‘When Calls the Heart’: Erin Krakow & Kevin McGarry React to Shocking Cliffhanger to End Season 11

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the When Calls the Heart Season 11 finale “Anything for Love.”]

The honeymoon phase can’t already be over for Elizabeth (Erin Krakow) and Nathan (Kevin McGarry) on When Calls the Heart … right? The two just got together at the end of the season’s penultimate episode, and now, the finale ends with shocking news—for Elizabeth!

But they do get to enjoy being a couple first, having a picnic with their kids and attending Mei (Amanda Wong) and Mike’s (Ben Rosenbaum) wedding together. (Watch Wong and Rosenbaum take us inside that event during TV Insider’s last weekly aftershow, Heart Beats here.) Between those two occasions, the new couple shares secrets—hers, a light-hearted story about kissing a potato as a little girl after her sister told her she’d find her heart’s desire that way and his much more serious. He reveals that when he was offered that job in Union City, he’d wanted to leave because of her. He’d found himself falling for her, and it felt wrong because he asked to be assigned to the town to protect her after her husband Jack’s death. She admits she dreaded the idea of a new Mountie coming to town, convinced she’d despise whoever it was because they were alive and Jack wasn’t. She also assures him that he’s not responsible for Jack taking his place in that mission.

Superintendent Hargraves (David Lewis) interrupts Elizabeth and Nathan as they share a moment following Mike and Mei’s wedding. He says he’ll explain why he there’s in private—but he doesn’t want to speak to Nathan. Rather, he’s in Hope Valley for Elizabeth, and it’s about her late husband!

“I hope they’re able to deal with that news and move forward,” McGarry told us as part of our Heart Beats aftershow for the penultimate episode.

“We’re not going to pretend that conversation never happened, so we will come back in Season 12 and address it,” teases Krakow. “Our scripts are still in flux as we’re moving toward filming. I will leave it at that. It’s a juicy enough cliffhanger on its own.”

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The star and executive producer also reveals that there were “a few different versions of the cliffhanger and we shot a few different versions of it.” Adds McGarry, “all of those endings were in the same world. It was just variations of different things. It was always going to be the idea that they’re getting pulled apart. … It’s nice you don’t see it coming. It’s this kind of comical light thing and all of a sudden this really heavy news comes out of nowhere.”

For Nathan, it’s very much, “Oh great, at the worst possible time again,” McGarry says, referring to the multiple interruptions that the couple has dealt with. “It could have been comical. Every time you go in for a kiss, it’s like ‘Grant!’ ‘What?’ Then he drops the bomb that this is about Jack. And then all of a sudden, especially after having that conversation that they had earlier and now Jack’s memory is back and we don’t know why or what’s going to happen, I think there’s a bit of fear that maybe he’ll lose what he holds dear.”

Krakow says Elizabeth’s “first and foremost [in] shock, but she turns to the person that she loves and trusts most in that moment to share that emotion because who could have predicted that Hargraves would be coming to talk to her about that at all, but about that?”

That comes after they’ve revealed to the town that they’re together, as everyone saw Mei and Mike off after their wedding. “I think they found a real comfortability together, too. I just remember even the body language, it just seemed very easy together with the two of them only to be halted by Hargraves,” McGarry notes.

After Elizabeth had checked off all the boxes she needed to—talking to her son Little Jack (Hyland Goodrich) and ex-fiancé Lucas (Chris McNally)—”it just felt like they didn’t want to hold back anymore,” says Krakow.

What do you think Hargraves has to tell Elizabeth? Let us know in the comments section, below.

When Calls the Heart, Season 12, TBA, Hallmark Channel