Amber Marshall was just 19 when she first drove to that ranch in Millarville, Alberta. Now, she’s filmed over 250 episodes of Heartland across 17 seasons, and she’s basically become Amy Fleming — she raises horses, lives rural, knows the work. At some point, acting just becomes real life.
Season 17 feels heavier than usual. Robert Cormier, who joined the cast in Season 15 as Finn Cotter — the kind of love interest Amy needed after Ty Borden died — passed away in September 2022. He was only 33. The show had built Finn to help Amy move forward without asking viewers to forget the years she had with Ty. Losing Cormier collapsed that path and meant the cast had to carry real grief while filming.
“It was devastating,” Marshall said during a break from filming. “Robert was open and honest and so much fun to work with. Losing him brought all of us even closer.”
That kind of quote can sound routine. It doesn’t here. This group — Michelle Morgan, Shaun Johnston, Chris Potter, and now the Spencer twins, Ruby and Emmanuella, as Amy’s daughter Lyndy — has been doing those dinner-table scenes for years. The comfort is just there. You don’t build that in a two-week shoot.
The show’s audience hasn’t gone anywhere. Heartland is one of the most-streamed series on UP Faith & Family in the U.S., where a lot of viewers are only discovering it now after missing its original run on CBC. The numbers point to something critics tend to overlook: Heartland found an audience that TV had pretty much forgotten about. There’s a steady group of people who want something quieter, and they’re not interested in being talked down to for it.
Season 17 needs to figure out Amy’s love life. Sam Langston has been circling her story with a kind of careful patience — that usually means the writers have already decided what’s going to happen. Fans noticed him months ago. Marshall isn’t confirming anything. “Sometimes you see someone as a neighbor,” she said, “and sometimes maybe something more.”
Heartland has outlasted most of the shows it started alongside. Marshall talks about it like someone who has stopped thinking about anything else. “You look around at those hills and horses,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
Seventeen seasons in, it’s still the same hills, the same horses.
