Bridie Carter Finally Reveals How Tess and Nick Could Return to McLeod’s Daughters — And Her Idea Changes Everything
For 25 years, McLeod’s Daughters has left behind stories that never really felt finished.
Among them is the life of Tess McLeod and Nick Ryan — two characters whose love story became one of the defining romances of the series, only for their journey to continue far away from Drover’s Run.
Now, with the beloved Australian drama officially returning to Stan in 2027, Bridie Carter has offered her own vision for how Tess and Nick could potentially find their way back.
And it is not simply about bringing two familiar faces home.
Her idea would allow the story to move forward by an entire generation.
A return that could begin in Argentina
Bridie Carter, who played Tess, recently spoke about the possibility of revisiting the character more than two decades after she first arrived at Drover’s Run.
Her vision is remarkably simple.
“You can absolutely see Tess and Nick coming back from Argentina,” she said, describing a story in which viewers would see what has happened to the farm, meet their offspring and watch them begin again.
Rather than trying to recreate the original series exactly as it was, Carter’s idea would allow the characters to return as older versions of themselves, with an entire life having happened off screen.
That distinction could be crucial for a reboot.
Tess would not be the young woman viewers first met in 2001.
Nick would not be the same man viewers watched fall in love with her.
Their return could be about everything that happened in between.
The story already left the door open
Carter’s idea is not completely out of step with the original story.
Tess and Nick eventually married after a complicated, on-again, off-again relationship. Nick later accepted a job in Argentina and the couple left Australia together.
The storyline then became one of the show’s most dramatic turns.
Tess returned to Drover’s Run while pregnant, believing Nick would soon follow. Instead, she learned that his plane had disappeared and he was initially presumed dead.
The devastating news did not prove to be the end of Nick’s story.
He was eventually discovered alive in Argentina after having been attacked and spending months unconscious. Once reunited, Tess and Nick ultimately decided to return to Argentina together.
That means the final known chapter for the couple already exists outside Drover’s Run.
And that leaves something remarkably useful for a reboot writer: a family whose future was never fully shown.
Their life after Drover’s Run was left largely unseen
That is where Carter’s idea becomes particularly interesting.
Instead of undoing what happened in the original series, a new story could simply pick up the pieces that were never shown.
Tess and Nick went to Argentina.
They built a life there.
And the audience was never given the chance to see what that life eventually became.
Carter’s suggestion to return with their offspring effectively fills that gap without erasing the original ending.
It would also give the reboot a way to connect two eras of the show without pretending 25 years have passed without changing anyone.
The characters would have changed.
The farm would have changed.
And the people carrying the McLeod and Ryan names could belong to a completely new generation.
Bridie sees a whole new story waiting there
Carter has been clear that she does not simply want the past repeated.
Speaking about the reboot more broadly, she said it was fascinating to imagine what the characters would look like after so much time had passed.
She pointed to “their offspring and a whole lot of new characters” as an opportunity to create an enormous amount of new material.
That could give McLeod’s Daughters something many reboots struggle to achieve: nostalgia without becoming trapped by it.
The original cast could exist as part of the history of Drover’s Run, while the next generation carries the central story forward.
Why Tess and Nick matter so much
Tess was never simply another character in McLeod’s Daughters.
She was at the centre of the show’s emotional transformation.
When the series began, Tess arrived back at the family property after years away and had to rebuild her relationship with her half-sister Claire.
Together, the women transformed Drover’s Run into a place where family, friendship and independence were as important as romance.
Carter has since described the core of McLeod’s as being about family, resilience and the ups and downs of life, themes she believes remain relevant no matter how much time passes.
That is exactly why bringing Tess back could carry emotional weight beyond simply seeing a familiar character on screen again.
She represents the show’s original idea of what it means to come home.
And Nick has a reason to come back too
Nick Ryan’s story was deeply tied to Tess, but it was also tied to the land and the world surrounding Drover’s Run.
Played by Myles Pollard, Nick was one of the major male characters of the original series and Tess’s eventual husband.
Pollard has already spoken enthusiastically about the new project, telling TV WEEK: “The show will live on!”
That does not confirm that he will reprise the role.
But his comments are significant because they show that the original cast’s relationship with the series remains strong even as the reboot takes shape.
The reboot has officially entered a new era
The return is no longer just a long-running hope.
Stan confirmed in September that a new McLeod’s Daughters is coming in 2027, 25 years after the original series began.
The first trailer was shown at Nine’s 2027 Upfronts, featuring a woman on horseback riding through the Australian landscape while the words “A place you remember” are heard.
Yet one major piece of information is still missing.
The cast has not officially been announced.
That leaves plenty of room for speculation — but also means Carter’s Tess-and-Nick scenario remains exactly that: a possible direction rather than confirmed story information.
A new generation could change everything
The original McLeod’s Daughters ran for eight seasons and 224 episodes, following the women of Drover’s Run through love, loss, family conflicts and life on the land.
Its final episode aired in 2009, but the story never completely disappeared from Australian popular culture.
The series has continued to reach audiences internationally and was recently ranked sixth in TV WEEK’s reader poll of Australia’s top 70 television shows.
Now, 25 years after Claire and Tess first rode into viewers’ lives, the reboot has an opportunity to revisit the same world without simply repeating the past.
And Carter’s idea points toward perhaps the most natural way to do that.
Let Tess and Nick return.
Let them bring everything they have lived through with them.
And let their children discover Drover’s Run for the first time.
There is one emotional complication
Any return to the McLeod’s universe inevitably carries the weight of Claire.
Lisa Chappell’s Claire died in one of the show’s most unforgettable storylines, leaving Tess to carry on without her sister.
Carter has recently spoken about how deeply that story affected the cast and how important the friendship between Tess and Claire remained to the success of the original series.
That is why a future Tess appearance would not simply be a nostalgia cameo.
It could also be an opportunity to show what remained of Claire’s legacy — and what Tess has carried with her all these years.
What the return could really mean
Carter’s idea does something clever.
It does not ask the audience to forget the ending they already know.
It does not require the old characters to behave as though 25 years have passed overnight.
And it does not depend entirely on recreating the original cast dynamic.
Instead, it imagines a Drover’s Run where the past is still there, but the future belongs to someone new.
Tess and Nick could arrive from Argentina with decades of memories behind them.
Their children could arrive carrying a name viewers already know.
And the farm that once changed Claire and Tess’s lives could become the place where another generation begins its own story.
For now, none of that has been confirmed by Stan or Nine.
But with McLeod’s Daughters officially returning in 2027, Bridie Carter has already offered one intriguing glimpse of what that next chapter could look like.
And perhaps the most emotional part is this:
Tess never really stopped belonging to Drover’s Run.
Maybe, after all these years, neither did Nick. ❤️