‘Virgin River’ Season 4 Ending Explained: What Happened in the Finale?

This post contains major spoilers for Virgin River Season 4. Proceed with caution.
Virgin River covered a lot of ground during its fourth season, which dropped on Netflix July 20, 2022. Yet the series still managed to leave viewers with a fair share of suspenseful cliffhangers and a whole lot of questions.
Throughout Season 4’s 12 episodes, the romantic drama welcomed a few fresh faces to town, delivered more romantic twists and turns, and finally answered some long-held burning questions. In true Virgin River fashion, the packed season finale includes several goodbyes, a surprise wedding, more than one medical emergency, a seriously unwelcome guest, a paternity mystery solved, a police investigation cracked, and a massive secret shared in the episode’s final minute.
It was A Lot. But have no fear, we’ll unpack Virgin River‘s Season 4 ending together. First, let’s back up to the beginning.

So what’s the Virgin River charm?

Virgin River is a romantic drama series based on novels by Robyn Carr. It follows nurse practitioner and midwife Mel Monroe (Alexandra Breckenridge) after she leaves her Los Angeles life behind to move to a charming little town called — yep, you guessed it — Virgin River. Mel starts working with Doc Mullins (Tim Matheson) at his medical practice, she befriends locals like Mayor Hope McCrea (Annette O’Toole), and she falls for Virgin River’s favorite bar owner Jack Sheridan (Martin Henderson). While Mel sets out to build a new life for herself, she also tries to escape her painful past. But once she arrives in town, Virgin River dials the drama up to 11 with love triangles, medical issues, major crime, and emotional baggage galore.
In Season 4 of Virgin River, Mel and Jack finally find solid ground as a couple, his pal Preacher (Colin Lawrence) and local mom Paige (Lexa Doig) make progress with their giant setback, Jack’s sister Brie (Zibby Allen) and Brady (Benjamin Hollingsworth) get a second chance at love, and so much more. Let’s dig into the Season 4 ending, shall we?

Virgin River Season 4 Ending Explained

If you recall, Season 3 memorably ended with Jack almost asking Mel to marry him. She stopped him to reveal that she was pregnant, but wasn’t sure if Jack or her deceased husband Mark was the father. Remember when Mel and Jack were on a break earlier in S3 and Mel went to a fertility clinic to access old embryos she’d frozen with Mark? Yeah, that’s why there’s a chance he could be the dad. But the timeline doesn’t make much sense, does it?

Anyway, the questions of Mel’s baby’s paternity and her and Jack’s fate as a couple loomed over viewers throughout Season 4. Thankfully, they were both resolved in the finale. Jack asks Mel to marry him and she says yes. Hoorah! Two days later, they get the lab results from the paternity test and learn that not only are they having a girl, but that Jack is the baby’s father! It’s great news for everyone, except maybe Dr. Cameron Hayek (Mark Ghanimé), the handsome new guy who Doc hired to help out at the practice.

Cameron came, he saw, he crushed on Mel. At one point he told her he didn’t think Jack was right for her, so after Jack and Mel get engaged, Cameron feels stupid and quits his job to head back to San Diego. Mel worries that without Cameron, Doc will be overwhelmed when she goes on maternity leave, so she resigns in hopes that Cameron will stay.
That’s just another thing Doc has to stress over. Between his health struggles, overseeing Hope’s recovery, and connecting with his long-lost grandson Denny (Kai Bradbury) who’s in town visiting, Doc has a lot going on in Season 4. In the finale, Doc tells a stubborn Hope that they need to hire an aid to assist her on a daily basis. She agrees, and says she wants Lizzie (Sarah Dugdale) to do it. But Lizzie’s hesitant because things are weird between her and Denny. At times it seems like Denny wants to be more than friends with Lizzie, but he always pulls away and is infamous for keeping secrets. When Denny hears Lizzie might leave Hope hanging because of him, he tells her the truth. “The reason I can’t be with you is because I don’t have a future. I have Huntington’s Disease, which is terminal,” he says.
While it would obviously be painful for Lizzie strengthen her bond with Denny knowing that his time is limited, she’ll have a lot more free time in Season 5 now that Ricky’s (Grayson Maxwell Gurnsey) out of the picture. In the finale, Jack, Lizzie, and the rest of Virgin River crew give Ricky a heartfelt sendoff before he hops a bus to join the Marines.

The episode may have torn Lizzie and Ricky apart, but it brought Brie and Brady closer than ever. Brady recently learned that Brie had been raped by an attorney she was dating in Sacramento, so he’s doing everything he can to be there for her. Meanwhile, thanks to a tip from Brie, Mike was able to solve the mystery of Jack’s shooting and the DEA dropped all charges against Brady. The gun used to shoot Jack, which was found in Brady’s truck, actually belonged to Vince (Steve Bacic), the twin brother of Paige’s abusive ex-husband Wes. A deputy who was helping local gang leader Calvin launder money admitted to planting the gun. So what happened to Vince? Preacher handled him.

Remember how Paige fled town after accidentally killing Wes in Season 3? In Season 4, Vince comes to town and kidnaps her son Christopher (Chase Petriw) to lure her out of hiding. She returns to Virgin River and agrees to trade herself in exchange for her son’s freedom. So Vince takes Paige to a cabin in the woods, and after Vince admits he shot Jack, Preacher smacks him over the head with a wooden log and he drops to the floor.
Like we said, the episode was jam packed! And its final minutes sure didn’t let up. As Brie’s getting into her car, she’s cornered by the attorney who raped her. He asks her to sign an NDA, but she tells him she’s going to file a police report and press charges. Mel and Jack, who went to a celebratory engagement dinner with their friends Nick and Jo Ellen, are introduced to Nick’s sister, Melissa Montgomery aka gang leader Calvin’s terrifying boss who may or may not have had him killed. Someone’s in the parking lot snapping photos of Melissa mingling with Jack and Mel, so those could become an issue down the line. Dinner is cut short when Charmaine (Lauren Hammersley), the woman who’s pregnant with Jack’s twins, calls him in a panic. Jack and Mel rush to her house and find her lying on the floor in pain. She says she thinks her husband Todd is going to leave her and that she’ll lose the babies. With seconds in the episodes to spare, she tells Jack, “This is karma. I’m being punished. It’s because I lied. The twins — they’re not your babies.”
GASP! We need Virgin River Season 5 ASAP, please!