The Way Home Season 4 Episode 8 Screams for Elliot to Stay Away from the Past — But Will He Get the Message?

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

4

We’re almost at the finish line now, and the story is desperately trying to connect the dots.

The easiest way to cover this from a review perspective is to get really recappy and share thoughts about what’s happening along the way. There is so much to discuss!

Does it change how I feel about many storylines? Not really. But I appreciate the attempt to tie this all together.

So, where did The Way Home Season 4 Episode 8 begin? Right where we expected it to start: with Elliot and the pond.

As it turned out, Elliot chose to stay, but that didn’t mean Tessa had any desire to stick around to help him create the formative moments he missed.

Fern, using her fast words, dubbed Elliot, the man stuck in time, Tom Buchanan, which I found weird, since as soon as he went to the Auggie boys, he outed himself as Coop’s son. Doesn’t that fly in the face of the Tom Buchanan of it all?

Kat had been trying to go back to 1925 for a month, so time was moving briskly. She’d been unsuccessful every time, but Del and Alice weren’t worried. Del trusted Elliot had things to work out, and Alice knew Kat would successfully jump — she’d seen it on film.

It was kind of funny that Del took it all in stride. They know exactly how long it took to get Jacob back. So why was everyone so calm? The date on the paper that Elliot found made the difference.

In 1925, when Tessa got back from her travels, she was shocked and thankful that Elliot had been so helpful in her absence. But she owed Elliot answers, and decided to give him some. And by some, I mean very few, but it was a start.

Tessa admitted to her son that Vic was very good to her. And that, although she said “we jump for love” when she hopped into the pond with Griffin, nothing about it was straightforward. They landed in 1882 and until she got sick, everything was going very well.

She still never mentioned why she left Elliot behind or how she could. And you have to wonder if she’ll ever give him that very important piece of his past.

When she got ill, Griffin jumped to the present to get medicine, but he never returned. As we know, the pond takes you where you go. Whether Griffin actually jumped or just left her behind, we’ll probably never know, either.

She cut the conversation short when Elliot asked about the letter they received about her being ill and near death, the one that contained her engagement ring. 

She only needed to give one more short sentence of explanation, but suddenly, she was exhausted before the big day she had coming up. Talk about disappointing. 

The next day, Elliot got to connect with his mom, however briefly, for a few more quick exchanges. He told her about him and Kat.

And he also mentioned he’s a science teacher and loves knowing there is a reason for all things (Honestly, any scientist knows that’s not true. Science is only as certain as what can be explained given the current technology and minds who grasp it. It is always evolving.)

They were bonding over TS Elliot and Tessa’s appreciation for “I measured out my life in coffee spoons” as the most brilliant line in any time. Frankly, it just doesn’t work for Tessa. 

She feels like a character who never properly made it out of concept stage. Does the woman we know now seem like someone who would read TS Elliot as an adult, let alone believe the mundanity of life is brilliant?

But just when Elliot thought he was getting somewhere, he discovered the clock in the wall had NOTHING to do with Tessa. She had no idea what he was talking about. And from there, I had an idea. What if he placed the clock in the wall for Kat?

If you recall, the placard on the clock read: “Time Past and Time Future and In Between is the Still Point of Now.” Find Me There.

I’m open to suggestions here. What do you think? If not Tessa, then who placed the clock in the wall?

Before he got an answer, Kat arrived, dramatically tunning into his arms. And, as usual, it felt just like a brother and sister reuniting. They have zero passion. Not a lick of it. 

It dwindled even further when he explained why he stayed behind. I buy his emotion about knowing and helping his mom far more than I do when it comes to Kat. 

The whole conversation fell flat. 

I bought more of the talk between Kat and Tessa when Kat called out Tessa for pretending to care so much about Elliot now, when it benefits her. As a mother, Kat knows she would never leave Alice behind.

Tessa had the gall to tell Kat that the love between a mother and her child is quite complex. 

She doesn’t know the half of it, not only because she never gave herself a chance to love her child, but because what Kat and Alice have shared is about as complex as a relationship can get. Several lifetimes of love, in fact. Tessa? She just bolted.

But merely saying “Alice” struck Tessa. Surely, she didn’t expect such a reaction because of the Alice books. What does she know about the name, and why did it hit her like a ton of bricks?

When Kat and Alice talked about her school aspirations and how she felt she wasn’t making music from the heart, I wondered whether whatever happens in the finale would be what she needed to inspire her to do so.

Honestly, if she can’t write from the heart now, when she’s spent years hunting down family secrets in different times, maybe she’s just not set up for writing. Maybe she’s got the voice and nothing else.

Because how can you go through everything she’s been through in several lifetimes and not have anything to say? 

And the film popping up in Monica’s box of Port Haven treasures wasn’t a problem. The part Kat was in had been spliced out. That led them to believe Evelyn knew Alice was a time traveler. 

But the weird part was that she thought young Evelyn would have done that. That she’d somehow sussed out the biggest secret she’d ever encountered only to keep it to herself.

My mind immediately went to an older Evelyn, the one we only glimpsed in The Way Home Season 1. That’s the woman who had enough time to ponder the years and the desire to scrape through old memories from an attic filled with them to make the connection.

Sadly, I can’t remember much about her from the first season, so I hope you ponderers can remind me what we learned about the bitter woman then. 

Did it seem like she had secrets she wasn’t ready to share? There was a whole conversation about who owed whom for things we don’t understand. Was any of it related to the film?

I really wish they could jump just a few years past and speak with the older Evelyn. It’s her story I want to know most of all. I can’t be the only one who has fallen utterly in love with that special girl who wants to know what changed things so much from the ’70s to the present.

When Alice did make it back to 1980, Evie was already struggling. The smile was gone from her pretty face, and she left her friends in a huff that read more like sadness and regret than anger.

But it bummed me out that Alice was there for reasons other than Evie herself. She was on a hunting mission, and it was Evie’s birthday. Evie was alone and wanted to celebrate with her friend, but Alice was just poking around for answers.

Finally, Evie admitted that Del’s pregnancy is what is causing Evie’s pain. Colton drifts further away from Evie as his love for Del and their unborn child grows, and Evie’s all alone in a big house. 

At least a drunken Evie wondered who Alice really was. Who doesn’t have a phone number? And they can’t even write, which was still a thing in 1980. 

Can you imagine having a wonderful friend who flits in and out of your life, but you have no way to contact them? It would be enough to drive you crazy.

In the romance department, things just aren’t gelling.

When it comes to the Jacob and Abby of it all, it’s just another relationship I don’t buy into. What’s weird is that my first inkling was to say we haven’t seen enough of them to feel that yet. 

But that falls short when I realize that Kat and Thomas had that bond from the start. They spent relatively no time together, but I never questioned their emotional connection.

The family dinner was incredibly awkward. The look on Sam’s face never faltered. He just enjoys being part of the family, and I love that for him.

Who else wishes we could get to know Del and Sam as their relationship grows? It’s the first hint of Del being more than a grieving wife and mother, and we will never get to know her. That stinks.

And when Abby revealed she was leaving Port Haven for Toronto, it threw Jacob for a loop. He takes commitment seriously, and with a little time, he offered to make long-distance work. That’s how in love he is with her.

The city girl is beginning to fall for more than Jacob. Even small towns are beginning to grow on her. She’s ready to tell her dad she’s dating a Landry. Let the entirety of the Romeo and Juliet of it all play out!

Even better? Sam finally told Del the truth about what he knew. And he did it because he wanted her to jump, telling Colton that their family would be happy in the future. 

I don’t know how she can do that without revealing he’ll die before he sees that happiness. And I have no idea how he’ll travel to see them as a happy family, as we saw him lurking in the bushes watching his family in The Way Home Season 2.

But we can’t forget about some other storylines before we get there. Such as Fern and her two beaus. What did she want to come clean to one of them about? Tessa bribed her to stay quiet until the big job was done. 

Yes, Fern was falling for Cliff. But she was still engaged to Grayson. So which one did she truly love? Or was she caught between them? Not really.

Seeing all three of them together in a room was interesting. They were downright icy. The inspector and the man he thought was the Big Fish were going toe-to-toe, talking fatherhood and legacy, no less.

Afterward, Kat and Fern realized that the big award Cliff was leaving to accept wasn’t true. He was using it as an excuse to make others think he was out of town, taking the pressure off the job, outing Tessa as the big fish, and catching them all in the middle.

But it was too late. One of Auggie’s goons was an informant, and the jig was up.

Cliff had Tessa, Kat, and Elliot at the end of his barrel when Fern rushed up and stood in front of them. She changed things. Cliff told them to run, giving them a chance to free themselves.

And in the “what does this mean” category, as Fern was proclaiming her innocence to Cliff, she handed him the page torn from the Alice books, claiming it was “evidence that would explain everything.” 

Their love almost fell apart when he said he lied to protect her, but she lied to protect someone else. Fern was confused by Coop and the film, but then she watched him fall in love with the farm and made the empty house come back to life, paving the way for her reemergence, too.

With time short, that did the trick. And I think in those days, it was easier to fall in love. They had less external pressure discussing soul mates, true love, and all that jazz. It was easier to fall in love and stay that way.

And at the very end of the hour, Elliot promised his mother he’d return on New Year’s Eve. He knows he’ll be there for the Lingermore party, and even if he’s arrested, as history shows, he decided it’s worth the effort if he gets more time with his mom.

But it gets more interesting from there. Fern said, “I’m just the messenger” when handing Cliff the page from the Alice book. All along, Fern has been sending messages through her columns that could be deciphered using the page.

Tessa used Fern’s columns to communicate with her bootlegging ring. How does that change things? I’m not too sure.

The page with a key was the literal key, a cipher that revealed the words of the song about the explosion in the catacombs. Five souls in, four out, Tessa gone. NYE job botched. Elliot realized he might have just invited his mother to his own death.

But we know you can’t change the past. They have tried again and again. Who are the other four souls? And how “out” were they? Did they live or did they die?

Would the living get a song, or does it take a more tragic ending to bring about a ditty? It seems we’re about to find out. If anything, this should have served as a reason to steer clear of that pond. Fat chance of that happening. I’m worried about those nameless souls from the explosion. Why isn’t anyone else?

So yes, we have many unanswered questions about earlier seasons and The Way Home Season 4, and the only way they will be answered is if the entire finale is dedicated to answering them. 

Because next week is dedicated to New Year’s Eve 1925. It’s titled “Auld Lang Syne,” and the details are: New Year’s Eve in 1925 brings into focus the Landry and Augustine families’ destiny, and Elliot and Kat witness it. In another time, Alice does the same. 

The finale is titled “Ahead by a Century” and will be longer than a standard episode. Does that mean we’ll see where Casey, aka KC, comes from? Will we see how this all plays out?

Or does that mean the difference between 1926 and 2026? 

Two more episodes to go. That’s it. For a show that I was suggesting just two years ago had enough stories for many, many more seasons. And it does! But it won’t have the opportunity to bring them to light.

Before I get maudlin, I’ll bid adieu for now. Please share your thoughts with me in the comments below. What are your theories? We’re almost at the finish line, so please don’t hold back!