Why Amy and Grandpa Jack Are Still the Heart of Heartland After 20 Seasons

I keep seeing the same thing in the comments, and I'm not even a little surprised. "Amber, you and grandpa make this show the best." "You and Grandpa are Heartland, but we love the whole cast." Twenty seasons in, that tracks.

It's been their story since episode one. After Amy's mom, Marion, is killed, teenage Amy (Amber Marshall) and her sister Lou (Michelle Morgan) end up at Heartland ranch with their grandfather, Jack Bartlett (Shaun Johnston). As CBC News put it this fall, Jack has stayed the family patriarch through all of it — the weddings, the kids, and more loss than most of us were ready for.

Here's the part that still gets me: Shaun almost wasn't Jack. In CBC's oral history of the series, creator Michael Weinberg said he couldn't find his 60-something cowboy, until Shaun — then 46 — came in to audition for Tim. They asked him to read for Jack instead. Shaun thought they couldn't be serious. They were. Thank goodness.

He didn't even think the show would last. Talking to the Calgary Herald while shooting Season 20, Shaun admitted, "Shame on me, maybe, but I thought it didn't have a hope." He warned the young cast, including Amber, not to get their hopes up. Amber still remembers that speech. Shaun laughed about it: "I'm telling them my old-man wisdom. They're going 'boooo … Don't bring us down, man, you're ruining the party!'" Twenty seasons later, yeah. Good thing nobody listened.

You can see that bond all over the show. In the Season 8 finale, "Written in Stone," when Amy married Ty, she and Jack rode from the barn to the house together — Amy on Spartan, Jack on Paint. UP Faith & Family still talks about that ride.

And in Season 15, Amy and Jack sang together at Tim and Jessica's wedding reception. That wasn't a one-time thing, either. In a fan Q&A for UP Faith & Family, Shaun said that every time he and Amber sing on the show, "we write one" — "an original song that has been written specifically for that moment."

Shaun has also pointed to Season 9's "Ties of the Earth," when Jack had to say goodbye to Paint, as the hardest episode he's ever made. He told CBC the whole cast and crew felt that loss together. I still can't get through that one clean.

Season 20 is sitting with something heavier. Amber told TV Week the family is facing the idea that "Jack isn't getting any younger," and that he's thinking about whether to keep going or "put the pressure onto my grandchildren to take over." As she put it, the ranch is "all they've ever known." Canadian fans are already in the middle of this season — including that Episode 5 cliffhanger. U.S. fans get Season 20 on Thursday, November 19, on UP Faith & Family, as TV Insider reported.

Shaun told the Herald he's watched Amber, Michelle and the rest of this on-screen family grow up, fall in love, and walk through the big stuff. "I witness it, but at the same time I feel like I'm a part of it, too." Amber's still all in. She's said she'll "do Heartland till I die."

She also told TV Week that a good episode leaves you thinking, "I need to go call my grandma." That's sweet, and it's true. But I keep coming back to what you all already said: you and Grandpa are Heartland. Season 20 is making us sit with the fact that Jack isn't getting any younger, and that ranch is all Amy and the others have ever known. So I'll just ask it plainly. If that day comes... would this still feel like Heartland without him?