How Virgin River season 4 handles the paternity of Mel's baby

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Virgin River season 4.

Virgin River has some serious daddy issues.

Season 3 ends with a cliffhanger (on an actual cliff) as Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) reveals to an about-to-propose Jack (Martin Henderson) that she is pregnant — and she doesn't know whether he or her late husband Mark is the father.

The question looms large over the Netflix series' fourth season, with Jack initially extremely reluctant to take a paternity test and get an answer once and for all.

"I don't know if my curiosity could stand not knowing," Henderson says of his own take on the situation. "But it was a really interesting take that the writers chose, where they gave Jack this perspective of, 'Okay, I'm going to be the father to this woman I love's child, but it may not be my own.' One would assume you have the same relationship to that child but there is a selfishness to people too, and this idea of it's not mine, so will I have the same degree of connection to this child? Biology isn't the defining factor of love. But it was interesting that Jack, who is a man who doesn't know that from experience, has doubts. So it's an interesting ride they go along that they then try and navigate that and be respectful of the other's individual take on it and all that drama that ensues from it."

"I can't imagine having that be something massively unanswered in my life," Breckenridge adds. "Mark and Jack look very different, so I feel like eventually you're going to figure it out."

And figure it out eventually, they do — with the longed-for confirmation that Jack is the father coming on the heels of his successful marriage proposal. It's a good thing too — since the season ends on another massive revelation, the fact that Charmaine's (Lauren Hammersley) twins are not actually Jack's after all.

"In all honesty, there were several different possibilities for the outcome and I was advocating strongly that it was Jack's baby," explains Breckenridge. "Because I was just like, 'Gosh, how horrible would that be if he's having twins with Charmaine and then the love of his life is having a baby from her dead husband?' This sounds terrible."

"But then by the end of the season, we find out that Charmaine's babies are not actually Jack's anyway," she continues. "That would be even worse. He's having no children. He thought he was having three children, now he's having no children. I was really happy about the outcome. The two of them want that life together so much. It's so powerful and strong between them that if it was Mark's, it just felt like it was the past coming up again. They would have dealt with that. Jack would have had a more difficult time than Mel. But luckily, we don't have to find that out."

Virgin River season 4 is now streaming on Netflix.

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