The Way Home Premiere: Chyler Leigh, Evan Williams Talk Kat and Elliot’s Tense Reunion, the Search for Jacob
Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Way Home‘s Season 2 premiere. Proceed at your own risk!
Fans of The Way Home’s Kat and Elliot might be wishing they, too, could time travel and fix the past after Sunday’s Season 2 premiere.
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After seven months away, Elliot returned home to Port Haven from his travels abroad, but he didn’t exactly get a warm welcome back. While Alice was upset that Elliot had abandoned them when they needed him most, Kat was a little more friendly toward him — at first. Despite insisting to her mom Del that she wasn’t looking to rekindle anything, Kat and Elliot later shared a kiss in the clubhouse to the sounds of Sister Hazel’s “All For You.” But after they pulled away, it was clear that she, too, was still harboring some hurt about Elliot’s actions.
“You just missed so much… I’m not your problem anymore,” Kat said before walking away.
Meanwhile, Kat and Alice had agreed to stop time traveling and to live in the present after Alice nearly drowned. But then Kat discovered a painting of herself from 1814 in the estate of a recently deceased townswoman from one of Port Haven’s founding families. That proved that Kat does go back in time again to find Jacob. Mother and daughter prepared to take one last trip together, and Elliot erased his text to Kat about how he should have kept kissing her when he saw them running to the pond.
The magical pond, however, had other plans for Kat and Alice: It separated them, sending Alice back to teen Elliot, and Kat much further back in time, where she was shot by an unknown figure and collapsed into the body of water.
Below, stars Chyler Leigh and Evan Williams break down Kat and Elliot’s complicated reunion and preview what’s ahead for Kat as she searches for her brother in the past.
TVLINE | How has Elliot’s time away changed not only him but also shape his relationship with Kat in Season 2?
EVAN WILLIAMS | It’s interesting because Elliot made a really strong choice at the end of Season 1, a choice that was maybe not popular with fans or with Kat —
CHYLER LEIGH | Or Chyler.
WILLIAMS | Or with Chyler, or with Evan. [Both laugh] But he is going to be forced to reckon with that choice in Season 2, and it goes from being an idea of like, “I want to learn how to live my own life,” to realizing that living your own life requires a whole lot of other things. It’s not just a choice you can make. It’s a journey, and it requires work. And so, we see Elliot doing a lot of working in Season 2. He’s challenged, and he is potentially losing his reputation as like the helpful one who’s always going to be there, because he’s sort of abdicated that responsibility. But if he’s not going to do that, then who is he? That’s a really deep question, and we go back into his past, and we learn a lot more by seeing young Elliot, played by David Webster, back in 1999, and we see the character continue to expand, and we see more facets, and, hopefully, it will be rewarding for audiences as it progresses.
TVLINE | Chyler, what does this new side of Elliot and his absence in Kat’s life mean for their relationship in Season 2?
LEIGH | When we see, in Episode 1, her coming back and passing the house, we see that she’s started running, she’s been on this journey. It’s seven months later. She goes by the house, and she’s kind of constantly wondering when he’s going to be back, while simultaneously trying to grow and move on. At the end of the day, he’s always going to be a love of her life. Like, that’s always going to be there, no matter what.
WILLIAMS | [pumps fist] Score!
LEIGH | [Laughs] So for their relationship, she sees him coming back in his linen, in his khaki pants, but like a little bit baggy — Oh, no, your jeans. You came in with some, like, boyfriend cut jeans.
WILLIAMS | Yeah. Not your boyfriend jeans.
LEIGH | And your flip-flops. And so, he comes back, and he’s all glowy and like windswept, and it looks like he’s had the time of his life. It’s hurtful. It’s like, oh, OK, so everything was challenging and difficult and bittersweet, and then all of a sudden, you’re back. And it’s like, oh, you want to kind of just like jump right back in and think that everything’s going to be like kosher, and it’s not. And so, for her, she’s got a tiny bit of like, “You suck. But also, I still love you, and I want you to be a part of our family.”
TVLINE | There’s so much tension, right off the bat, between Kat and Elliot this season, and a lot of hurt feelings on both sides. How justified do you think each of them is in those hurt feelings?
LEIGH | I think they’re both very justified. One thing that I as, I would say, a fan of the show actually really appreciated was Elliot making that decision to choose himself, finally. I found that to be something that was really powerful and really strong. So from that perspective, I think that was just a beautiful move.
WILLIAMS | When you have characters who clearly love each other, and some sort of disharmony happens, in real life, what happens is the communication kind of breaks down even if people are trying to take care of each other. The show does a really good job of reflecting that and reflecting the nuance and the minutia, because I don’t think the question is do they love each other? That’s very clear, which is why there is tension, and the fact is that human beings have a hard time connecting their heart to their brain, let alone their heart to their mouth. So I think that the audience, hopefully, will feel safe knowing that the writers and the performers in this show are taking care of them and going to bring the audience with them every step of the way, and then earn the love in a way that is believable and really impactful. And I don’t think the story between Elliot and Kat is simple. I don’t think it will ever be simple, and that means that it’s fertile ground for a lot of different nuance and reward, as well. We’re going to keep people guessing, I think.
TVLINE | Chyler, where will Kat’s search for Jacob lead her, especially following that dramatic ending to the premiere?
LEIGH | To the 1800s. [Laughs] What I love about Season 2 [is] we get to understand how Kat is that White Witch at the end [of Season 1], when she says, “Jacob, I’ll be back for you.” So that being the case, we know that he’s somewhere. We know that there is some sort of connection, and she’s found something very significant in the 1800s. … What’s really cool about this is that she doesn’t necessarily know how all of it came to be. And so, even the lore of the White Witch that everybody in the present day knows, we come to understand what that actually means. We come across that in Kat’s search in the 1800s to hopefully find Jacob. So that, thematically, throughout the whole season is just such an amazing journey, and everybody that’s in the 1800s, we come to really see what their role was to play in it, and the origins of the Landry family and the Augustines, and how all of this town, this Port Haven, this place that we, as an audience as well, have come to love so much, we get to really see how it started and who had the biggest impacts on that.
The Way Home fans, what did you think of the season opener? Grade it below, then hit the comments!
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