A Hallmark production, The Way Home is a family drama/time travel thriller revolving around three generations of the Landry women, Del, Kat, and Alice. After a tragic incident took place in the Landry family, a distance was created between Del and her daughter Kat, causing Kat to move away from Canada and settle down with her family in Minnesota. But one day, when Kat received a letter from Del asking them to come back, she hurried back to Canada with her daughter, Alice. Kat, taking Alice with her, set out on a journey to discover a valuable piece of information from their past. A magical pond on the Landrys’ property turned out to be a portal to different time periods and the Landry women used that portal to travel back in time to unravel the mysteries surrounding their family.
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What Happens In The Series?
The series opened in 1814 with a woman running into the woods, chased by some mysterious figures. Having been able to elude them, the woman ended up arriving near a pond and jumping into the water to save her life. But right after jumping, she disappeared under the water.
Kat Landry, a reporter, was married to Brady Dhawan, her childhood friend, but they were on the brink of getting a divorce. Kat’s daughter Alice, who was a bratty little teenager, couldn’t accept the fact that her parents were splitting. She was expelled from school after causing a scene, but instead of regretting her choice, she threw a party at her house. Kat and Alice’s relationship was as affected as Kat’s relationship with her mother was. But Kat wanted to mend her relationship with Alice. One day, Kat received a letter from Del asking her to come back, which caused her to worry. As Brady had moved away from the house, Kat decided to take her daughter and return to her hometown. Alice had no interest in catching up with her grandmother or living at the Landrys’ because she wanted to stay with her father, but Kat didn’t want to let her daughter out of her sight. While Kat and Del tried to bond over overcoming and forgetting their past arguments, Alice was extremely bored. However, as Kat confronted her mother, asking about the letter, which was the sole reason she had come back home, Del denied sending any letter to her. It wasn’t Del who sent her daughter that letter; it was someone from the past.
Alice began to explore the grounds and found a pond on the Landrys’ property. She angrily threw her bracelet in and immediately regretted doing that. As she leaned over the pond to take it back, she fell into the water. Shortly after, a teenage girl rescued her, but Alice recognized that teenage woman as her mother, Kat. Alice was startled, but she remained silent and went back to Kat’s house, where she found a young Del and her husband, Colton, who was still alive. Alice had portaled back to 1999, the exact year when Kat’s brother Jacob disappeared. Alice realized how the Landry family used to be before Jacob’s tragic disappearance. Meanwhile, back in the present timeline, we’re introduced to Elliot, Kat’s childhood best friend, who came to meet her. As Alice was in a different timeline, Kat couldn’t focus on anything until her daughter returned home. She expressed her worries to Elliot, who assured her that her daughter would come back.
How Did Colton Die?
Alice loved being in the 1990s, as she slowly became best friends with teen Kat, who was her age. Not only Kat, but Kat’s childhood friends Elliot, Nick, and Brady also became Alice’s friends. As Alice stayed there, she also fell in love with Nick and shared a kiss with him. However, Alice knew that she had no way of continuing her relationship with Nick because one day, she would have to come back to the present.
A year passed, and Jacob’s disappearance caused the family a great deal of pain. To move on in life and forget the traumatic past, Colton, Kat’s father, began to attend a group grief session without informing Del about it. Del began to get suspicious of Colton, thinking that he might be seeing another woman. Meanwhile, Alice was torn between returning to the present and staying in the past. She decided not to dwell in the past and returned to the present because she had been missing out on her current lifestyle. Meanwhile, Kat decided to travel back in time, and through the magical pond, she went back to 2000, where she met her father, Colton, who was still alive. However, in 2000, a year after Jacob disappeared, Colton also died in an accident, so Kat thought that she might change her father’s destiny by preventing the accident, but instead of preventing it, she became the reason for the accident. Even though Elliot asked Kat not to make the mistake of going back in time, Kat didn’t listen to him and traveled back to the year 2000. She arrived at the route where her father’s truck had crashed. Alice followed her mother and arrived at the same spot, but despite being there, they couldn’t prevent the catastrophe. Colton, in his truck, was driving on that road towards his home, but as he spotted Kat and Alice together, he tried to swerve the car to save their lives, and the truck crashed straight into the pool. Kat and Alice witnessed Colton’s lifeless body in front of their eyes.
How Did Jacob Disappear?
Kat and Alice managed to get back into the present and grieve over the fact that they were the reason behind Colton’s death. Kat perceived it as a life lesson about not looking back on the past anymore. Kat decided not to dwell in the past and move on with life. However, her divorce from Brady was finalized, but she still couldn’t get back to Elliot, as neither of them was sure about it. At times, they got a little close to each other, but they feared moving things forward. One day, as Kat found their pet dog Finn playing with a ball in the woods, she realized that it was the same ball Jacob had played with on the night he disappeared. Kat began to remember everything about the night when Jacob went missing. She remembered that she was talking to her brother about the stars in the sky, while Jacob was distracted by Finn running into the woods. Jacob chased their dog to retrieve him, but Finn ended up jumping into the river. Jacob also jumped into the water to save his dog, but through the magical pond, he was transported to a different timeline. Kat had followed her brother, but she couldn’t find him anywhere. She only took her dog back home and told her parents about Jacob’s disappearance. Kat could remember everything clearly and concluded that it was the pond that had taken her brother to a different timeline. Therefore, she would be going back in time again to find her brother.
At the end of The Way Home season 1, we were back to the 19th-century timeline, where we saw the woman, who had been previously chased by some mysterious figures, arrive by the pond. This woman was revealed to be Kat, wearing a long white gown. Before she jumped into the water, she mentioned Jacob and promised that she’d come back for her.
The first season of The Way Home ended with the possibility that Kat may travel back in time to 1814 to put an end to this pond’s existence, which will later prevent Jacob from disappearing. In the upcoming season, there will be a lot of back and forth in time, and we just have to be patient to let Kat discover Jacob from a different timeline.
