6 Years Later: What Ty Borden Would Be Most Proud of in Amy Today

Ty Borden died in the opening minutes of "Keep Me in Your Heart," and Heartland has been a show about the aftermath ever since.

That episode aired on January 2021. Looking back across the years, Amy Fleming remains the beating heart of the ranch: a mother, a gifted horse trainer, and a woman who has slowly navigated what it means to open her heart again.

Nobody can speak for Ty, but years of storytelling give us plenty of clues. If Ty could look down at Amy today, his pride wouldn't center on business wins or the "Miracle Girl" reputation. It would rest on the quieter, heavier moments she walked through.

The Year She Couldn't Finish the House

The Season 14 premiere didn't draw out the tragedy. Ty collapsed from a blood clot—a hidden complication from the gunshot wound in the Season 13 finale—and the story jumps ahead a year.

Amy spent that year completely frozen. The home she and Ty began building stood half-finished, a hollow frame of the life they had planned. She wasn't ready for a memorial, and she wasn't ready to pretend everything was fine. Amber Marshall once described that period as a year of pure numbness, crying until there were simply no tears left.

What gets Amy through isn't a speech. It's Jack, in the barn, telling her how he lived through the death of his own wife, Lyndy. Marshall said that with Jack's help, Amy "accepts that it was out of her control and the best way to honour Ty is to move forward and be present for their daughter," as she explained to TV, eh?. Amy holds the memorial and scatters Ty's ashes. Then she tells her father she doesn't want to keep building the house.

I think that's the first thing Ty would be proud of. Amy has always been the one who steps up. In that barn, she let her grandfather carry some of it.

The course he built for her

A few episodes later, Amy hosts her first horse clinic in more than a year. Episode summaries describe "The New Normal" as a return to her "Miracle Girl" roots. The nickname goes back to Season 3, when a bystander's video of her calming a frightened horse after a highway crash made the news.

That is the part of Amy the public sees. I doubt it's the part Ty cared about. In only the second episode of the series, he shows her a jumping course he has built for her in the woods, when they were still teenagers and he was on probation. It is one of the first things he ever gives her.

In between, Caleb finds Ty's old motorcycle and brings it to Amy, and it stirs up as much in Jack as it does in her. By the Season 14 finale, "Staying the Course," Amy decides to rebuild that jumping course. She doesn't leave it behind. She puts it back together.

A name on the door

Ty came to Heartland with a record. He lost one of his first jobs when his past came out, and Jack, who could have said no, agreed to be his sponsor. His own father once left in the middle of the night with the money meant for Heartland's horses. I think Ty spent a lot of his life waiting to find out whether he'd be let in, and being let in changed everything about him.

In "Leaving a Legacy," which aired on December 19, 2021, Ty's mother sends Amy money from a racehorse's winnings. Amy feels his mother has overstepped, until she finds a gift and card Ty bought her for their sixth anniversary. In it, he wrote that the two of them could leave a legacy, and we hear his voice as she reads. She puts part of the money into a struggling horse therapy center for kids and names it the Dr. Ty Borden Equestrian Youth Centre.

In the same episode, Amy gives Logan, a teenager thinking about quitting school, Ty's old college course book. Logan decides to stay.

A place that takes in kids who need a second chance, with Ty's name on it, and a boy holding Ty's textbook. If anything would reach him, I think it's that.

Letting herself be happy

Marshall is clear that the writers took their time. "There were a few seasons we wanted to spend honoring his legacy and their relationship and connection," she told TV Insider in 2023. "Season 16 was finally where it became, no, Amy is allowed to move forward. She is allowed to be happy. She was given that time for her to grieve and for fans to grieve with her."

Nathan Pryce Jr. arrives in Season 17, and he and Amy grow closer over the next seasons. The moment that says the most about her comes in Season 19's "Ghosts." Amy turns cold on a trip to a place she once visited with Ty, and afterward she tells Nathan why. She doesn't pretend. By the Season 19 finale, Nathan proposes, Amy smiles, and the scene ends before we hear her answer. The Season 20 premiere finds the two of them at a crossroads.

I don't think Ty would need her answer to go any particular way. What I think he'd be proudest of is that she can say "this place reminds me of him" out loud and keep going. Grief you can name is something you can live beside.

What she hands down

Marshall has said Amy leans on what has always comforted her: horses. "She includes her daughter in this form of healing and together they share some beautiful moments," she said. You can see it in how Lyndy grows up on the ranch. In Season 14, Amy worries that Lyndy isn't adjusting. In Season 15, she struggles to let her go to a week of preschool prep camp. Then, in the Season 15 finale, as Lyndy gets ready for kindergarten, she tells her to make a wish on what they think is a falling star. It turns out to be a lantern Peter has sent up for Lou.

By Season 16, Lyndy is copying her mother. In the Season 16 premiere, after a trailer accident, a loose horse is running near the road. Amy tells her daughter to stay in the truck. Lyndy gets out anyway, raises her arms over her head, and stops the horse, the way she's seen Amy do.

In a video message to fans after the premiere, Graham Wardle said, "I know this is tough because people have grown up with the show," and added that "everything come to an end, everything dies. Make the most of what you have," as Horse Canada reported. Marshall, speaking before the premiere aired, described the way forward like this: "to honour that person and that person's journey and by moving forward and living each day is the best way that you can."

That is Amy, nearly six years on. She let Jack in, rebuilt the course, put his name on a place that helps kids, and raised a daughter who watches her and learns. I can't speak for Ty. But I think he'd be proud.

Related reading:
Love and Loss: The Story of Ty and Amy on Heartland
Amber Marshall on Heartland, Loss, and Amy Finding Love Again
From a Stable Kiss to a Wedding at the Ranch: Amy and Ty's Best Heartland Moments