EXCLUSIVE: Virgin River just completed its fifth season with a two-episode Christmas special. It followed a 10-episode Part 1, which was released in September.
The upcoming sixth season won’t follow the same pattern. “No, I don’t know if I would do the holidays again. It’s sort of, been there done that, and I feel like we did it in a big way that I wouldn’t even know where to start to explore,” Virgin River showrunner Patrick Sean Smith told Deadline in an extensive interview. “I think we’re probably looking at a 10-episode season moving forward.” After producing 10 episodes in Seasons 1-3, Virgin River went up to 12 episodes in Seasons 4 and 5.
The hit romantic drama starring Alexandra Breckenridge and Martin Henderson is now expected to go back to 10 episodes a season, starting with Season 6, with no more holiday specials planned.
The Virgin River writers, led by Smith, who joined as executive producer/showrunner at the start of Season 5, had finished half of the scripts for Season 6 when they went on strike in May. “Coming back to it, we’re finishing the second half,” he said in the post-mortem interview, in which he reveals a new time jump for Season 6.
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