The Way Home Showrunners Answer All Our Burning Questions About Season 3 and Beyond!
From reunions across time to 70s romances, The Way Home brought us even deeper into the Landry family’s secrets and the mystery of the pond. We uncovered answers to questions like: Would Kat (Chyler Leigh) finally be able to bring Jacob (Spencer Macpherson) home? How much did Colton (Jefferson Brown) really know about time travel? And are there more time travelers among us? Yet each answer only raises more questions. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado sat down with the mother-daughter showrunning team of Alexandra Clarke and Heather Conkie to answer all of our burning questions about season 3 and what we can expect in season 4.
Pop Culture Planet: The season 3 finale was full of layers and emotions. What was it like filming the scenes where Alice is outside of the suual timeline with Colton? That gave me chills!
Alexandra Clarke: I don't even know if I can get through the answer without crying myself still. From writing it to then hearing everyone reading it in the cast read through of 10 to then being on set the day that they shot it, everyone was so committed to getting it right. Getting that moment of Colton recognizing Alice for who she really is as his granddaughter, but then also explaining what he thought and when and why and the secrets that he carries. It was a really tough thing to write and witness, but also just so cathartic and so needed. It’s the culmination of three seasons of questions swirling around this man. It was lovely to be able to finally give them their moment together and hear what Colton has to say. […] We got to hear 70s Colton (Jordan Doww) explain some things in episode nine and then to hear adult Colton, who we've known since episode one and been so in love with ever since, acknowledging and explaining is such a satisfying moment to have. We wanted to get it right for everyone, for ourselves, and I truly do think Jefferson and Sadie [LaFlamme-Snow] gave the best performance of their time on our show. We're just so proud of them.
PCP: We’re all thinking Colton must know everything, but he doesn’t. Was it always the plan to keep him as out of the loop as the rest of the characters when it came to time travel?
AC: It's always been in the back of our minds a pretty fine line with Colton — because of the fact that his own son goes missing and he does spend all the money trying to find him and it does disintegrate his marriage and his relationship with his daughter — that he couldn't know everything because if he did he'd look awful and he's not an awful person. At the same rate, it was that reminder to our audience that everyone has their own experience with this pond. Because they keep it to themselves and don't share it, there's not a lot of communication between generations, between people about what you learn from this pond. Colton says it himself, “I made a terrible mistake.”
Everyone on the show is culpable of making a terrible mistake when it comes to the pond, which is not talking about it with each other. Communication is so key when it comes to this stuff. We've seen this family learn how to communicate with one another about life and tragedy and trauma over the course of the three seasons. I'm hoping that communication continues on in a season 4 to embrace the lore. But it was a really lovely moment because I think what we did do is show that he's also human. Colton is someone that we've put on a pedestal a little bit and has become this mythic person because he is a perfect dad and he is a perfect husband. Now we've seen him in the 70s and his love for Del (Julia Tomasone) is so pure. None of that is wrong, like none of that is incorrect, but he's also a human and and makes mistakes just like Kat — who makes a lot of mistakes. It was important to see that.
PCP: I’ve shared with you guys before that I watch the The Way Home with my dad. “Communication is key” is something he has always said to me. I feel like when you're watching the show, you're seeing yourself and your own family reflected in it. People are able to resonate with this so much because there are these universal things we can all connect to. I love that.
AC: I’m so glad to hear that. That's the goal for sure for us to bridge this gap between the impossible, the time travel, and the absolutely authentic and real, which is a broken family trying to heal. It's lovely to hear when it does feel real.
PCP: Why were Colton and Jacob able to recognize Alice over time whereas certain characters like Del didn’t?
AC: It's all about when they meet her. The thing about Del is, if you actually look at the time Alice spent with her in the 90s over the course of season 1, it's really not that much. They shared two, three dinners together, maybe. […] But a lot of that time was Del dealing with a missing child. Before that fall carnival, she'd really only met Alice a couple of times, and then the fall carnival happened and her world imploded. Anyone coming and going from that house was just not what she was thinking about, whereas Colton met Alice in the 70s in such a a clear time of falling in love. It was a happy time. It was an informative time for him singing his songs and getting noticed by a music producer and she was involved in that. It was a very pointed happy moment, which would include her, versus Del's very distracted, traumatized moment.
Heather Conkie: We knew that Colton knew something about Kat even in season 1 in the truck. […] He knew something in that truck and he played it so beautifully. It was very nebulous and, I think with Del, she's the one who's keeping this household going. She's running around. She's making lunch, she's making dinner, she's got all these kids coming and going. Even in the 70s, she was removed. She was the girl on the lounger by the pool who wasn't really part of Evelyn (Devin Cecchetto) and Alice’s friendship. She's always once removed and I think that makes it extremely believable that she's just totally not into the Intrigue of it like Colton was.
AC: As for Jacob, I think Jacob is a bit of a mercurial character and of himself. We've always joked about the reason that he remembered Alice from that dinner was like literally a month later he was gone. Maybe he did see something in her. Jacob has always been a little all knowing in his weird little way. We always like to keep that open-ended with him.
HC: Jacob is one of those kids who you never know what's really going on behind his eyes. I totally believe he still knows things as an adult that he just keeps in there and doesn't really express them.
PCP: It was mentioned this season that Del had a secret that she was afraid could change Alice’s perspective of her. I wanted to clarify, is it that Colton gave up music for her, or is there another secret?
AC: It's both. Absolutely I think we saw Del this season really struggle as Alice comes home with all these reports of the 70s and how she saw it from her perspective and from Evelyn’s perspective. It reminded Del of a time where she was happy and in love, but she also felt like maybe she forced herself into Colton's life at the end and made him give up something he really wanted to do in order to accommodate her and her needs. As Alice's journey into the 70s got deeper and deeper, that part of the memory was more and more present in Del's mind because she knew Alice was going to get to that moment. She's also learning that Colton's been keeping all this crazy stuff from her — the time travel — and she's doubting their relationship. She's trying to grapple with, “Well, why would he have kept this stuff from me? Why would he keep secrets?” and in her brain tying that to, “Well, it's because I made him do this and it's because he must have resented me for that thing that I've always been worried. I really messed up his life. Now this is confirmation that all of those fears and insecurities I had were true because he kept this from me.”
So I think initially it is about that. It is about the idea that she came back he was on the cusp of potential greatness with his music and […] instead he said, “No, we're staying and I'm with you.” But over the course of episode 10 what we realize is that dream of music wasn't really the dream. It was a means to the end and the dream was actually Del. Music was a way to get there because he thought making the money, if you got to star status, then her parents would actually take him seriously. Playing that demo tape for Del and the scene just ahead of them all jumping is really a release for Del from the pain and the worry of that. But, look, that’s not to say there aren't other secrets that Del is hiding from her daughter and granddaughter. Stay tuned.
PCP: Let’s talk about Del’s first jump into the pond. What was the decision behind now being the right time for her to time travel?
HC: We had a glass of wine with [Andie MacDowell] on a rooftop bar in [LA]. Marly [Reed] and Alex and I looked at each other and we thought, “Maybe now?” So I just said, “How would you feel about jumping in the pond?” She basically said, “Hell yeah!”
AC: That was well before we'd broken season 3. It was just as we were starting the room for the season and it really informed how we approached it because you want that first Del jump to be as epic as possible. So saving it till the end was perfect for us and it was so great that Andie was game. The day of was actually very funny because your brains are writing it and you're saying, “Oh and then they grab hands and they jump,” but the logistics of those rocks… we weren't even sure if we could fit three of them on the rock. […] Luckily, it worked.
HC: It was such an iconic shot.
AC: I'll never forget the first take of that wide, coming in on the zoom, as they all hold hands. Watching that camera skate across the pond and seeing Andie and Chyler and Sadie all hold hands. It was like, “Oh my God, we did it! We're doing it! It’s crazy. The thing that we always talked about.
HC: And especially in the mix with adding the original Colton love song. Blasting that out was so moving for all of us. Again, we were in tears.
AC: This was the season to really earn that change of heart. We see her even as late as episode eight yelling at this pond saying, “You won't stop until you take everyone I love and I'm the one that's left behind.” We really needed Del through this season [to] have a reckoning with the pond now that she knows the truth and then come to accept it. Then that first jump had to be a way to show her that it can be a gift versus a curse. The curse stuff comes later. It's something that Alice said to Elliot before she took him in the pond, which he was very reticent to go. She says, “The first time as gift, I promise you. The first time is a gift.” Sure enough, for Elliott it was five more minutes of Colton.
We were very determined to make that jump worthwhile for her and, in the end, I think that jump and going back and seeing the wedding was the culmination of her arc for the season, which was feeling like her memories weren't her own anymore and doubting the love that she and Colton had. Then to go back and see that wedding and say the words of, “It's exactly how I remembered,” it was just this beautiful affirmation that her memories are her own. That horrible fight that she has with with Alice in episode five where she screams at her to, “Stay out of my memories” and it was all coming and working towards this point where she had to see for herself that actually she should never doubt the love that she and Colton had. It is exactly how she remembered it. It was as pure and iconic as we all know it to be.
PCP: From pond jumping to pushing, what can you tell us about filming the reveal that Alice pushed herself into the pond?
AC: Complicated. Brain breaking. The actual shooting of it was really, really fun. It was the coming up with it that was the brain breaking moment because we were sitting in this writer's room going, “What's a cool way for someone to go in the pond that we haven't seen yet?” and we all said, “What if you get pushed? Like you don’t mean to go.” Then through that we were like, “Well, who would push Alice? Who would do that?” We realized that the only person who would ever do that to Alice is Alice so we were trying to figure out a way to make it work. Oh my gosh, there were so many whiteboards and arrows pointing to you whatever, but we got it down. We figured it out and I hope people love the payoff because it's an awesome moment.
Sadie did such a great job. The part about that I really have loved [is] standing back and watching the audience's reactions and looking on the fan pages. So many people screenshot that shot of the person running through the field back to the pond from episode one and it is actually Sadie. We were not lying. We didn't manipulate anything. It's Sadie. Her hair is tucked into her jacket. We were all so worried that people would just get it in the first episode by freeze framing that, but they didn't, which is great.
PCP: KC has been confirmed as a time traveler and now there’s so many places you can go with this character. What else can you tell us about them?
AC: That's what's so fun about the KC character. I love that it's keeping people guessing. They're the biggest anomaly of this show and I think that's so great. What can we tell you about KC? Now that it's out that they're a time traveler I think it's very safe to say that they know a heck of a lot more than maybe even a good chunk of our characters do about the lore, about the story, about everything. They are fascinating and they will continue to be fascinating and it's so perfectly played by Vaughan [Murrae]. They're a little bit of magic and I love that. I love that they they can pop up unexpectedly anywhere. I love that they are very similar to Fern in a weird way. Like they do speak in riddles a little bit or they only they only share as much as is absolutely necessary to share. They're well-versed, clearly, in the rules of the pond.
PCP: Speaking of Grandma Fern (Jill Frappier), she mentions that she and Kat have met before. She also has these riddles about 65 and 25. Do you think this is teasing season 4 will take them to the 1920s?
AC: Anything is possible! The Fern of it all isn’t over, that’s what I can say for sure.
HC: Yes, she’s a little nuts, but, anything she says, you need to listen to.
PCP: This season reveals that the mysterious baby from the first episode is none other than Elliot (Evan Williams). There are clearly big secrets around his mother and his origins. What can you tell us about what to expect for him in season 4?
AC: All will be revealed! What's really interesting about how we leave things in this season is it seems like maybe from here on out things are about to get a lot more personal for Elliot when it comes to the pond. Other than this lovely jump that Alice gave him to get his five more minutes with Colton, he's kept the pond at arms length, right? He's the guy that observes and comes up with the rules and figured out the Finn factor and all those things, but he's also held it against characters as well. Like Kat running off to the past in order to avoid problems in the present. He's certainly called that out and he has absolutely recognized the trouble that you can get in by going back and maybe attempting to fix something and obviously you can't. He's taken this sort of objective view from afar, from high up, and what's interesting about this implication at the end of the season is that now it's about his family. Now the pond has affected his childhood, how he grew up. That will be a really interesting launching pad for him into a season 4. I mean, it's the cheesiest line ever, but you see it on those action movies: “Now it's personal.” That's how he's gonna approach things in season 4.
PCP: What can you tease about the love triangle between Elliot, Kat, and Thomas (Kris Holden-Ried)?
AC: No one is ever really gone on this show, regardless of whether they're actually there or whether they're imagined or the memory of them. Our show is always about how the echoes of the past play out in the present and the cyclical nature of things. [You get] perspective as a result of being able to time travel and seeing the patterns, seeing the generational things that get passed down, whether it's trauma or just patterns in people's personalities and how people interact with one another.
So no, I think no one is ever truly gone. I think what was really lovely though [was] the idea that there needed to be a bit of a moment of reckoning between Kat and Thomas. [A] moment of acknowledging the impossibility of their love was important because Kat is someone who leads with her heart and is impulsive and that catches up with you. If you really take a step back and look at their relationship, it's been this heightened passionate thing of brief moments of peril and intensity. How long can you sustain that really?
HC: Every once in a while Kat has to face reality in the present and not in the past. […] They've tried to have that conversation before, but I think the fire was the catalyst to really realize how impossible the situation is. If she was in trouble in the present day, he could never get to her and vice versa. The worst part is if she had disappeared, if she'd been killed in that fire, [or] Jacob had been wounded or unable to get home, no one would know in the present what had happened. They would just be there stranded with no answers. Thinking about the people you love not knowing is unthinkable, especially when you can avoid it. I think they both came to that conclusion — Thomas included — that if he can't get to her and she can't get to him, there's no future. I know a lot of the fans hated it, but it had to be done.
PCP: Fans have become suspicious of Del’s boyfriend Sam Bishop (Rob Stewart). What can you tease about him?
AC: It is absolutely something that's going to be explored. We'll never leave you hanging for too long. I'm so glad we're finally exposing a little bit more about [Sam] in the end of our finale. There is a very purposeful reason for why we mimicked his pose and what he says with what Elliot tells Kat the end of episode one of our pilot episode. If you go back to episode one, the way he's standing, the way we reveal Sam at the end looking out at the pond, shooting him from behind, we did that with Elliot. He actually ended up saying the exact same words to Kat as Sam does to Del on the phone.
For Kat, it was, “Where the heck is my daughter? I don't know where she is,” and Elliot saying, “She'll be fine.” “How do you know that, El?” “Well, I just do.” Very similar pattern […] and history repeating itself. And Del about Jacob and the reveal of him at the pond. So I think that in and of itself should tell people something about Sam, but those are the things that we know we need to address and we will. All in good time.
PCP: That’s such a cool Easter egg to hear about! I’m curious about other references you’ve made in the show that fans may or may not have picked up on.
AC: I'm so glad that they picked up on Colton's first fall into the pond was an echo of Alice's first fall into the pond, right down to the score that we used for the moment. I'm also so glad that now that people have heard most of “Breathe,” the song that Alice and Colton sing together, that they've now gone back and noticed that a lot of the Del-Colton moments in the 70s of coming together, first kiss, first dance that song is playing in the score. […] The other one that I was really proud of that people did notice was that Evelyn's tarot cards that she she's doing by the water as they wait for Del and Colton to come back uh from their date actually is her future. If you actually looked at the way that the cards are laid out and the pattern and looked it up, that is Evelyn's future. She just didn't notice it.
All three seasons of The Way Home are available on Hallmark+.
