The time-traveling world has expanded farther than we imagined in Port Haven.
Hallmark’s hit time-traveling family drama wrapped up its sophomore season by utterly blowing our minds with the revelations to come during The Way Home Season 2 Episode 10.
And we’ve been reeling from that finale and what it could mean for the series trajectory as it has blessedly gotten its Season 3 renewal.
But we’re left to wonder if the series has overshot itself by dropping so many surprising moments during the finale, jumping the shark, or if their ambition is merely a mark of their greatness and more fabulous things to come.
Frankly, if this question had been posed during the first half to midseason, I would’ve admitted I was a woman of little faith.
The Way Home Season 2 was rocky, with the season not capturing the same level of magic as the first season, which is a routine pattern.
Many times during the season, it felt like we were spinning on a wheel and not going anywhere, which stripped the series of its typical compelling storytelling.
Kat’s quest to find Jacob Landry in 1814 and the long and winding road toward coming face to face with him started to take its toll as the process of her actually having a conversation with her cognizant adult brother kept getting prolonged beyond what was reasonable.
And at some point had me wondering if I even cared anymore.
The mystery behind what happened at Lingermore hangs over the season, getting built up into a huge thing that amounted to little of nothing when we finally got the payoff roughly four episodes too late.
The crux of the series is about the relationship between three generations of Landry women, and much of the season found them apart more often than they were together, fraught with tension that seemed to increase rather than dwindle between Del and Kat.
And it was only made worse with the sale of the Landry farm looming over them, a seemingly inevitable action hanging over the last of their potential reconciliation like the Sword of Damocles.
Related: The Way Home Season 2 Episode 10 Review: Bring Me To Life
Overall, it made the season difficult to sit through at times, especially as we faced some difficult and frustrating moments from many of the characters we loved.
Save for Alice, who has grown exponentially and matured in such a refreshingly beautiful and heartrending manner that it was tough navigating many of the other characters, their obstinacy, stagnancy, and ability to get in their own way.
And let’s not forget how challenging the love triangle has been.
I never would’ve envisioned Elliot Augustine becoming this polarizing of a character.
It would have initially seemed possible that someone new (or old for all accounts and purposes) could come into the picture, steal his thunder, and have fans reevaluating whether or not Kat and Elliot should even be considered a viable “endgame” in the first place.
For most of the season, it was hard to fully grasp what we would get as it came to a close.
Jacob expressed such little interest, real attachment, or investment in returning home that the huge reunion viewers have been clamoring for felt like a fruitless desire, with disappointment as the only outcome.
And there weren’t enough high stakes for the penultimate and finale episodes to lead anything that could possibly knock our socks off, right?
Wrong. I’m willing to admit I was 1000% wrong.
Some of the second season was a chore to slog through; it felt like we weren’t going anywhere.
The Way Home reminded us how incredible a series it is by delivering the best episodes of the series with The Way Home Season 2 Episode 9 and that finale that will live rent-free in my head until 2025.
If you lost faith along the way, the finale proved that the series is capable, knows what it is, and knows what it wants to do. It is one of the most deceptively smartly written, intriguing, and elaborate series currently on the air.
It’s a series that touches the lives of millions, and yet I still feel as if not nearly enough people are tuned in to appreciate the incredible character and story work at play.
The Way Home is both the answer to the loss of quality family dramas on television and has nailed the level of escapist television that many of us have craved for some time.
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It’s a massively successful and well-thought-out genre-bending series that plays with many elements, like family drama, fantasy, romance, and more, while also having a grounded approach that appeals to a diverse audience.
It gives you the vibes of highly praised, critically acclaimed series like Lost, an incredibly detailed series that leads viewers to search for easter eggs in every nook and cranny, theorizing each and every episode and inspiring multiple viewings.
Nothing has solidified that more than the season finale, as all of the pieces clicked into place, and we discovered that Colton, too, was a Landry time traveler.
And no, the series certainly hasn’t jumped the shark with this and many other revelations but merely unlocked new levels of the show that could expand into many different directions as the rich tapestry of the Landry family unfolds.
It’s the most exciting turning point of the series to date!
The sky is the limit for where The Way Home Season 3 can go now that we’ve gotten these answers that spiral into new, bigger, more exciting mysteries.
And there’s nothing more gratifying than realizing that all of the little things, even the minute moments seemingly meaningless at the time, have led up to these revelations.
In hindsight, isn’t it clear that Colton Landry was probably a time traveler too and that he knew about his adult Kat when he came face-to-face with her every bit as much as Colton realized he was talking to Elliot and proceeded to tell him everything he needed to hear?
We’ve never once witnessed Colton shocked or put out by the sudden appearance of seemingly random people on his property, frequently looking as if they just got caught in a storm.
He never questioned them too much or pried into their background. We noticed that instantly with Alice, and then the same happened with Katherine, even during her slip-ups and her inability to hide the awe that she was seeing her father again.
But if we missed all those little moments before, it became increasingly clear when he came face-to-face with Elliott, who looks much the same as he did in his youth (a credit to spectacular casting).
He didn’t even ask for Elliot’s name, and his response to Elliot stating that he was “wandering” was simply that he understood.
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Now we know that it was Colton, not Jacob, who was the Landry boy with his grandmother at the pond waiting for his time.
It only makes sense that if Kat and Alice discovered that they could time travel through their family’s pond, and Jacob did so, this is something common or known down the Landry line, including Colton.
It’s such a deliciously great revelation for the series to drop on us because it can expand this story in ways we couldn’t have anticipated and keep the time-traveling arc going in a refreshing way that doesn’t get too redundant.
Plus, it means that we can spend more time with Jefferson Brown, who is incredible as the most beloved father since Jack Pearson.
With Kat’s mission essentially coming to a close the second Jacob returned to the present, it brings a natural semicolon to the portion of the story that drove the plot for roughly two seasons.
And it’s a natural progression that has thankfully evolved. Dragging the storyline on longer than feasible and risking the loss of viewers’ attention could have been an issue.
But this story is about so many different characters that the Colton revelation signifies the promise of a new and just as compelling mystery for the series to unravel.
It’s another chapter to the story that most likely shifts the focus to Colton as we delve deeper into Landry’s history and role as a time traveler.
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Colton’s story connects to Kat, Alice, Del, and Jacob anyway.
It also connects to Elliot, as he presented us with the Fynn Theory, which suggests that the pond allows Landrys (and those accompanying them) to travel to the past but not the future.
What’s fascinating is now trying to determine what that means for Colton. We saw him as a boy in what could’ve easily been the 19th or early 20th century. But if that’s the timeframe he’s originally from, how did he get to meet Del Landry later in time to have kids?
Does Colton mean that the Fynn Theory is already flawed on its premise, or does it mean that he comes from the future or pulled a Jacob at some point and spent some time in the past biding time and waiting until the pond called for him to return to “his time” again?
See? This Colton Time Traveling angle opens the door for so much more story to be told to make sense of Landry’s history and time travel as we know it.
It also makes you wonder why he never shared with his children before he died about the time-traveling pond and warned them similarly to what his “Grandmother” did for him.
It also makes you reevaluate everything you know about Colton in the time after Jacob disappeared. Did he eventually realize that his son time-traveled and didn’t tell anyone?
And if that was the case, why?
Finding out that Colton is a time traveler does a fantastic job of shifting the focus to another Landry.
It also means we get to reevaluate things we thought we already knew from a different perspective with new information (like all the circumstances surrounding Jacob’s death and the aftermath of it).
Hell, we still have to wonder if Colton also time-traveled to 1814 at any point and if he knew Thomas Coyle. It would explain why he’d have that Coyle’s sticker on his guitar.
We also have to wonder if Colton is still the guy who was born in the 1950s or if somehow he’s the Colton Lacey Landry we thought was his grandfather in the 1800s.
In the Landry family tale and mystery behind the pond, they’ve unlocked a whole new level via Colton that, based on how incredibly well they unraveled all these tidbits to make everything click into place during the finale, things will only get better from here.
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And that’s just the Colton component. We have yet to begin to unpack the Casey situation.
With both huge revelations, it sets up The Way Home Season 3 to be a season heavily focused on Colton in the past and Alice in the present.
And that’s also an exciting prospect, as we have a new potential angle to work via time travel, thanks to Casey.
Casey’s introduction seemed insignificant initially, but we should know by now that nothing is without significance in this series.
However, in hindsight, it was evident that Casey behaved similarly to Alice when she was in the ’90s.
Casey has supposed ties to the Goodwins. They claimed that a Goodwin was their father, even though we have yet to see the man to confirm as much.
Casey has been interested in working with Kat Landry, especially its historical component, and has made a series of little remarks that imply that they aren’t from this time.
What’s genius is how Casey’s comments to Kat about how outdated things are or working for a paper before it’s obsolete could have been so easily passed as casual comments that younger generations would make.
Casey is another big mystery, especially regarding the ring they were wearing around their neck.
It’s identical to Kat’s engagement ring that she gave to Alice, and Alice pieced that together after looking at a photo and maybe onto Casey as a result.
The most obvious conclusion to draw now is that Casey is a Landry time traveler and could potentially be Alice’s child from the future.
It would explain how Casey got the ring when we last saw it in Alice’s possession; maybe she passed it down to Casey.
However, it could also be that Adult Alice is helping Casey in the future, and she gives Casey the ring as a symbol to let teen Alice know that Casey isn’t of this time.
Now, we also have to wonder how an item can exist in two timelines if Casey is wearing the ring around their neck and Alice still has the ring in the present.
If it’s a replica ring, that would suggest that it’s meant to be more of a symbol than the real thing, making Casey’s identity even more confounding.
Is Casey really a Goodwin, as they say? And if they are, does it mean that they’re a Goodwin with Landry blood, like Alice’s, or someone else, like maybe Jacob?
Whatever the case, Casey has a connection to the Landrys, and they’re clearly a time traveler, which introduces a fascinating new layer into the fold.
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This means we have another teen time traveler in the mix, and this one is potentially from the future.
It also means we can either stay in the dark in the present with Alice, as we’ve done, or in the past with Katherine and the others, whether it’s during 1999 or 1814.
But it also could mean that at some point, the series could expand the timeline even further into the future as well.
If we’re ever to properly understand things like who Casey is and where they’re from, or we have to test the Fynn Theory, we’re left to believe that Colton was able to travel to the future, unlike everything Elliot said.
Like This Is Us, this family drama’s ability to play with time and take us on incredible journeys in the interim feels like it’s only just beginning.
There is a treasure trove of things The Way Home can continue to explore, which makes it feel like we’ve only just scratched the surface of what this cast, crew, and storytelling can do.
If you didn’t walk away from that jaw-dropping, twist-filled season finale even more excited and invigorated about the future of this series, were we even watching the same show?
The season may have lost its footing at times, but it came in clutch at the end, and the third season can get better from here.
I’m ready to lay back and trust the process and that the storytelling, just like the pond, will take us exactly where we need to be.
How about you? How did you feel about The Way Home’s shocking season finale? Do you think the series “jumped the shark” or are you excited about the future?
Sound off below with all of your thoughts and theories! We can’t wait to read them.
You can stream The Way Home on Peacock and Hallmark Movies Now.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is an insomniac who spends late nights and early mornings binge-watching way too many shows and binge-drinking way too much tea. Her eclectic taste makes her an unpredictable viewer with an appreciation for complex characters, diverse representation, dynamic duos, compelling stories, and guilty pleasures. You’ll definitely find her obsessively live-tweeting, waxing poetic, and chatting up fellow Fanatics and readers. Follow her on X.