While the latest season of The Way Home has been anticipated by fans because it’s been promising to deliver some big answers and reveals about the time-traveling Landry family, it has gotten more press than usual because of it’s complicated rollout. Fans (perhaps you, the fan reading this) pushed back when it was announced that the show’s new season would premiere on Hallmark+, so the company reversed course, returning it to its original home on the Hallmark Channel. The new season does indeed deliver the goods, too, as Jacob Landry returns home to his mother and sister after having been gone for most of his life, closing a major chapter of the time-travel story… and beginning a new one as the family just can’t seem to stay away from the portal that allows them to transcend time.
THE WAY HOME (SEASON 3): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: In a fuzzy flashback, woman writes a note and places it next to a baby in a woven bassinet next to the bank of a pond. The woman and a man then jump into the pond, disappearing into the water.
The Gist: The third season of The Way Home kicks off with a game-changing episode that feels like something show show has been leading up to this whole time. Jacob (Remy Smith), the missing son of Del Landry (Andie MacDowell) has returned home to the present day after having gone missing 25 years ago, to Del’s complete shock. And not only that, Jacob’s sister Kat (Chyler Leigh) reveals to Del that the pond on their property is not just a pond but a portal that they can time-travel through. While most of the other characters on this show were aware of this fact, Kat intentionally withheld the information from Del in case she wasn’t able to return Jacob to the present day, after spending much of his life in the 1800s.
Of course, a child who’s been missing for 25 years because they fell into a time travel pond isn’t an easy thing to explain to the world, so Del makes her family (Kat, Jacob, her granddaughter Alice, and Kat’s boyfriend Elliott) swear secrecy about the pond. In a statement to the media, they create a fake story about Jacob suffering from memory loss and being taken in and raised by a couple who lived off the grid to explain his whereabouts… and then we do yet another time jump, although this one has nothing to do with the pond, to nine months later. A media frenzy followed the announcement of Jacob’s return, but on top of that, Del has started to receive anonymous letters that threaten to reveal their family’s lie. Someone else obviously knows their secret and wants them to know it.
And yet, Jacob’s return home is not perfect. He’s deeply uncomfortable with his role in 2024 and doesn’t know how to assimilate to the times, and to add to that, Kat actually finds that she misses jumping back to 1814 to visit Jacob and to see the man she fell in love with during her time travel, Thomas. (She had thought Thomas was dead which at least offered her some closure in returning to 2024, but when she learns he’s alive – and lied about his own death – it stirs up complicated feelings, especially now that she’s made a comfortable life in present day with Elliott.)
And while the mystery of Jacob is somewhat resolved, the mystery of Colton, Del’s husband, deepens this season. Did he know about the pond and was he a time traveler himself? Kat definitely thinks so, but what’s even crazier is the fact that now, she’s found out that her own daughter, Alice, met Colton in the 1970s. When Del brings down an old music demo Colton recorded in the ’70s, Kat is stunned to hear Alice singing with her own grandfather, a man she supposedly has never met. At least, not in this timeline.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The twisting, intertwined timelines and romances definitely give Outlander vibes.
Our Take: In its third season, The Way Home has done what a great show with a mystery at its center should do, and that’s start planting new mysteries. While Jacob’s story line has been partially resolved, in that he’s found the way home, the show not only provides us with a new twist, in that he’s not actually happy to be there, but it’s developing several new threads that will most definitely sow more seeds of mystery and confusion for the Landrys, including Alice’s past relationship with her grandfather, and Kat’s century-spanning love triangle.
There’s also a bit of an unexpectedly delightful (and maybe unintentional, I could be reading into this too much) Easter Egg in the series, now that Andie MacDowell’s character Del is essentially getting a Groundhog Day-style opportunity to go back and re-parent Jacob all over again… and possibly even take a dip in the pond herself? I’m not certain if she’ll go that far, but the possibility for yet another generation of Landry women to experience a time jump and give herself a do-over feels like a bit of a wink to one of MacDowell’s biggest films.
Hopefully Hallmark learned a lesson about messing with the rollout of one of it’s more popular shows, because even though The Way Home feels like it exists under the radar for many people, it clearly has a dedicated and vocal audience and and they will not stand for having their show moved around. Even though the show’s plot is shifting gears a little bit, the third season has begun by introducing some genuinely intriguing and exciting new twists, and that dedicated audience deserves to see it through.
Parting Shot: Alice, having seen a mysterious figure run toward the pond at night, follows after them. When she gets to the pond she finds an old sweater but doesn’t see anyone. She calls her mother, frantic, to tell Kat that someone else knows about the pond, when all of a sudden the mystery person shoves Alice, phone and all, into the water in into… another dimension?
Performance Worth Watching: Remy Smith is playing Jacob as a bit of a tortured soul this season, because now, he’s a man torn between two worlds. On the one hand, he’s relieved to be reunited with his mother who mourned him and questioned his disappearance for decades, but on the other, he’s obviously deeply uncomfortable living in the present.
Memorable Dialogue: “Mom, the pond isn’t just a pond,” Kat tells her mother, Del. Finally, Del is in on the secret they’ve been keeping this whole time.
Our Call: It’s surprising that The Way Home hasn’t garnered more attention or accolades, because it has all the merits of other, more popular time-jumping shows like Outlander or Firefly Lane (I know that one’s not time travel, but it’s got the whole “actors playing their characters in different eras” thing). And while none of these shows are prestige dramas, they don’t need to be, because they’re simply all comforting and satisfying and totally addictive. STREAM IT!
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Way Home’ Season 3 on the Hallmark Channel, Where Jacob’s Return To The Present Day Brings Up More Questions Than Answers appeared first on Decider.
