Virgin River season 5 recap: Wildfire brings new love and shocking revelations to the town
The Netflix show that’s equal parts heart-racing nature shots and big-hearted small-town drama is back, and in season 5, which dropped on Sept. 7, a massive wildfire threatens the town of Virgin River.
By the time the smoke clears, hearts will be broken, relationships forged and destroyed, and mud baths ruined. Let’s recap!
Here’s hoping you remember last season’s cliffhangers, because Virgin River drops us right into the thick of them.
Jack’s (Martin Henderson) still reeling from the news that Charmaine (Lauren Hammersley), aka the worst person on earth, lied about him fathering her twins.
When Brie (Zibby Allen) hears the news, she declares, “I never liked her.” Same, sis. And despite his assurances to her, Jack’s not handling the news well.
Mel’s dealing with her own stress and decides to step away from her job at the clinic because of her high-risk pregnancy. Cameron (Mark Ghanimé) offers to leave — remember, he awkwardly hit on her last season — but she insists that she’s the one to go.
This leaves Doc (Tim Matheson) alone with his failing eyesight and his concerns about how well Cameron fits into the practice.
At least his grandson, Denny’s (Kai Bradbury) fitting better into Doc’s home life after opening up about his terminal Huntington’s Disease diagnosis. Denny also apologizes to Lizzie (Sarah Dugdale) for being secretive about it for so long, and the two get back together.
Lizzie’s working as Hope’s (Annette O’Toole) post-TBI home health aid and takes all of Hope’s prickly Hope-ness in stride, even when Hope learns that her alleged friend Muriel (Teryl Rothery) is helping prepare a no-confidence vote against her mayorship. It’s the closest betrayals you never see coming.
Speaking of keeping the people you love in the dark, Brie’s still seeing Brady (Benjamin Hollingsworth), and Brady’s still working for Melissa Montgomery (Barbara Pollard), who’s forcing him to help run fentanyl through the lumber yard after Calvin, her former CFO of drug smuggling, died in a boat explosion.
Melissa Brady keeps under her thumb by reminding him that bad things will happen to Brie if he does not obey, and she uses Jack’s friendship with her brother Nick (Keith MacKechnie) to invest in his new glamping business to launder All that money.
But the fentanyl makes it onto the town radar when tow-truck driver Bert (Trevor Lerner) stops to help one of Melissa’s henchmen (Darcy Laurie) fix a flat and cuts himself trying to reach the spare tire where the fentanyl’s hidden.
Before long, Bert’s at the clinic with wooziness and pinpoint pupils, and Doc suggests accidental fentanyl exposure.
Public health and safety message! While fentanyl can affect a person if it gets into an open wound like Bert’s, it can’t be absorbed through the skin, and inhaling it on accident generally won’t cause an overdose. Accidental fentanyl exposure’s just not as common as police reports and the news make it sound.
Cameron, on the other hand, is right that you can’t ever really know if another person uses drugs. But he’s wrong to get snippy when Doc asks him to make coffee now that Mel’s gone.
Next, we left Preacher (Colin Lawrence) last season fighting off Vince (Steve Bacic), who’s big mad that Paige (Lexa Doig) killed his brother in self-defense.
Thankfully, Mike (Marco Grazzini) shows up to arrest Vince for getting all violent and kidnappy and for being the mystery man who shot Jack last season. Better luck not having an abuser for a brother next time, Vince!
Assuming he and Paige are headed for a happy ever after, Preacher ends things with the very nice Julia (Lawrence’s real-life wife, Lucia Walters). But Paige and her son want to leave the town and all its bad memories, so Preacher sadly bids them farewell. I bet he’s wishing he hadn’t ended things with Julia quiiiiite so quickly now.
Wanting to learn how to hand-make baby clothes like her mom did, Mel joins the town sewing circle, where she’s introduced to the late Lilly’s daughter Ava (Libby Osler), who’s reluctantly back in town and coping by wearing an aggressively wide-brimmed fedora.
By the end of the episode, Mel — who escaped to Virgin River — is having dinner with Ava — who escaped from Virgin River — when Ava dramatically collapses. Was it toxic hat exposure?
Brie also has a scary night when someone tosses a rock through the front door of her new apartment. She assumes it’s because she’s going to testify in her ex-boyfriend’s rape trial, but Brady has a different list of suspects.
Jack, meanwhile, has been stewing about Charmaine’s duplicity for the whole episode and angry shows up at her house to talk. If that woman turns up dead, we’ll all be forced to testify against him. I mean, did you see the murderous look on his face?
