Hallmark Channel’s time-travelling family drama The Way Home wraps up with its fourth and final season
The time has come to say farewell to The Way Home, but the cast of the time travel drama is far from ready to leave Port Haven behind. “It’s really bittersweet because this is something that we all care about so much,” says Sadie Laflamme-Snow, who for the past four seasons has played teenage Alice in this highly unusual coming-of-age story. “We’ve made an onscreen family, of course, but also an on-set family. So the idea that it was coming to an end was really hard, but at the same time, I think that we all trust our showrunners and our writers so much. I never had any question about whether the things that we wanted to see happen were going to happen.”
There are, of course, many threads to tie up. At the end of season three, Landry family matriarch Del (Andie MacDowell) time travelled for the first time, hand in hand with daughter Kat (Chyler Leigh), to her own wedding to Colton (Jordan Doww) in the 1970s, where questions arise about Colton’s mysterious brother. Meanwhile, in the present, Elliot (Evan Williams) discovered a note from his mother who abandoned him as a baby, setting in motion a time-travelling storyline for the one character that has until now been rooted in the here and now. “Elliot has spent a lot of time being the one who’s like, ‘Don’t time travel. Don’t do it. It’s not safe.’ And while I understand, from the character’s point of view, that he’s doing the best he can and that’s how he shows his love, it’s also a time travel show,” says Williams. “I think there is this whisper from the pond that’s like, ‘Elliot . . . ’”
What Elliot discovers, once he descends into the pond, is about to alter everything he has built his sense of self on. “It’s like a thread, that when it’s pulled, everything unravels,” says Williams. “Elliot’s whole idea of who he is, what his family means and who the Landrys are, that’s maybe all going to unravel. But then there’s also a lot of healing potential on the other side.” While time travel is fun, it is the ponderings on what makes a family that Williams and the rest of the cast believe is the real meat of the show. “One of the beautiful things that the writers do is that they treat the stuff inside the family — things that would be typically domestic — as deep, varied and seismic,” says Williams. “I think that’s why audiences have really taken to it, because it’s relatable and the show hasn’t pulled any punches with how complicated [family relations] can be and also how rewarding it can be to investigate it.”
For Alice, who this season graduates from high school, the past is the least of her problems. “She’s really nervous about the future,” says Laflamme-Snow. “She has found a home in Port Haven — somewhere she never thought she would like, somewhere she never thought she would belong. Now, it’s everything to her. All these experiences that she’s had, jumping in the pond and getting to the bottom of family mysteries, has given her a really big purpose. And as much as I think her experiences in season three with younger Colton reinvigorated her love for music and she started dreaming again about her future, I don’t know that she’s ready to be far away from this phase of her life.”
Alice not wanting to leave her mother is a far cry from her introduction to Kat, who in season one could not see eye to eye on anything. The evolution of that mother-daughter relationship has reverberated for Leigh and Laflamme-Snow offscreen as well. “The growth between the two of them is so much of a mirror in my own personal life, having to heal and guide my children through different areas of life,” says Leigh. “Having Alice know that she is loved beyond circumstance — that it’s unconditional and Kat will always, always fight to the death for her daughter — it’s the same thing with my daughters. To see that really personified through Kat and Alice brings so much joy in my little mama heart.”
Also bringing joy to Leigh is a time-travel storyline where she is not constantly in peril. This time, Kat travels to the 1920s for a truly Great Gatsby-esque experience. “You get to see Kat actually have moments of laughter and enjoying herself in the past, instead of always crying, running and lurking,” laughs Leigh. “She’s trying to solve mysteries for Elliot, fighting for him to get answers about his mom. And Bianca Melchior, who plays young Fern — I can’t wait for the world to meet her in this role. They’re going to see how young Fern ties to why Grandma Fern is the way that she is later in life.” In terms of how the series wraps up all its intricate storylines, Leigh believes viewers will approve. “I feel like we did as amazing a job as possible to bring closure to several eras,” she says. “Our creators and showrunners managed to do it as seamlessly as possible, and tie everything together in such a beautiful way. But in true Way Home-fashion, we can’t wrap everything up, right? We’ve got to dangle that carrot just a little bit to see if there’s an uprising of Way Homies.”
When it comes to saying goodbye to the time travel portal itself, the actors won’t necessarily miss jumping into the Ontario lake — but that doesn’t mean they didn’t come to appreciate the pond days from a creative standpoint. “There’s never a scene to be played at the pond that’s casual,” says Laflamme-Snow. “Pond days are always the scenes that you’ve been waiting for all season – or the whole entire series. I’ll miss that, for sure, because I think on another show, maybe all the locations play in an equally dramatic way, but on our show the pond adds an extra level of crazy. And it’s real adrenaline and excitement, because you actually are going in. We experienced the drama of that moment and that’s a huge gift that I don’t take for granted. I’ll be sad to say goodbye to that.”
The Way Home airs Sundays on W Network