The fifth season of small-town drama Virgin River is currently filming in Vancouver, British Columbia, and if we are to assume anything based on the season four finale of the Netflix origin series, this next season will answer our lingering questions as the story continues to unfold.
Melinda Monroe (Alexandra Breckenridge) is a nurse who quit her job in Los Angeles after a series of tragic personal losses and relocates to a town in northern California called Virgin River. She meets Jack (Martin Henderson), a bar owner and former Marine, who immediately takes interest in her and convinces her to stay in Virgin River. Mel is hesitant to get involved with him, due to the recent loss of her husband in a car accident and stillbirth of her daughter. Meanwhile, Jack is involved with another woman when Mel moves to Virgin River, further complicating their growing interest in each other. As the story continues, they end up admitting their love for one another.
Over the last four seasons, Virgin River has added several new cast members, including those that have taken on roles in Jack’s circle of former Marines as a drug cartel causes trouble in Virgin River. Jack decides to take on Calvin, the leader of the local cartel, to end his trade in the area; despite several warnings to keep out of Calvin’s business, Jack continues to search, and after one of Calvin’s men is sent to work undercover for Jack at the bar, the man poisons the food, ruining the reputation of Jack’s bar.
Courtesy of Netflix
One cast member that was brought on at the end of season three and became a series regular for season four is Kai Bradbury, who plays Denny, the grandson of Doc. He is seen as a shady and mysterious new character; he gets caught stealing drugs and taking photos of his medical files in Doc’s office, and he is also seen transferring a sizable amount of money. He becomes involved with Lizzie (Sarah Dugdale) and she finds prescription drugs stashed away in Denny’s bag. In an interview with Bradbury, TV Fanatic asks him how he portrayed Denny in a way that kept the audience from turning against him. He stated that he “want[ed] to honor what the audience is being told by the characters and to make each twist and turn believable. When they’re saying drug addict or scam artist or lost, you want to play to those things to keep the audience guessing as we go along.” He truly had the audience guessing until the end of the season, when his character reveals that he has Huntington’s Disease.
To understand and empathize with his character, Bradbury had to thoroughly research Huntington’s and the impact it has on a person’s life. He notes that his character has been through a lot of loss and suffering, including the loss of his father, and Bradbury admires his character’s strength through the hardships he has faced. We find out at the end of the season that the reason he transferred the money and had the secret stash of drugs in his bag was because he was using his late father’s insurance payout to pay off the debt that Doc’s clinic has incurred, and the drugs were for his treatment of Huntington’s. He kept Lizzie at an arm’s length due to his fatal genetic brain disorder, since being romantically involved with Lizzie would mean that she would have to live with the heartbreaking and tragic fate of their relationship.
Though the audience may have doubted Denny’s relation to Doc, his parentage is revealed— following the death of his parents, he sought out his paternal grandfather, which landed him in Virgin River. His arrival set up a cliffhanger in the finale for season three, and over the course of season four, the audience found out the reason for Denny’s strange behavior. Several other storylines within the small town of Virgin River have lingering unanswered questions, and with filming for season five underway, we will hopefully get to see them answered.
TWE has an exclusive interview from Silence on Set podcast speaking with Kai about his character journey on season four below:
An Atlanta-based actress, model, writer, and screenwriter, Miranda started her career on stage in high school. She figured out that acting and writing were two passions of hers that allowed her to constructively express her emotions through character and narrative. In 2022, she packed up her cat and everything she owned to move across the US to Atlanta to further pursue opportunities in the entertainment industry. She is currently working on a novel and the screenplay adaptation for the novel, and enjoys designing graphics.
