SPOILER ALERT: The story includes a plot detail about Season 7 of Netflix‘s Virgin River.
Fifteen months after Virgin River introduced the origin story of Mel’s parents Everett (Callum Kerr) and Sarah (Jessica Rothe) via flashbacks in Season 6, there has been no word on the prequel series about the couple’s backstory that had been in development.
“It’s still in development,” Virgin River showrunner Patrick Sean Smith, who has been shepherding the project, told Deadline this week in an interview about Virgin River’s seventh season, released March 12.
According to sources, the initial version of the spinoff did not pan out, with Smith currently brainstorming new ideas. He also has been focusing on Season 8 of the romantic drama, which is slated to start production next month.
Meanwhile, Kerr and Rothe return for another 1970s Everett-Sarah flashback in Season 7. The heart-wrenching scene gives a closure vibe. In what may have been the couple’s last encounter before Sarah died, Everett pleads with her to come live with him. Sarah, heavily pregnant with Mel at the time, instead chooses to “let him go” and return to her husband for the sake of her daughters, asking Everett to accept her choice (Which he reluctantly does.)
In present day, Everett is prompted to share the story with Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) after Marley, the young woman who had agreed to have Mel and Jack (Martin Henderson) adopt her unborn baby, tells them that her newly surfaced boyfriend is opposing the adoption, putting the process in limbo.
Was the flashback a way to wrap Sarah and Everett’s arc on Virgin River or could their story be revisited in future seasons?
“I think if it’s appropriate,” Smith said. “This felt like an opportunity for Everett to impart how difficult it was for him to give her up. It spoke to Mel’s story about Marley organically, so there was nothing more to it than having Everett be able to connect with Mel on something very personal.”
In the Season 6 flashbacks, Everett (Kerr), a singer-songwriter with a poet’s soul, was skimming through life in a VW Van until a chance meeting with a beautiful hitchhiker, Sarah (Rothe), showed him that there’s more to life than he ever thought possible.
While the fate of the proposed prequel is unclear, Netflix has been able to utilize both Rothe and Kerr on other series. She recurred on the streamer’s 2025 medical dram Pulse while Kerr plays a major role, the Smoker, on the second season of One Piece, released earlier this week.
In a December 2024 interview, Smith shared more of his vision for the prequel.
“I personally see it a little bit like Queen Charlotte to Bridgerton,” he said, referring to Netflix’s hit series Bridgerton, based on Julia Quinn’s books, which got an original prequel, Queen Charlotte, from Shonda Rhimes. Virgin River too is a book adaptation of Robyn Carr’s novels.
“I think if there’s an opportunity to take what Virgin River as a book series was, which was each book was focusing on one couple and expanding the world outside of it, to put Sarah and Everett in the foreground of their own story, while populating, as Virgin River has, the world with supporting characters and other relationships — but all still running it through the romance lens — to me, is what defines a lot of what an expansion of the show and the franchise would be,” he added.