The Way Home Cast Talks Haunting Parallels and Time Traveling To The 70s In Season 3
The Way Home promises reunions, romance, and more time travel mysteries in its highly anticipated season 3! As Del finally reconnects with her time traveling son, fans will be transported back to 1974 where a young Del and Colton first fell in love. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with the cast about the new season.
Throughout the first two seasons of The Way Home, we see the Landry’s time travel from modern day back to 1814 and 1999 where they get to meet and spend time with members of the Landry family and the families that helped found Port Haven. This third season finds us exploring the summer of Del and Colton’s teenage love story in 1974. “I'm always so impressed and so excited to see these eras come to life for us. With the photography, the cinematography on its own, but then also the sets and the clothes and the hair and the makeup and the vibes of whatever time we end up going into is so well done. [It’s] so well thought out and beautiful that just being there, it's kind of almost like, 'What am I doing here?’ It's so cool,” gushed Chyler Leigh. “The 70s is such a good period too. We get to meet the younger versions of characters that we already know and love, which is really, really exciting. Anytime we get to see backstory on people, I love it!”
Sadie LaFlamme-Snow called traveling to the ‘90s a “magical memory” for herself that she got to recreate when traveling to the ‘70s — with a personal twist. “That magic that the '90s had, I've kind of been looking for that ever since that the first '90s reveal of the farmhouse and golden hour and Colton and young Elliot. You just see everything coming together and that was such a magical memory for me personally. The 70s was that all over again, but, at the same time, the more people are excited about the show, the more you want to meet people's expectations and even go above and beyond that too. When we were starting the ‘70s stuff, I was like, ‘Okay, look, I need to find my footing. How do I connect to this new era and how do I have a new relationship to it?’ A family member of mine sent me a picture of my dad and his brothers in [‘74 or ‘75],” she shared. “I saw the picture and it just totally sparked that curiosity that we all have about like what if I could go back and see what my parents childhood was like or see what my mom was like as a teenager or see what my grandmother was like when she met my grandfather. All those questions that are just daydreams for all of us and it really connected me to the magic of the ‘70s and made that personal connection for me.”
Another compelling new addition thanks to the ‘70s is tapping into the music of that era. “Music was my first love — before acting, before anything — so having that be such a big part of Alice as a character was always so central for me. I just can't believe that it's even a part of my life in the way that it is. This season what's extra exciting is that our teen Colton, Jordan Doww, he has a beautiful voice and he's a wonderful musician,” said LaFlamme-Snow. “We see that origin story of who is teen Colton. Who is [this guy who is] excited about his dreams of music and how does that affect Alice and how does that inspire her? Jordan did such a beautiful job and being able to share the musical load on the season is something that I really, really appreciated and enjoyed this year.”
Meanwhile, in modern day, Kat and Elliot’s long time friendship has finally turned to romance, but it might not be all smooth sailing. “Elliot has a mandate that he’s going to stand up and become the man that he's always dreamed of being. Part of that dream involves Kat and that dream all of a sudden is on his doorstep, but, in typical fashion, in real life when an idea or a dream that we've been dreaming about for years becomes reality, all of a sudden it has all of the other dimensions too,” explained Evan Williams. “It's real life so we see Elliot trying to work all of that out while at the same time having the main perpetrator of his trauma [his father Vic] show up.”
This season also explores Jacob’s (Spencer Macpherson) struggles with living in modern day after leaving 1814. When asked about why Jacob was able to remember Alice from the ‘90s, LaFlamme-Snow called it something she just “accepted as Alice because I would want him to remember me.” “What I found recently is that my memory as I grow up is less specific. The people I met as children are these caricatures in my mind. […] Jacob had such a short existence in the early ‘90s as a child and at home with Del and everything that I imagine that's almost like a dream with these characters that are symbolic to him of a time that he can barely really remember, whereas when Alice interacts with Del you're watching someone who was going through so much grief and was holding so much responsibility. They're an adult. They're meeting a lot of new people all the time,” she explained. “Little kids have the same cast of characters in [their] life all the time. Your world is small. Your memory is absorbing everything. I don't think he has some power that other people don't, but I do think that Alice was a big part of his [short] life before he disappeared. She was there for a whole year with him before he was gone, so that's a lot when you're eight.”
It hasn’t been just fans waiting for the reunion between Jacob and Del since the show premiered — the cast has been too! We finally get to see it come to fruition in the first episode of season 3. “It was pretty heavy. We actually had filmed that in season 2, but we held off and aired it for season 3. It was really fun to watch it again after obviously being there. I'm a huge fan of our show. I'm just saying that in general,” shared Leigh. “I went back recently with a really, really dear friend of mine and […] re-watched the entire thing all the way through season 2. That moment right before we even see what happens… oh my God, it's so powerful and so profound. Andie [MacDowell] was just phenomenal. The fact that she can have these deep guttural cries or sobs and this beautifully powerful emotional work and then after when they say cut, she’s like, ‘Was that good? Did ya’ll get what you wanted? That was crazy!’ It shows what an absolute pro she is. You could throw anything at that woman and she could turn it around and wrap it in a bow. Those scenes were so beautiful.”
This season also explores a haunting parallel for Alice as we see her save teen Colton from a car accident after she previously was a part of adult Colton’s (Jefferson Brown) death by car accident in season 1. “What's so haunting as you mentioned is that she saves his life and it's in the exact way that she ultimately ends it. Both a car crash,” said LaFlamme-Snow. “Part of it is playing that struggle of how do I enjoy the extra time I get with Colton while also really feeling that profound guilt for what's to come for him. One of the interesting things is that as an actor you have to play fully involved in the scene in one second and then turn away and be so heartbroken. He says like, ‘Thanks for saving my life,’ and I say, ‘Oh, you know, no problem,’ and then turn to have a private moment to yourself and your heart just shatters into a million pieces. I love playing that double life and it's a really exciting challenge as an actor. It makes the scenes have so many layers to it. I think that as an audience your brain is just like there's so many things going off at once that you could watch it a billion times and you'd notice different double meanings every time.”
It’s so heartwarming to see how much of a fan of the show the cast is themselves. “I am so impressed and thrilled with the writing of season 3. I didn't think it would have been possible to serve up as many twists and turns as they do while still keeping the nutrition of the show. Audiences are going to be mind blown,” Williams enthused. “What's cool about a time travel show is it's already all in there, we just get to show the audience. It's almost like a piece of corn. When you pop it, all of a sudden it becomes something else and you can see all the dimensions. It was there all along, it was just in its little shell. It's like a Gordian knot.”
“It feels personal [for the audience]. The same thing has happening to us when we're on camera playing them out. We're playing them out with our own bodies, with our own sense memory so it just means so much more the longer the show goes on. To be doing a third season, it feels so deep and you can tell because when we were doing our table reads they always have at least two big Kleenex boxes because there's inevitable tears. We have a game where we see how many pages into the script [our showrunner Alexandra Clarke] gets before she starts to cry. Our last episode of season 3…” Williams teased, with Leigh interjecting: “It was like three sentences! Someone is always crying when we're reading the scripts together. It's beautiful.”
Season 3 already has us asking more questions, including who really is Casey (Vaughan Murrae) and could there be other Landry’s time traveling from the future as well. “That would be really interesting honestly. I think what would be hard for Alice would be knowing how hard it is. How hard it was for Elliot to know so much about his future and knowing that there could be someone out there that knows more about her life than she does and knowing that could really derail her life if she started asking too many questions,” said LaFlamme-Snow. “What's funny is that Alice, like the audience, is always looking for who's a time traveler here. She has the eye for that and she thinks that anyone could be a time traveler. On the other hand, Kat is trying to help her stay in the present. She's being mom.”
It’s also opening up more theories around Colton and what he knew. “How to discuss this… well, here's a question: is Colton the only one that might know about the pond? I certainly don't know, but it does definitely beg the question of if he did know about the pond, then why would he not say anything? Especially given the fact that the pond is what took Jacob and for all we know affected things from maybe even the very get-go because getting back to the 1800s, guess what we had to use? The pond! So trying to wrap it all in one idea is too hard because there's too many variables in that sense,” said Leigh, with Williams continuing: “Which is why it's such an amazing cliffhanger for the end of season 2. Just one shot and all of a sudden it's Colton's face and then blackout. The audience’s theories have been off the chain. Everybody can't wait to see and I can say with full confidence that I'm excited because I know audiences are going to be thrilled with the way the story is told this season. It's so good. The writing is so good.”
New episodes of The Way Home season 3 air Fridays on Hallmark Channel and hit Hallmark+ the next day.
