‘When Calls the Heart’: What’s the News About Jack? 7 Burning Questions for Season 12
The good news after that major cliffhanger to end When Calls the Heart Season 11: We already know it will be back for more! And so that means that all of our burning questions—and oh, do we have those, especially after that last scene—will be answered.
After all, yes, we need to know just what that news about Elizabeth’s (Erin Krakow) late husband Jack (Daniel Lissing, who exited in Season 5) is and what it means for her new romance with Nathan (Kevin McGarry). But we also need to know what’s in store for Hope Valley going forward. For instance, Lee (Kavan Smith) is currently acting mayor, and after Mei (Amanda Wong) and Mike’s (Ben Rosenbaum) wedding, whose love story will we see next?
Below, we take a look at those questions and more as we await the return of the Hallmark Channel drama.
When Calls the Heart, Season 12, TBA, Hallmark Channel
What’s the Jack Thornton news?
In the finale, Superintendent Hargraves (David Lewis) interrupted new couple Elizabeth and Nathan as they shared a moment following Mike and Mei’s wedding with a request to talk to Elizabeth in private—about her late husband! Jack was killed in a landslide in Season 5, but already, there are theories that he might somehow be alive.
What we do know is that while the stars filmed a few different versions of that cliffhanger, “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,” McGarry told TV Insider. “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.”
How will Nathan and Elizabeth be affected by the news about Jack?
The two just got together! And to think, before this, their biggest problem seemed to be the constant interruptions. “I hope they’re able to deal with that news and move forward,” McGarry told TV Insider. And now, for Nathan, he added, “There’s a bit of fear that maybe he’ll lose what he holds dear.” Meanwhile, Elizabeth is mostly just in “shock,” said Krakow. “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?” Considering what it took for them to get together—it was about time!—we do think they’ll be able to get past it but how they do should certainly be interesting to watch.
Will Lucas get a new love interest?
Elizabeth did make sure to let her ex-fiancé know that she’d be attending the wedding with Nathan, and the two have seemingly moved towards being friends once again. But will Lucas find love again? His past (Jeanette) did just come back to haunt him, and maybe she can serve as a reminder of what he shouldn’t be looking for in a match going forward.
Will Bill and Rosemary continue to work together?
One of the best and most entertaining parts of Season 11 was watching Bill (Jack Wagner) and Rosemary (Pascale Hutton) working together on the mystery of who shot Lucas. Something about the official story didn’t add up, and the two teamed up (at first reluctantly, on Bill’s part) to get to the bottom of it. We need more of the two together in Season 12, even if it’s not to solve another mystery.
Will Lee join Lucas in Capital City?
During Season 11, Lee became acting mayor with Mike feeling very much like a younger brother during negotiations with his sister, Maisie (Samantha Ferris), the mayor of Benson Hills, when it looked like the two towns would merge. Now he has a decision to make: In the finale, Lucas said if he was going to turn the ship around, he had to do it from Capital City—and hoped Lee would consider joining him to get his plans for a national park ready. Will he?
How much will Fiona appear going forward?
The Season 11 premiere revealed that Kayla Wallace would not be returning, with Fiona off working with her sister and the other Suffragettes with so much work still to be done securing women’s rights. She did return in the finale for Mei and Mike’s wedding and even wanted to recruit Faith (Andrea Brooks) for the cause, before she saw how settled she was caring for Lily. But will Fiona continue to return to Hope Valley? Will it depend on scheduling? As Krakow told us, that was what kept her away for almost all of Season 12 (she was filming Landman).
Who will Season 12's new couple be?
There has to be at least one! Might Faith find love? Brooks told us during Heart Beats she was glad that her character stating she was lonely in the premiere didn’t result in a love interest but rather the young Lily coming into her life. “Obviously [love is] still an aspect of Faith’s life that she is missing, but I think she’s actually quite fulfilled for the first time, possibly ever on the show, in a way that she just was not expecting,” she said.
That being said, she added, “I think she does ultimately want a partner. I think that would be good for her. I think she knows that would be good for herself. But she is that interesting modern woman in the 1920s who sought out a dream that was so different from most women in her generation. She became a doctor. She values the town so deeply that love has always ended up being brushed aside. I do hope that she comes to a point where she can let her guard down enough to find the right person, but I think it’s just a matter of, again, finding that right person. I don’t know if that person’s fallen into her life yet.”
Plus, Wong told us during the finale aftershow, “I find that the couples always give advice and I wonder what kind of advice Mei and Mike would give potential people. I just think that that’d be the most hilarious. They’re like, ‘We don’t know what we’re doing either.'” We’d love to see that, too, and this would be a fun way.
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