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Virgin River has returned for season 7, which is eyebrow-raising in the streaming era, where we’re not talking about 20+ seasons of shows on broadcast TV, and this almost never happens.

But as it turns out, it literally never happens on Netflix. With its early renewal for season 8, Virgin River will set a record as the longest-running drama in Netflix history once that season is released. No other show has hit that high-water mark. Here is the list, if you’re curious what is close. Only two other hour-long dramas even have seven:

  • Virgin River – 8 seasons

  • Orange is the New Black – 7 seasons

  • Elite – 7 seasons

  • The Crown – 6 seasons

  • Lucifer (later seasons Netflix) – 6 seasons

  • House of Cards – 6 seasons

  • Peaky Blinders – 6 seasons

  • Longmire – 6 seasons

  • Stranger Things – 5 seasons

  • The Last Kingdom – 5 seasons

  • Money Heist – 5 seasons

  • You – 5 seasons

There is a catch here is that despite having the most seasons, Virgin River will not have the most episodes. Technically, that goes to Lucifer, but that’s in part because season 3 had an absurd 26 episodes before it moved to Netflix. Rather, Orange is the New Black has 91 episodes across its 7 seasons because this was back in the very early days when big Netflix shows were allowed to have 13-episode seasons. So did House of Cards. Now? The max is usually 10, with 6-8 being more common. Virgin River seasons have 10, though two seasons are 12.

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Virgin River

Netflix

It says something about our TV landscape when we don’t even have enough critic reviews in to give Virgin River’s seven seasons a Rotten Tomatoes score, indicating at least some disconnection from what audiences are actually watching, hence why the show has been infinitely renewed. And it really may be almost infinite, as there are 21 Virgin River books to adapt, so who knows, maybe this gets into Grey’s Anatomy territory by the 2040s when we’re watching Malia Obama and Barron Trump face off for the presidency.

Netflix loves a series like Virgin River, a perfect storm of short production, low budget, high viewership, and endless source material already laid out. It’s not surprising that, given all this, Virgin River has done this well this past decade and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, it looks like. We’ll know more about this season’s viewership soon, but with season 8 and that record already on the way, it doesn’t matter all that much.

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