The Way Home (Season 1 - 2023)

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Until this year, I had never watched an entire Hallmark series. I saw snippets of When Calls the Heart and I recently watched the pilot episode of Chesapeake Shores, but that was it. Then Hallmark started advertising the series that would premiere in January 2023, The Way Home. Normally I would not be interested in starting a new series, but this one caught my attention. Through the commercials, it was clear that time travel would be a theme. Time travel has been done many times in movies and television. Hallmark has done this through such movies as The Love Letter, Journey Back to Christmas, Next Stop, Christmas, and Rip in Time. I have enjoyed all of those movies, with Rip in Time being one of my all-time favorite movies. So I decided to give The Way Home a chance.

The opening scene takes place in Port Haven, New Brunswick in the year 1814. A woman, referred to as a witch, is being chased, and out of desperation, she jumps into a pond and disappears.

Flash forward to present day Minneapolis where we meet fifteen-year-old Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow), her dad, Brady (Al Mukadam), and her mom, Kat (Chlyer Leigh). Alice is about to perform a song on stage, but when she sees her dad in the audience engrossed in his phone and her mom not there at all, she pulls the fire alarm. We find out this is not the first incident and that Alice is going to be expelled. We also learn that Kat and Brady are separated and that Kat has just been laid off from her job.

Kat later receives a letter from her mom, Del (Andie MacDowell), asking her to come back home to Port Haven to live on the family farm. Much to Alice's dismay, Kat and her daughter pick up and move back to Port Haven. Kat has had a strained relationship with her mother and the two have barely spoken in 20 years, since Kat's younger brother, Jacob (Remy Smith), disappeared and Kat's father, Colton (Jefferson Brown), died.

It turns out that Del did in fact write the letter inviting Kat to come back home, but who sent it is a mystery. Del had actually decided not to send it, so she is confused. Things are tense and Alice, out of frustration, takes her mom's pendant that has the year 1999 engraved on it, and throws it into a pond. Alice, alone at the time, has a change of heart and tries to retrieve the bracelet. However, she falls into the pond, only to be rescued by none other than her mother as a teenager. Alice suddenly finds herself in the year 1999. This sets up the entire premise of the series, which goes back and forth between 1999 and present day.

The Way Home is a solid, standout series. This isn't your average cheesy Hallmark drama. It is family-friendly as Hallmark movies always are, but it could easily be on any other network and succeed. The time travel theme is what pulled me in, but it's everything else that made me stay. The acting is stellar, the music is moving (the actors can not only act, but they really can sing, too), and the story is compelling. It will make you think about your own life and what you might do in certain situations, ask questions, and form theories. The latter is what I love most about this show. There is so much to contemplate. The pacing of the series is perfect. There are ten episodes in this first season and they are each one hour long (with commercials). Each episode gives us just a little more, and yet each one also leaves us wanting just a little more. Questions are answered, but then new questions are posed. 

The Way Home is a journey worth taking. I recommend watching it with someone or finding someone who has watched it because you will want to discuss it. You will want to share theories and discuss certain events. I've seen every episode twice, except for the finale which I watched once. I re-watched the first nine episodes leading up to the finale so that I could refresh my memory on the details and I can tell you I picked up on things I hadn't noticed before or I found myself saying things like, "So that's why that happened..." And I'm certain when (not if) I watch the season yet again I will notice even more. It's that kind of series. At the time of this writing, it's been four days since the finale aired and I'm still forming theories in my mind. Oh, and by the way, I was so excited to watch the finale, that I stayed up to watch it when it first aired. Normally I record every show and watch them during the day a few days later.

Earlier this month, the series was renewed for a second season, which will likely air next year. So you have plenty of time to watch season 1 if you haven't yet. My hope is that they put as much thought into how the next season will unfold as they did into season one. For me, season two can't come quick enough. By the end of season one, some questions were answered, but we were also left with quite the cliffhanger.

Please tell me if you've watching The Way Home or if you plan to watch it. I want to chat about it!