The Way Home EPs Talk Finale’s Big [Spoiler] Twist, Jacob’s Decision and Kat/Elliot/Thomas Love Triangle
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Warning: The following contains major spoilers for The Way Home Season 2 finale. Proceed at your own risk!
Talk about a gamechanger!
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During Sunday’s jampacked Season 2 finale of The Way Home, the Hallmark Channel drama unspooled twist after twist: Kat and Thomas shared a kiss shortly before he was shot to death by Cyrus Goodwin — or so Kat thought. After also sharing a kiss with Elliot (“I want you to choose me,” he declared), Kat made her way to the pond and talked to “Thomas,” telling him, “Maybe I could have loved you, but I love someone else. And you and I, it’s just too late.” Then Jacob surprised Kat by popping out of the pond, ready to come home, and dropped another bombshell on her by revealing that Thomas survived in 1814.
Elsewhere, Alice noticed that the ring on Casey Goodwin’s necklace looked identical to Kat’s wedding ring, and Kat discovered that it was Susanna who painted the portrait of her. After finding Susanna’s journal hidden in the fireplace, Kat vowed to republish the book and set the town-history record straight.
Meanwhile, Elliot took his first time-travel trip, with Alice’s help, to share a meaningful moment with Colton in 1999. But just when we were left to think it was only Future Elliot and Alice who were hiding in the shrubbery, watching the summer kickoff party, we learned that another Colton was also lurking in the shadows! Yep, Colton is a time traveler! Oh, and that little boy we saw at the pond with an older woman at the beginning of Season 2? That’s not Jacob, but a young Colton and his grandmother! And in case you need a refresher, these were her words to the young time traveler: “I know it calls to you… It will always take you where you need to go, but you need to stay here for now. It’s not your time. Not yet… You just have to be patient, Colton.”
Below, mother-and-daughter co-showrunners Heather Conkie and Alexandra Clarke break down all the big surprises and what they mean for Season 3. Plus, grade the season finale at the end of the Q&A, then stay tuned to TVLine for even more scoop!
TVLINE | You had this Colton reveal planted in the opening of Season 2, but when exactly did you know that he was also a time traveler?
ALEXANDRA CLARKE | It was in our heads from the beginning. This is a show that is so complex, and there are so many intertwining plots happening in different eras that you do kind of have to know your ending before you even start the beginning. And this was definitely always something that was in our head as being an incredible payoff moment. Whether or not we could achieve it was something that we were constantly debating. I think one of the things that was so incredible was Jefferson Brown’s performance as Colton was such a perfect, enigmatic, incredible way of approaching that character. It could have gone both ways. Does he know? Does he not know? Does he recognize someone? Does he not? And I think those questions are still very valid questions, even now, knowing what we, technically, do know or sort of know about Colton at the end.
TVLINE | Did you let Jefferson know from the beginning? Or did he only find out with this finale that he was a time traveler?
HEATHER CONKIE | I think he instinctively took it there because he knew what was in the back of our minds. If you go back and you watch his performance, you’ll see that there are moments that you might say, “Oh, wait a minute, what’s he taking in here?” And then, especially at the very end of Season 1, when he calls Kat, “My Katherine.”
CLARKE | He played that in a very ambiguous, interesting way, and I think that was amazing. From a logical, logistical standpoint, Jefferson knew off the top of shooting Season 2 what we were going to do by the end because we had to shoot all of the summer kickoff moments right at the very top of our first block, when it was actually summer. We actually had to shoot the ending of the show within the first week of being in Season 2. So in that way, he knew.
TVLINE | This twist really gives a new dimension to every Colton scene we’ve seen over the past two seasons, and you mentioned that scene when he’s dying and he says, “Katherine.” Can you definitively say now whether he recognized her then as his daughter from the future?
CLARKE | No, we can’t definitively say anything. Never, ever, ever. [Laughs] We could certainly say that Season 3 will shed a new light on what we know or thought we knew, rather, about Colton. But we can neither confirm nor deny the specifics.
CONKIE | Our big goal always with the show — totally ’90s reference, of course — is the movie The Sixth Sense, in that moment at the end where you realize, first of all, this is a ghost, and all you want to do is go back to the start and watch it again, armed with this new piece of knowledge. That’s something we strive for all the time on our show and just think it’s an incredible, incredible surprise and reveal. Because the goal is, yeah, go back, watch it all over again from a new point of view, because that new point of view is there if you were looking for it.
TVLINE | As you were crafting the finale and looking ahead at Season 3, what storytelling doors were you hoping to open with this twist for the next season?
CONKIE | Well, the doors are always so wide open at all times. This is the kind of series where you can, literally, go anywhere, anytime… Season 1 and Season 2 led to the very same goal, which was for Kat to find Jacob and bring him home. So the fact that that journey for her is accomplished and [she’s] just about to open that door and reintroduce Del’s son to her is kind of the end of one journey. But it will prove to be the beginning of another, because in our show, when anything really ends, it’s really just the beginning of everything else that is to come. … Any questions you’re having right at the end of this season as a result of seeing that figure turn around and reveal who it really is, those are the exciting questions that are going to drive our third season. The very fact that that little tiny millisecond moment conjures up so many questions, that’s exciting to us because those are stories. Those are plot points, those are roads we can go down in a Season 3, and that’s how you know it’s right, because in this crazily quick moment, there’s so much you can take from that moment and run with.
TVLINE | The reveal of little Colton and his grandmother at the end really sent me spiraling down a rabbit hole of questions and just trying to wrap my head around all the time travel. Is there anything you can say in terms of what time Colton is from, originally, and help us make sense of all these timelines?
CLARKE | [Laughs] I think all we can really say is just trust. We really loved, in Season 1, our bookend moment of the White Witch, starting it with this incredibly Gothic romantic vision of a woman in white being chased by villagers down to a pond and disappearing, but not really revealing who she is. And then at the end of Season 1, revealing not only is it Kat, but she’s saying, “I’ll come back for you, Jacob,” i.e., she found him, and then that really launches you into Season 2, which is of course the quest for Jacob, why she was in that situation. In a very similar way, those two final moments of Season 2 are going to launch us into Season 3 in a lot of ways, and we’ll get to explore both of those moments a little more.
TVLINE | I was rewatching that final scene by the pond, analyzing their clothing to try to figure out are these old-timey clothes or not.
CLARKE | [Laughs] Well, we definitely did purposely make them pretty timeless. We’re evil that way. [Laughs]
TVLINE | Will the reveal that Thomas is alive in his time change Kat’s feelings about Elliot and pursuing a relationship with him? What is going through her mind after she finds out he survived?
CONKIE | We’ll see. [Laughs] I think more to the point, Kat has accomplished what she set out to do from the moment Jacob went missing at the carnival: She’s brought him home. That quest has now ended, so she has more options, let’s put it that way. What does she want to do next? Elliot is solid and there and nothing to do with time travel. So he’s her rock. And I think that it might allow them a little more time. Plus, Elliot’s now time-traveled. So he’s a different guy. She’s come home to a different person.
CLARKE | The playing field has changed so dramatically within the last act of our last episode, in the sense that Elliot, the guy that always talked about the rules and reminded everyone of the rules but never had actually lived the experience of being a time traveler, has now been given the gift of that, to see that perspective and to put himself in Kat’s shoes and realize, “I understand why you tried to stop Colton now. I never could before, but I was in the same position and I almost told him. Even with me talking about all the rules and knowing it’s impossible, I wanted to say, ‘Don’t get in the truck. Don’t go to the carnival. Keep an eye on your kid.’” He’s now in a much different place in his perspective of Kat and what she’s done, what she’s sacrificed, what she’s given up. And conversely, to mum’s point, I think that Kat is in a really strange position now because the journey is quote-unquote over for her. Whether it is or not remains to be seen as a Season 3 thing. But as a result, what is her next step? And here’s a man who all of a sudden not only wants [her] to choose him, but also understand [her] so much more than he did before. And there’s a guy in the past who is the complete opposite of this amazing person in the present, who is now also alive. It’s going to be a really interesting thing to see what she chooses to do next. But I think the choice is being made on a much different playing field than at any other time in the season.
TVLINE | Kat did not tell Elliot about her kiss with Thomas or her feelings for Thomas. Don’t think I didn’t notice that! What should we take away from that fact?
CONKIE | All season long, she wasn’t sure about her feelings. I mean, I think it took a very desperate situation in Episode 10 for all those feelings to come out for both Thomas and Kat. But if you look at the trajectory, she hated him. [Laughs] And it took a long time for even trust to start to take hold.
CLARKE | And I will say that in her return to the present after that kiss, I’m not trying to validate her choices, but what is the point in saying to someone in the present, “Yeah, we kissed,” when the guy is dead? She watched him die, and nothing more can come of that. So in a way, I do understand keeping that moment to yourself because it was the final moment. There are no more moments. What’s the point in hurting the person that’s here by telling them about something that isn’t going to affect anything in the long run? Actually, I don’t know, there’s a part of me that wonders if she had told him, would that have been the selfish thing to sort of assuage herself of that guilt, even though it doesn’t mean anything, because it’s not like she’s choosing Thomas? She can’t. He’s gone in her mind. So I think her keeping it to herself makes sense in the moment.
TVLINE | Jacob mentioned in the previous episode that he was worried that he was going to break if he came back to the present. So can you talk a bit about his decision to actually take that leap, literally, and how he’s going to be dealing with this transition?
CLARKE | I’m curious to see the audience reaction to him popping out of that pond at the end of [Episode] 10, and I hope people do ask the question of, “How did he make this decision?” when he did seem so sure in [Episode] 9 that he didn’t think he could face it and he was scared for all the reasons of, “My life is here, I have an incredible father, and I have these amazing friends,” but also like, “What are the odds that the pond is nice enough to allow me to jump and take me where I want to go?” That’s a huge risk, too, in that leap. For all he knows, he could be jumping out of 1814 and into the ice age. [Laughs] So I think, on a number of levels, it was a huge, emotional leap, as well as physical. And so, I hope people do ask that question of like, “What made him get here?” Again, like so many things on this show, everything is a little bit more than meets the eye. One of the lessons we try and sort of say to our viewers is don’t take most things at face value. [Laughs] So that’s all I’ll say about that, but I’m so glad you asked that question because it makes me hope that people will ask it.
TVLINE | This finale also planted a big new mystery for Season 3 with that scene where Alice recognizes the ring around Casey’s neck is the same one her parents gave her. What can you tease about what’s going on there, and whether Casey Goodwin is who they say they are?
CLARKE | [Laughs] I think we would be really remiss if we didn’t throw those kind of big questions at the wall ahead of a finale, because as much as Kat bringing Jacob home is the close of the story, there are so many more stories to tell, and you do have to have those moments that kind of peel back the curtain just that much bit more to promise the viewer that, oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The Casey moment is certainly one of those. Vaughan Murrae, who plays Casey, just did such a lovely job with the role, and they’re a very new, awesome talent. In fact, they were a fan of the show ahead of being asked to join. They watched the show with their mom [in] Season 1 and loved it, and then to be a part of it in Season 2, it was lovely watching them on set, not only acting and working with our cast, but also, I could see the sort of awe, which is lovely, and I think it actually really translated onto the screen in a really, really amazing way. So I’m really excited to continue to tell that story, and again, trust that we will, because any question we raise, we do eventually answer.
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