THE WAY HOME -Season 2 Key Art | ©2024 Hallmark

THE WAY HOME is an unusual series for the Hallmark Channel. While the network thrives on family drama and romance – and THE WAY HOME has plenty of both – it doesn’t often feature elements like time travel as a major propeller of the plot.

Created by Marly Reed & the daughter/mother team of Alexandra Clarke & Heather Conkie, THE WAY HOME centers on the Landry family, whose little Canadian farm includes a pond that can transport any Landry, and anyone accompanying them, back as far as 1814, or to when their parents were growing up, as teen Sadie Laflamme-Snow discovers early on.

Sadie’s mother Kat, played by Chyler Leigh (as an adult – adolescent Kat teen is portrayed by Alex Hook), is a divorced journalist who has moved back in with her widowed mother Del, portrayed by Andie MacDowell.

Alice and Kat realize that their lifelong friend (and now Kat’s love interest) Elliot Augustine, played by Evan Williams (as an adult – Elliot as a teen is portrayed by David Webster), has known the pond’s secret and kept it from them for decades. While this has caused conflict, it has also allowed the Landrys to find Kat’s little brother Jacob (played by Remy Smith as a child and Spencer Macpherson as an adult), long believed drowned but really just displaced in the past.

THE WAY HOME is now in its fourth and final season Sunday nights on the Hallmark Channel, with episodes streaming the next day on Hallmark Plus. Creators Clarke, Reed and Conkie join up with cast members MacDowell, Leigh, Williams, and LaFlamme in a virtual Q&A for the Television Critics Association (TCA) to talk about it.

Clarke lays out the series’ origins. “We initially developed THE WAY HOME with Lisa Hamilton Daly, our incredible executive at Netflix. But then she left Netflix and brought us with her to Hallmark. What was so incredible about that was that she was very adamant about it staying the same tone we’d already developed. We were so grateful for that, because we didn’t really know what we would need to do to change our pilot, to change our entire pitch proposal once we’d gotten to Hallmark.

“What was so exciting,” Clarke continues, “was that she said, ‘We’re going to try this the way it is.’ And as Marly and Heather can attest, we didn’t change one thing about that pilot between being at Netflix and being at Hallmark.”

THE WAY HOME – Season 4 Key Art | ©2026 Hallmark Channel

In many ways, Clarke points out, THE WAY HOME already fit Hallmark’s brand. “What helped us was the fact that, at the end of the day, yes, there might be some darkness in our show, but it is still a multi-generational family drama, which is what Hallmark does so well. It’s about healing, it’s about hope, it’s about love. So, the main pillars of what Hallmark is and what our pilot was, and the show became, were the same.”

How do the creators feel about the fourth season of THE WAY HOME being the final one?

Clarke says, “I think every season of a show, you go into it knowing it’s a gift and knowing that this could be the last. Any season we’ve had on this show, we’ve always gone into the writers’ room the next season and gone, ‘Okay, they’ve given us one more, but we’ve got to write an ending that’s a cliffhanger [if there’s a renewal], and we’ve got to write an ending that’s an ending.’ You never know.”

Except, in this instance, Clarke adds, they did know “fairly early on that this was the direction that we were going to go this season. It’s a daunting task to be in that writers’ room and realize you have to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts – this is the season to do it.

“Of course, it’s a bittersweet thing. This has truly become family over the four seasons. Our cast, our crew has pretty much been the same throughout our four seasons, [as has] our writers’ room. So, to face this season all together knowing it was probably the end was bittersweet, but we also rallied together. We all decided we wanted to meet it in the best possible way for our fans.” She turns to Conkie. “Mom, you want to add anything?”

Conkie does. “Part of the hardest thing is, we always raise so many questions with this show. It’s not like most television shows, and there were all these beautiful dangling questions along the way through every season. The daunting task was to answer them all.

“The writers’ room is amazing,” Conkie continues. “Alex is amazing. She has all those dangling threads in her mind very clearly, when not just the cast but some of the writers were all going, ‘Wait a second, what do we do now?’ We hope to have managed to answer all the questions, but we would be lying if we didn’t say there were tears, because there certainly were. It’s a family and it’s really hard to say goodbye.”

Reed elaborates, “I just want to echo what Alex said in terms of every season being a gift. That’s the way I feel, like we went into every season, ‘Yeah, we get to expand this story further, we get to use more of our ideas.’ I think the real tragedy would have been ending at Season 1, because 1 left on such an insane cliffhanger. But every other season, it just felt like, ‘Oh, great, we get to tell more of this story, and if this is the end, then we can wrap it up as best we can,’ but every season after that was such a gift.”

What drew MacDowell to THE WAY HOME?

MacDowell begins with a pond pun. “I don’t think I really knew what I was jumping into.”

“Nice!” Leigh observes.

THE WAY HOME -Season 2 Key Art | ©2024 Hallmark

“I love the idea of the character,” MacDowell resumes, “the matriarch idea. I had it in my head that that’s really something that I wanted to experience, and also show other mature women that they can be this strong, dynamic woman. And I loved the concept of the farm. I’m big into bees and organic farming and the community idea. But I had no idea where the writers were going to take it.”

MacDowell adds that she’s very happy with where THE WAY HOME has gone. “I had so much to learn from everybody that I worked with, because a lot of times I was out of my comfort zone. But it’s been interesting to carry a character on and to also be adamantly sure that I know what’s right for my character by the fourth season. I feel like the first season was interesting for me as an actress, because I would stick to my guns about who [the character is] and I think I was right. We would talk about it. It was a beautiful experience to get to play a character that long and have these really strong feelings about who I was and how I was being created, because I fell like I knew Del intimately.”

Elliot is having a series of strange dreams, including one where he’s dragging a huge sledgehammer, not entirely unlike Jack Nicholson in THE SHINING. What are Williams’s thoughts on this?

Williams keeps a straight face. “Almost every day when I go to set, I ask myself that question of how much Jack Nicholson in THE SHINING should I be? And usually the answer is zero, especially on this show. But anything’s possible and Season 4 is long, so you never know.”

More seriously, Williams discusses what he believes the dreams represent. “I would say it’s metaphorical. So, the things that Elliot is dealing with are the walls that are in his psyche. And so, to take a sledgehammer to the walls in his house and in his interior life, I think it’s a symbol of wanting to create freedom and create space in his life. And I think in Season 4, we get to see how that pans out and whether or not some of his dreams can come true. I’m hoping they will.”

Laflamme-Snow has spent almost a quarter of her life playing Alice. How does she feel about saying goodbye to the character and the series?

“Especially with the fourth season starting off with Alice’s [high school] graduation,” Laflamme-Snow responds, “it feels like a sort of a graduation for me as well. This show has taken me through such a life-changing journey personally. It’s very emotional to say goodbye to this story and to the character, but at the same time, knowing that it’s an experience that I was ushered through with such a wonderful team alongside me. I’ve learned so much about myself as an actor and as a person through all of these incredible people who are on this panel and more. I think that will be reflected in Alice’s journey this season, too. She’s growing up, she’s looking ahead to the future and her relationship to the pond and everything that’s come before it is going to inform every choice she makes going forward, and I can say the same for myself.”

Did anyone have trouble keeping track of the changes that come with the time travel?

This gets a laugh from everyone on the panel.

Laflamme-Snow says, “If anything, I think I was the clearest in the first season, because you’re only keeping track of one season’s worth of time-travel knowledge. By the time Season 4 came around, you’re just looking at what you have in front of you and you just have to trust that you’re a part of a bigger picture than you can even imagine. We worked together to keep track of all the details. Our amazing writers and creators and showrunners who are all on this panel with us today can probably speak to this more. Their minds are constantly putting together that web and supporting us through every scene where we turn to them and say, ‘What’s going on right now?’”

Are there plot thread resolutions or character developments the actors would like to see by the conclusion of THE WAY HOME?

Leigh has a real stumper. “Where’s Finn?” She is referring to the Landry family dog, whose leap into the pond prompted young Jacob to follow him.

Nobody has a solid retort. “Mexico,” Conkie offers. “He’s getting a spinoff.”

“He’s with the dinosaurs,” Clarke proposes.

There is now a real-life Finn, Leigh reminds everyone. “Heather, you ended up taking one of the barn cats home from near our Landry home, and you ended up naming your little kitty Finn. The legacy remains.”

“Finn came back as a kitten,” Conkie confirms.

Williams hopes there will be more about Elliot’s mother. “I’m definitely intrigued with Elliot wanting to find his mom. The mystery of, where is my mom and why did she disappear is a juicy one that I look forward to exploring.”

MacDowell says, “I would like to see some of Del’s rough edges softened. I feel like Del has such a load on her shoulders, had to carry so much without any parents around. And she had so much loss. I think it would be nice to see that she has hope for herself as an individual, not someone who’s having to take care of her farm or other people.”

“That’s beautiful,” Laflamme-Snow compliments her fellow performer. “For Alice, one of the things she’s really tried to ignore this whole time is she knows that Evelyn’s [played by River Price-Maenpaa as a teen and by Susan Hamann as an adult] fate is very lonely and dark. So, there’s a big question for Alice about what happens to Evelyn. I’m really excited for audiences to see where we go with that.”

We know the Landrys can bring companions on their watery time travel, so will there be any surprise pond-jumpers in Season 4?

Reed isn’t sure if this should be answered. “Can we?”

“Obviously,” Conkie supplies.

“Oh, yeah,” says Clarke. “We’re going to go out with a bang. We can definitely guarantee that.”

This doesn’t mean that every mystery will be solved, including the exact workings of the pond’s magic.

Clarke previews, “We certainly can promise that we will be delving more into the lore of the pond and a bit more of the origin stories of that lore. I don’t want to give too much away. It’s one of those things where we’re a show where, yes, we’ll answer questions, but there will always be some that aren’t answered, and those answers might beget other questions.” She turns to her colleague. “Marly, what do you think?”

Reed responds, “I think the important thing to remember is that we’re not a sci-fi show. The way that we treat the more magical, otherworldly elements is more from a fantasy standpoint. I think if we tried to explain every single little thing and how it worked, the way a sci-fi show would, it would kill some of the magic of our show. So, we’ve tried our very best to answer the questions that need to be answered, but I don’t think it’s the type of show where you need to know every single little thing.”

Clarke agrees. “At the end of the day, time travel in our show is not just for the sake of time travel. It’s not ‘Isn’t that cool and lets dissect everything about it and the whens and the whys and the hows. It’s a tool for healing, it’s the means to an end. So, I think in that regard, what Marly is saying is very true, that to dissect it down to its minutiae would take up precious screen time that we usually don’t have. It would also kind of ruin the message, which is, this is to let you heal, this is to get your five more minutes, to understand each other just that much more.”

Reed elaborates, “We’ve always said from the very beginning pitch, this isn’t a show about trying to save the world or undo crazy world events, it’s about one family finding their way back to each other.”

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