‘Virgin River’ Season 4: Cast, Filming, and News Updates
Netflix’s fan favorite drama about finding love and yourself in a charming rural town will soon make its way back to the streaming platform. Virgin River Season 4 will answer the questions that have plagued us since the Season 3 finale. But when will it arrive on Netflix? When can we get back to the romance and drama?
Here’s everything we know so far about Virgin River Season 4
Virgin River Season 4 Production
At the end of September 2021, Netflix announced that not only will fans get Virgin River Season 4, but Season 5 was promised as well.
Netflix’s VP of original series talked to USA Today about what makes renewing a show like Virgin River so important right now. “[With] everything that’s going on in the world, more and more people [are] looking for, not just that comfort, but also that feeling of hope and that feeling of community. All of that really came together in a way that was really organic, and I think this was more of a proof point that this is a really vital area of programming for us.”
Star Alexandra Breckenridge who plays protagonist and nurse practitioner Mel Monroe said of the show “There is a sense of connection and intimacy that you have on the show that people crave in their own relationships. During the pandemic, you’re not experiencing that as much, and so that connection became something people were craving.”
The cast began production in Vancouver at the end of July. Various shooting locations included Squamish in B.C., Snug Cove, New Westminster, Squamish, Agassiz, and Port Coquitlam.
We know for sure that on August 17th and 18th, the crew shot at the Watershed Grill. This restaurant serves as the filming location for Jack’s bar in the show. They posted on Instagram that they will be closed those days for shooting. They had additional shooting days on location at the end of August and beginning of September.
Post-Production
During February 2022, we got further insight into how post production was progressing when we saw Alexandra Breckenridge’s Instagram stories. She told her followers that she completed another part of the filming process. She said, “I just went and finished my last ADR, for Virgin River. For those of you who don’t know what ADR is, I think it stands for audio digital recording. So, say you’re working outside and there’s a lot of traffic and we can’t really hear what you’re saying, we have to go into post-production and match our audio to the screen in a sound booth.”
Sound post helps the editors clean up lines that were muddied during filming due to interfering noise. Generally when a show is at this stage, it’s a good sign that the show isn’t too far from a release date.
Virgin River Season 5 News
So Netflix confirmed Season 5 already. When do they get started on filming that season? Unfortunately, Breckenridge said during Instagram Live that “We were supposed to start in March but it’s been pushed so I don’t know. I’m hoping that maybe we’ll start in the summer. It would be nice to film in Vancouver in the summer rather than in the winter because to be quite frank with you guys, I’m pretty done filming in the winter.”
Since then however, it has been rumored that filming on Virgin River Season 5 will begin in July 2022.
Virgin River Cast
So who will return for Virgin River Season 4? All the usual suspects will make a return: even the ones who are no longer with us.
Alexandra Breckenridge returns as Mel, Martin Henderson as Jack, Colin Lawrence as John, Lauren Hammersley as Charmaine, Tim Matheson as Doc, Benjamin Hollingsworth as Brady, Zibby Allen as Brie, Sarah Dugdale as Lizzie, and Grayson Gurnsey as Ricky.
Showrunner Sue Tenney put our fears to rest about Annette O’Toole as Hope. In the season finale, the character experienced a car accident. Instead of succumbing to her injuries, we believe she’ll move forward in Season 4 while dealing with a traumatic brain injury.
Lynda Boyd’s Lilly lost her battle to pancreatic cancer in Season 3. However, the producers told Boyd that they planned to “bring me back in flashbacks – like Mel’s husband, her dead husband.”
