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The mystery of who shot Lucas on When Calls the Heart has taken center stage in Season 11, and we finally know who the perpetrator is … or so we think?
When Calls the Heart is Hallmark Channel’s drama series following Elizabeth Thatcher (Erin Krakow), a young teacher accustomed to her high-society life who receives her first classroom assignment in Coal Valley (now named Hope Valley), a small coal-mining town in western Canada. The show, which premiered in July 2014, is based on Janette Oke’s novel of the same title from her Canadian West book series. Season 11 of When Calls the Heart premiered on April 7 on the Hallmark Channel.
What happened to Lucas on When Calls the Heart?
In Season 6, McNally was introduced as Lucas Bouchard, a businessman who owns the Queen of Hearts saloon and Gowen Petroleum in Hope Valley. Lucas and Elizabeth start dating in Season 8 and get engaged in Season 9 after Elizabeth’s breakup with Nathan Grant, a Mountie she started seeing in the wake of her late husband Jack Thornton’s death in Season 5. However, Season 10 ended with the couple breaking off their engagement because he wanted to move to Capital City to continue his campaign for governor, while Elizabeth wanted to stay in Hope Valley.
After winning the Governor race and leaving Hope Valley for Capital City, the Season 11 premiere revealed that an unseen assailant had shot Lucas. Lucas survived, and in the four months that followed, Nathan was part of a special investigative team to find the person who shot him. Clayton Pike, a seasonal worker, was captured and confessed to the crime. Despite this, neither Nathan nor Bill believed he was guilty.
Who shot Lucas on When Calls the Heart?
In the Season 11 episode “Along Came a Spider,” Lucas’ ex-fiancée Jeanette Aucoin showed up in town to bid on the resort he planned on building. She informed him that she represented a group of wealthy investors, but Lucas was skeptical and agreed to only accept the bid if the investors passed a background check. Jeanette turned up again in “What Goes Around,” and after spending more time with her, Lucas remembered that she was there the night he got shot. She was accompanied by the notorious gangster Casimir Shaw, who held a gun up to her. Lucas then grabbed for the gun and got shot in the process. As it turns out, Jeanette had been coerced by Shaw to make a deal with Lucas that would allow the criminal to run rum through the territory and use the resort for money laundering activities.
In the promo for the penultimate episode, which airs on June 16, Shaw arrives in Hope Valley and stirs up all sorts of trouble. “If you don’t cooperate with him, he’ll destroy this town you care so much about,” Jeanette warns Lucas. In the final clip, Shaw seemingly captures both Rosemary Coulter (Pascale Hutton) and Elizabeth and holds them hostage.
Prior to the big reveal, Hearties were convinced that Lucas’ assistant, Edwin Mitchel (Erik Gow), was the one who shot him. The fans came to this conclusion after Edwin exhibited some sketchy behavior in Season 11, Episode 8. “I think Lucas’s assistant shot him. He just seems off,” a Reddit user wrote at the time. Another user speculated: “I am with you. I think he is a mole and reporting to the opposition.” A third user commented, “I agree! I think it’s his assistant!”
Edwin was introduced in When Calls the Heart Season 10 as the assistant to Governor Bixby Balfour (Mark Brandon). After Lucas decided to run against Balfour in the election, Edwin left Balfour and became Lucas’ campaign manager and assistant. Following Lucas’ attempted assassination on Election Night, Edwin stayed with Lucas during his recovery in the hospital and also alerted his friends in Hope Valley about what had happened.
While Edwin as Lucas’ shooter was an interesting theory, not everyone was on board. “I doubt Edwin is the shooter. On the Montague payroll, no doubt. I’m not sure he even has the brass to be the one calling other investors to warn them off. Montague or one of his more threatening cronies would have done that,” one Heartie wrote on Reddit. “Hopefully, this is exposed before Lucas moves forward with his bid for the resort. For a former savvy businessman, they are writing Governor Bouchard as naive and inexperienced this season, as though he’d experienced brain damage. This does not track with his character, but keeping characters consistent is not a forte of WCTH writers.”
Other users noted an important detail from Lucas’ shooting that ruled out certain suspects. “Remember that Lucas recognized the shooter before he got shot. So it’s definitely someone he knows,” a user wrote. This fan was spot on, since we know now that Jeanette was there and that the pair go way back.
Hearties weren’t the only ones trying to solve the mystery. A major storyline in Season 11 has been the unlikely team up of Rosemary (Pascale Hutton) and Bill (Jack Wagner), who took on sleuth roles and tried to piece together all the clues.
“That’s really what Bill’s storyline has been about this year—becoming a team. And it’s not with Nathan; it’s with Rosemary,” Wagner said in a behind-the-scenes video shared on May 6. “She’s so excited that finally she has a real story to pursue,” Hutton said of her character. “Rosemary is so so enthusiastic and bubbly. Bill is so not those things like he’s kind of a bit grumpy.” Wagner added that they needed to figure out how to “combine this and make it realistic” that the two would be crime solvers.
“It is so fun to see Bill and Rosemary working together like buddy cops,” added lead star Erin Krakow. “It’s a real who done it, and we’ve never done that,” Hutton concluded. “And I think it brings new colors and storylines for a lot of characters.”
When Calls the Heart airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on the Hallmark Channel. The series is also available to stream on Peacock.
For more on When Calls the Heart, check out our gallery of who the cast is dating and married to in real life below.
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