‘When Calls the Heart’: Fiona’s Not Returning to Hope Valley — Will Kayla Wallace Be Back?
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the When Calls the Heart Season 11 premiere “When Stars Align.”]
Hearties returned to Hope Valley in the When Calls the Heart Season 11 premiere, but the episode revealed that not everyone is back for the new episodes.
Minnie (Natasha Burnett) is the one to tell Faith (Andrea Brooks) that Fiona (Kayla Wallace) sent a telegram that she loves working with her sister and the other Suffragettes, and with so much work still to be done securing women’s rights, she won’t be returning to Hope Valley.
It’s simply due to scheduling, star and executive producer Erin Krakow tells TV Insider as part of our weekly When Calls the Heart aftershow, Heart Beats (which you can watch here). “We love Kayla Wallace. We would love for her to be in every episode. Kayla had a really incredible opportunity on another TV series that films out of town [Landman]. We’re excited for her,” she says. (Wallace debuted on When Calls the Heart in Season 6.)
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And Krakow hasn’t ruled out seeing Wallace again on the show. “We are hoping that we’ll be able to have Fiona back for some episodes,” she adds. “Who knows? But yeah, we truly, truly over the moon thrilled for Kayla.”
The premiere does address how not having Fiona around affects Faith, who admits that she’s lonely, especially seeing her friends making huge changes in their lives. But with how close a community Hope Valley is, it has to affect everyone else as well.
“Not to make it about Elizabeth, but look, she goes to the barbershop and Robert’s there. She’s not going to have Robert cut her hair,” Krakow jokes. “Yeah, it’s a very close community. I think people are really heartbroken over the fact that Fiona’s not around. And truthfully, we don’t have enough time in the episode to really dig into that. And so hopefully it doesn’t feel like people are in any way cavalier about her departure.”
Faith is the one who is especially struggling. “She’s got these two best girlfriends. She’s got Mei [Amanda Wong] who is pretty distracted by Hickam [Ben Rosenbaum] at the moment, and she’s got Fiona who’s now written to say that she’s left Hope Valley indefinitely. And so I think Faith is struggling a bit with that loneliness and kind of trying to figure out what her place is,” explains Krakow. “If Mei has this fun new romance and Fiona is really passionate about her work with the Suffragettes, what is it that’s going to really bring fulfillment to Faith’s life? Outside of obviously medicine, which is very important.”
What do you think of how the Season 11 premiere wrote out Fiona? Let us know in the comments section, below.
When Calls the Heart, Sundays, 9/8c, Hallmark Channel
When Calls the Heart (2014) where to stream
