After that explosive Season 11 finale, When Calls the Heart Season 12 has a lot of questions to answer. Here’s what we think the show needs to set straight.
It’s great news for fans and residents of Hope Valley – When Calls the Heart Season 12 has officially been greenlit for a 2025 release.
Showrunner Lindsay Sturman seems intent on making this wait a painful one, though. The TV show ended its eleventh season with an unforgettable cliffhanger, casting doubt over the biggest romance in When Calls the Heart history.
While their antics would put rom-com couples to shame, things aren’t looking too rosy for other small-town stars either. With fan complaints about show quality building up, here’s everything we think When Calls the Heart Season 12 desperately needs to answer.
When Calls the Heart Season 12: What does Hargraves say to Elizabeth?
It goes without saying that the biggest what-if in When Calls the Heart Season 11 came from the final scene.
Nathan’s superior officer, Andrew Hargraves, turns up at Mike and Mei’s wedding – which is also where Elizabeth and Nathan made their public debut as a couple.
Nathan assumes that Hargraves wants a word with him, but he’s actually come for Elizabeth. We hear him say, “Mrs. Thornton, it’s about your late husband,” just before the series comes to an end.
For longtime When Calls the Heart fans, the mere premise of this is a headscratcher. Elizabeth’s late husband died back in Season 5 in a landslide while on a training mission in Fort Clay.
There’s been a lot of confusion about his death since, with his alleged body brought back to Hope Valley for a final emotional send-off. But what does Hargraves have to say to Elizabeth?
Of course, there are already a few working theories. Some fans believe that Hargraves might have been complicit in Jack’s death, considering he is stationed in Fort Clay. The other person who is now there is Nathan which, if he was involved in Jack’s death, could have huge consequences for Season 12.
Other theories claim the cliffhanger will turn out to be something more trivial. Jack might have had a pension that was buried in admin, making Elizabeth a wealthy woman, or perhaps Jack didn’t die exactly how we’d believed he did.
For now, all we know for sure is what actor Kevin McGarry offered up to TV Guide.
“That leads right into the early problems of what’s going to happen in Season 12,” he said. “Finally, they get to the honeymoon phase – I don’t want to say it’s cut short because we’re still going to see it blossom – but there’s definitely a big boulder thrown right in their way in the last couple seconds of Season 11.
“We’ll see how Elizabeth takes it, where she stands with it all.”
Is Jack still alive?
Unsurprisingly, there’s a separate theory spinning around fans’ minds… what if Jack is actually alive after all?
It would be a wild move but it could be a plausible one. We didn’t actually see him die on screen – so for everything that’s happened up until now, we’re taking someone else’s word for it.
Some fans don’t even believe that the body we saw in Season 5 was actually Jack’s. Essentially, Hope Valley could have had a funeral crying over a landslide rock, which sounds like a bad Fleetwood Mac song.
Let’s face it – Jack actually being alive is highly unlikely. However, if When Calls the Heart continues to stray into soap opera territory, we could see a redo of Dallas’s infamous decision to bring Bobby Ewing back from the dead.
Fan opinion is now about as positive as a bout of influenza, could make When Calls the Heart resort to such drastic measures. Dallas is the perfect example – Bobby was brought back because fans were so irate that the writers had no other choice.
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If not, there’s still a lot of doubt over Fort Clay itself. Why have they been so secretive about Jack’s death? Why is potentially life-changing information being revealed seven seasons later? We can blame bad writing until we’re blue in the face, but let’s give the Hallmark channel the benefit of the doubt… something fishy is definitely afoot.
Are Elizabeth and Nathan endgame?
What might come as the biggest surprise to When Calls the Heart fans is the idea that Elizabeth and Nathan are in it for the long haul. The pair have only been together for one season and already words like “soulmate” are being thrown about (at least according to Elizabeth actor Erin Krakow).
It’s been a short-lived thing – and arguably could get shorter depending on what Hargraves has to say – and if you ask us, the chemistry just isn’t there.
Understandably, fans have been left pining for Jack, and never more so than now. On top of this, Elizabeth only broke up with town Governor Lucas at the end of Season 10, and fans of that fan-favorite ship haven’t really had a chance to grieve yet.
Elizabeth called off their engagement due to wanting different things out of life, which was made clearer when Lucas was elected. But surely true love would make you stay the course regardless?
Krakow is convinced we’ve got a lot more to unpack between Elizabeth and Nathan, even if no one else is. This makes it likely that wedding bells will be on the cards at some point in the future, but will that tie into When Calls the Heart Season 12?
What will happen to Jeanette?
Fans had the shock of their lives when they finally found out who shot Lucas – none other than his ex Jeanette, who had been using an alias to pose as a gangster.
It was an unexpected reveal, with Jeanette shipped off to jail just as quickly as she appeared in Hope Valley. First introduced in Season 6, she’s been an integral part of Lucas’s character growth.
Originally dropping everything to come to her rescue at a moment’s notice, Season 10 was the first time he grew a backbone. As a result, he lost funding for his dream resort project and almost his life.
Now that we know Lucas is confirmed to appear in When Calls the Heart Season 12, could Jeanette be seen again? We know that she has cronies working for her, including the guy who she ordered to physically shoot Lucas.
With such rich and dangerous contacts in the outside world, surely we haven’t seen the last of her yet.
Does Hope Valley have anything left for Lucas?
Poor, poor Lucas. Over the last two seasons, he’s lost the love of his life, his dream job, and almost died. If anything, he deserves the easiest time in When Calls the Heart Season 12.
On the other hand, what does Hope Valley actually have to offer him? There’s no sense of direction for the land he was going to use for the resort, and his time as Governor doesn’t feel well spent somewhere that nearly took his life.
In short, When Calls the Heart doesn’t really deserve him, and they’ve done a huge disservice to his character since his relationship with Elizabeth ended. He’s going to need a miracle not just to stay in town but to get something worthwhile from it.
Actor Chris McNally definitely isn’t leaving the show, and he’s got a brighter perspective on Lucas.
“As we progress through this Season 11 storyline, the amount of weight and pressure and stress that’s added on him and sort of chipping him away, you just get to see sides of Lucas that you haven’t seen before — some for the better and some for the worse,” he told TV Line.
Lucas better not have to bear the bad storyline brunt in Season 12, or there will be a lot of fans to answer to.
For similar vibes, check out Virgin River Season 6, The Way Home Season 3, shows if you like Virgin River, or see our list of other binge-worthy TV shows.
