The Way Home has been pretty good at upending traditional Hallmark expectations, and The Way Home Season 2 Episode 5 was a doozy in that regard.
Elliot’s past is slowly being revealed to be much worse than anticipated, and everything we thought we’d started sussing out from 1814 has also been turned on its head.
But if you’ve been paying attention, at least some of this doesn’t come as a surprise.
When we’re watching a show about a town’s history and the interconnectedness of its residents (and main characters), Founder’s Day would have special significance.
Here, it worked to dramatically upend everything we thought we knew and plant the seeds of future stories that will may not even come to fruition during The Way Home Season 2.
It certainly feels like The Way Home is playing the long game, and since it’s one of the most successful series Hallmark has produced, we can at least feel comfortable that our investment will pay off.
The Founder’s celebration brought to light dark memories for Elliot, who had not been forthcoming with Kat over the years about his relationship with his father.
Judging by the amount of time Elliot spent with the Landrys, it was clearly fraught with tension. As we learn more, it’s almost hard to imagine why Elliot would turn to the Landrys, given the rivalry his dad Victor felt with the other founding families.
Elliot’s perspective on time travel wavers like an ocean tide, but it’s not hard to imagine that whatever Kat experiences in 1914 will impact how he feels about his father and the treatment of the Augustine family throughout history.
It surprised me to learn that the Augustines were the town historians. That kind of familial thread would seem right up Elliot’s alley. Even as a kid, he was attuned to current events, so knowing about his ancestors should have instilled in him a sense of pride.
Vic only saw their lack of money and his hard work with little reward. As a fisherman, it might seem he had laid down his family’s legacy, but he was also interested in the historical aspects of Port Haven.
His reasoning was off-kilter, but the interest remained. The way he could scour family records to find unique details didn’t give him pleasure, though, as he only saw that his family wasn’t rewarded for their part in creating Port Haven.
Instead of pride at his family’s accomplishments, Elliot pulled away from the Augustine legacy and snuggled up with the Landrys, which must have been difficult for Vic, but it was his own fault.
Kat shared a little bit more about Susana Augustine with Elliot, but just when it seemed like that would help him recover some of what he lost at the hands of his father, he swung it around and read the situation with his own biases.
Elliot: Why does this keep happening to us? You used another member of my family!
Kat: No, you have been a very willing part of this, OK? Even when I tried to keep you out of it, you came to me. You remember that.
Elliot: Don’t you see what bringing Susana in on this will do to her? I can say from experience it will literally ruin her life, Kat!
Kat: Just stop! You hide behind your talk of rules and the pond having its reason, but you have never lived it, so don’t you dare judge what you can’t understand. I don’t know why you were always in such a mood on Founder’s Day, but how about you stop taking your family’s insecurities out on me?!
We should have known that as soon as Alice began tempting fate by bringing Kat and Elliot together, something would draw them apart.
I’ve mused about this elsewhere in my The Way Home reviews, but it’s worth mentioning again that Elliot’s lack of interest in all things Augustine is surprising. He’s so inside of his own head that he doesn’t even recognize how lucky he is to get a peek into his heritage.
Instead of realizing how incredible it was that he was a chip off the ol’ Augustine block by accepting the reality of time travel and aiding Kat in her travels just like Susana did before him, he focused on the negative and how she might have suffered by knowing about it.
And frankly, the more time we have to think about that pain, the more ludicrous it seems that he’d allow himself to be stifled by anything he learned from Alice while he was a teenager.
If he bothered to ask questions, he might have already learned why Susana took it so well and how she and Jacob bonded by feeling like outsiders — that as a “witch” in her time, she was already pegged by the elites as a nuisance and nothing Kat could have said would make it any harder on her.
On the contrary, feeling a kinship with other outsiders provides a sense of belonging you can’t find otherwise. Maybe that’s what’s been missing in Elliot’s life. He’s spent so long trying to be a Landry that he lost touch with what it means to be an Augustine.
Perhaps his unexpected speech will pave the way for a new future for him.
Whatever is to come, it seems unlikely that he and Kat are a love affair written in the stars. Not only am I beginning to think they may be related, but now we know that Thomas Coyle could be a great love for Kat Landry.
Every good love story begins with antagonism.
See Claire and Jamie on Outlander, or Seeley and Temperance on Bones, or Beckett and Castle on Castle. The more they irk each other to begin with, the more likely they are to fall in love.
Kat and Thomas indulged in a pretty irksome conversation that got sparks flying between them.
I’ve been wondering about the possibility that Kat falls in love in the past (see that Outlander reference again!) because things don’t line up for her and Elliot and because the phrase “My Katherine” isn’t right for a brother to paint on a portrait of his sister.
My Katherine is a phrase of love. It’s incredibly intimate and possessive. Most sibling relationships are not built like that, even when they’ve been torn in two by a time-traveling pond.
Kat: Paintbrushes?
Thomas: The pond is yours, my Katherine.
After their flirtatious banter, we didn’t need both to see the paintbrushes and for him to call her his Katherine, but it goes a long way to firing up the neurons in our brains to conjure up an entirely different future for our Kat.
That’s especially true now that Kat has seen her brother only for him to be whisked away again, a brief encounter during which the reality about Jacob’s friendship with Thomas was thrust into the spotlight.
Thomas and Jacob are close. Thomas and Jacob worked hand in hand to get the Goodwin ship to Canada and for Jacob’s return.
But Thomas wasn’t honest with Kat about why Jacob was using his name as an alias on the ship’s passenger manifest. Jacob is wanted as a traitor, and from the way Thomas ran to the water’s edge, his hand on his pistol, he knew arrest was a possibility.
What he failed to consider was that Jacob’s sister could send their carefully built house of cards to come crashing down.
Just like Kat was responsible for Colton’s death, she was also responsible for Jacob’s arrest for treason. She wondered if she could live with herself if she lost him again. Can she live with herself if she caused the end for Jacob as she did for Colton?
Maybe now Kat can change events. Maybe this is her chance to ensure that Jacob’s name returns to the history books. Or maybe he’ll leave 1814 and return to the present to escape execution.
They mentioned treason and execution already this season, so things aren’t looking great for Jacob.
Would it be wrong for me to hope that Kat remains in the past with Thomas so that Jacob can return to the present, thus saving his life? Could the two time periods exist on one show? It worked for Outlander.
Maybe Elliot is the Randall of the equation, and he’ll never have Kat’s love the way she falls for Thomas. Kat’s scenes with Thomas hold so much promise that swinging the story in that direction would be both unexpected and an incredible adventure.
This episode really packed a punch, revving the engines for the second half of the season.
There are so many possibilities ahead, and it’s unclear where the story will take us right now.
You’ve read my thoughts. What are yours? Does “Long Time Gone” mark a turning point in The Way Home storytelling?
Hit the comments and share your thoughts below!
Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She’s a member of the Critic’s Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on X and email her here at TV Fanatic.
