice. (Warning now: Spoilers ahead!)

Charmaine finally gave birth to her twins, but not before Mel found out that Cal was the unlikely father. (Charmaine swore Mel to keep it a secret from Jack for now; can’t wait to see how he reacts to that one). Meanwhile, Kaia is the new Virgin River fire chief, thereby complicating things even more in her relationship with Preacher now that Wes’s body has been identified.

In other developments, Cameron’s ex-fiancé, Michelle, showed up wanting to get back together. Cameron tells new lady love Muriel that he has no interest in revisiting that relationship, but Muriel isn’t so sure she believes him. TBC in season six….

Meanwhile, Lizzie is pregnant with a baby girl, and everyone seems to be delighted, including Lizzie’s mother, who comes around after a heart-to-heart with her daughter.

On the marriage front, Doc asks Hope to marry him again (of course she said yes), and Mel asks Doc to walk her down the aisle whenever she marries Jack (of course he said yes).

Speaking of Jack, he gets Mel a puppy named Pony for Christmas. (That’s not at all confusing, but also, yay!).

Then, in the last few minutes, we find out that Lark is out to get Brady and is in cahoots with Jimmy. “Brady doesn’t suspect a thing,” she told him. (And I tell Lark, shame on you for being so awful.)

But most importantly, we find out that Mel’s biological father is a man named Everett Reid, who lives in a remote cabin on the outskirts of Virgin River. When she shows up at his door, he originally wanted nothing to do with her, but by the end of the two episodes, he’s come around, literally and figuratively. He also has some news for his daughter, which makes you wonder, what is his real motive?

With that said, we got on a Zoom with executive producer and showrunner Patrick Sean Smith, who was “chugging along on season six” from the writers room, to answer all our questions and preview what”s to come. Grab your coffee or cocoa (or spiced eggnog) and settle in!

Glamor: Let’s start with Mel’s strawberry blonde hair color and cut, which is gorgeous, but markedly different from the rest of season five. Did Alex Breckenridge want to change it up since Mel had been through so much this season?

Patrick Sean Smith: Yeah. We knew we were going to have the time jump between part one and part two, so Alex reached out to ask if she could get bangs. And I was like, “Let me talk to Netflix.” And then I talked to everyone and came back to her and I was like, “Okay, you’re clear for takeoff for bangs.” And she was like, “Great. And I have some notes on 5.10.” And I was like, “I just got you bangs and you’re giving me notes?” [Laughs.] I think she was excited for a change. She’d been wanting one for a while, and I think the hair color came out of just wanting to mix things up. Alex is also super thoughtful about her appearance in terms of how it relates to her character. So I believe she was also wanting to find a little bit of lightness and levity and joy after such an emotional experience. It was all coming from a place of character and where Mel was this holiday season.

And now Alex is back to blonde, but she also debuted a shoulder-length bob a few months ago. Are you going to write that into season six?

I have been doing a lot more research about extensions and wigs and hair than I ever imagined in my career, but I’m going to be well-versed and she’s going to look awesome as we work together to get that look for season six.

With that hard-hitting question out of the way, let’s talk about Mel’s father, Everett. What was behind the decision to have her father be someone we hadn’t met before?

When we came up with the idea, we had talked about all of the different possibilities of who it could be. And Doc was the obvious choice, but Doc has played so well in her life as a surrogate father that it would feel, I think, pointless to then just attach it to biology. So we decided it was more interesting to create a new character that could establish new dynamics for season six for all of our characters and everyone in the cast. Then it was just like, Who is this guy? What can we imagine? And especially with Virgin River being so remote, it was somebody who had shut themselves off, who had suffered heartbreak that Mel could relate to that we get into in season six. And it felt like a fresh way to bring in a new character that had an automatic close bond with Mel.