In the new season of ‘Virgin River’ fans of the Netflix series can expect to see some complications for Mel and Jack, according to stars Alex Breckinridge and Martin Henderson. They recently took some time to talk with Moviefone about this new season.

Moviefone: Alex, so we've seen the relationship between Mel and Jack through two seasons now. What is the relationship like in the third season?

Alex Breckenridge: Oh. Well, they finally get together at the end of season two, and so we get to watch that relationship finally unfold because they're both really in it now. But it becomes complicated pretty quickly because Mel still wants to have a family of her own, and obviously for many reasons, that's a big complication for her and Jack, mostly for Jack.

MF: Yes. That is a complication for Jack. And Martin, in this season, we learn more about Jack through some new characters that come onboard, and one of them being Jack's sister, Brie. I feel like he's been an enigma. We didn't know a lot about his background.

Henderson: Yeah. And I think it's been nice that the character's remained enigmatic in that sense. And you know obviously from season one that there's a lot of stuff in his background that's unexamined that he's trying to keep at bay with drinking, and he's got the night terrors, and there's obviously issues there.

And we know that he was in the Marines, but like you said, it's quite vague. He's not one to talk a lot about his past. And then with Brie arriving, we start to get snippets of what that family dynamic is like and we realize that he's somewhat estranged from his family, but we're still yet to really delve into what those things are. And I think if there's more seasons going forward, we'll learn more about what that is.

And certainly through the relationship, I think what's nice, we see through the relationship of Mel and Jack too what some of his issues are around commitment and living with someone and the idea of being a father and all these things. So I think more will be revealed.

MF: Alex, would you say season three is darker than seasons one and two?

Breckenridge: I didn't particularly think it was darker. It certainly wasn't darker from my character's perspective. I think the first season was the darkest for Mel.

Henderson: Miscarriage, dead husband.

Breckenridge: Yeah. She was going through so much, and I think that she's been coming out of that since the beginning of the series and really trying to overcome all of that. So I didn't find it to be darker from that perspective. I think there are some more complicated ... yes, there are some storylines that are a little bit darker for sure. I'm not going to say what ones.

MF: Well, Martin for me, I am a fan. I've watched all of season one and two, and so it was so exciting to be able to see season three so early. There were a lot of moments for me in season three that I was like, um...


Henderson:
Which? Oh, we can't talk about it.

MF: I'm just wondering, when you were renewed for season three, you're ready to start shooting, do you get one script at a time, or do you know the whole season outline?

Henderson: What typically happens at the beginning of the season, way before we go and shoot it, the writers will sit down with their team of writers, and they will hash out a bunch of storylines, and they'll essentially create the overall storylines for every character and every episode, and then they pitch that to the network and the network say, "Yes this, no that," and then when that's been pretty much worked through, they'll call Alex, and they'll call myself, and then they'll tell us, "This is what we have planned for your character throughout the season." And sometimes I'm like, "Oh, that seems weird," or, "Okay, that sounds cool."

So we'll have a preliminary discussion about what we might be bumping up against, but it's not until usually couple of weeks before shooting that we'll get the script for that particular episode, so then we have somewhere between one and two weeks to kind of then enter into a dialogue about how those things are presented. And if we need to edit things, we'll try to get it to a place where we feel comfortable with. So there different stages of it as we go along, but we don't really get the final scripts right until we're pretty close to shooting.

MF: So you're kind of surprised as well.

Henderson: Yeah.

‘Virgin River’ is now streaming on Netflix.