The good news: Mel and Jack are back together after breaking up — she

wanted kids, he wasn’t so sure — by the end of Season 3. The bad news: There’s a major complication.

As he’s ready to propose, she drops a bombshell on him: She’s pregnant. Wait, shouldn’t that be great news?

Yes, but … she doesn’t know if he’s the father. While they were broken up, she visited her sister, who reminded her of the two embryos she and her late husband Mark  had left.

So whose baby is it? TV Insider turned to Breckenridge to get her take on that, Mel and Jack’s relationship, and more.

Whose baby do you think it is?

Alexandra Breckenridge: I can tell you that I hope that it’s Jack’s baby, but I don’t know. That might be wishful thinking.

Does any part of Mel want the baby to be Mark’s since it would be a way for him to live on?

She was pretty conflicted about that from the inception of the idea when Joey brought it up with her, so I would say maybe a small part of her. She was definitely more comfortable with that idea when she thought that Jack and her were truly breaking up. But I think once they got back together, she thought, “Well, the likelihood of me getting pregnant is so small.” I think that after she found out she was pregnant, it brought on a lot of complicated feelings for her — obviously, you can see it on her face — so maybe a tiny part. But I think at this point she mostly wants it to be Jack’s. That’s who she’s currently in love with. Of course, she loves Mark, but they’re not in a relationship anymore. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to say about somebody that’s passed away.

Courtesy of Netflix

Speaking of those complicated feelings, she wants to be a mother, but the timing of it…

It’s a double-edged sword for her until she knows the paternity and she doesn’t know how Jack is going to react also because she knows she has to be honest with him. Obviously, she dropped that bomb at the end when he asks her to marry him, which is the saddest thing ever. It’s a moment that you want to happen so badly and then she’s like, “I’m pregnant,” and he’s like, “Oh, that’s amazing.” “I don’t know if you’re the father,” which leads him to believe, “Oh my gosh, did you sleep with somebody when we broke up for that one day?” Luckily that was not the case. She’s just going through a lot of emotional turmoil about it and if there’s a Season 4, we’ll obviously explore that a lot. But at the end of the season, she’s very torn about it.

Speaking of the proposal, is Mel ready to marry Jack? They did just get back together.

I know. A couple of weeks have passed. That’s not much time. Mel ultimately loves Jack and wants to be with him and wants to marry him, absolutely. When he asks her, it is a little bit shocking and I’m not entirely sure, but my first inclination is she would have said yes. However, just because you want to say yes in that moment…  She doesn’t not love him. She doesn’t not want to be with him. And he certainly came back and said, “I’m all in and I promise that I’ll be with you and I won’t turn my back on you again.” I think she fully believes that at this point. I want to say she would’ve said yes.

Courtesy of Netflix

Yeah. And there’s also just so much going on besides them because Lilly [] died. Hope’s [ in the hospital. It’s just a lot going on in a very short period of time. And then to have the pregnancy and the proposal…

It is. It’s a lot. The proposal is a huge moment for Jack and the fact that Hope is clinging to her life in the hospital makes it kind of a strange time to propose. But I think Jack’s point is that he loves Mel so much, he doesn’t want to waste another moment, seeing how fragile life is.

When Mel talked to her sister in Episode 8, she said she was considering moving back to Los Angeles but whenever she’s in Virgin River, it does seem like she’s home. Is there always going to be that pull for the city versus the small town for her?

She loves living in Virgin River. I think she’s adjusted to small-town life in a way that she wasn’t expecting when she moved there. When she moved there, she was trying to escape herself. She was trying to escape the loss of her husband and the loss of her baby and all of that emotional baggage she was running away from. But obviously, you can’t run away from your emotions and I think she’s been able to heal a great deal since being there. And I think Jack’s really helped her with that process. Personally, I think that Mel loves Virgin River now. I don’t think she wants to leave. I think she wanted to leave when she thought her and Jack were breaking up and her sister needed her. And so there were multiple things at play when she was considering that.