The Way Home Reveals What Led to Kat and Del’s Falling Out — Plus, Does a Grim Fate Await [Spoiler]?
After much teasing and speculation, we finally know why The Way Home’s Kat and Del didn’t speak for 17 years — and really, it had nothing to do with what went down at Lingermore.
This Sunday’s episode picks up with the aftermath of that incident back in 2007. Teen Elliot is beating himself (and the wall) up over hurting Kat (“I ruined everything tonight!” he exclaims to Nick), but a hospitalized Kat is OK (minus the head injury that explains why she doesn’t remember talking to Alice). She and Brady get a big surprise, however, when the doctor reveals that Kat is pregnant. Brady takes the opportunity to ask Kat to marry him for real, and she agrees even though just hours ago she was ready to leave him and run off to London with Elliot.
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“Our life together, it’s right. It’s what I choose,” Kat says to Brady, then asks if they can name the baby Alice.
When Kat and Brady return to the Landry farm, they run into Elliot, but Kat doesn’t want to talk to him about what happened and says sorry in a way that conveys nothing is going to happen between them after all. When it comes time to tell Del about the pregnancy, Kat first gives her a check from Brady’s parents to help save the farm. Del refuses to accept it since Kat isn’t moving back home. Kat calls Del too difficult, and Del insinuates that Jacob should be here instead of Kat. Ouch. So Kat picks up Colton’s guitar and declares that she’s taking “a piece of dad and never coming back here. Because it should have been him” instead of Del. Double ouch.
Outside, Brady asks Kat if she told Del about the pregnancy. Kat responds that her mother doesn’t deserve to know the baby. Oof.
As for Lingermore’s role in the mother-daughter falling out, it turns out that Del begged Evelyn not to press charges, thereby keeping their names out of the paper. Back in the present, Del signs the paperwork to sell the farm to the Goodwins and tells Alice that she didn’t mean what she told Kat in 2007.
Meanwhile, Nick is all of us and wonders how nobody recognized that Kat’s daughter Alice is the same Alice who was Kat’s friend in the past. “Memories are fickle. They fit the story that we tell ourselves about life,” is Elliot’s squishy explanation.
Nick gets angry at Elliot and accuses him of keeping this time travel secret to feel special and superior just like his dad. Ouch No. 3! After the pals later make up, Elliot chaperones the most awkward conversation ever between Nick and Alice that finally seems to put that ill-fated romance behind them, and not a moment too soon, because it was seriously starting to feel uncomfortable.
In the 1814 timeline, Kat discovers that Jacob is no longer in hiding because Thomas brokered a deal with Cyrus Goodwin to spare his life. She also learns why Jacob isn’t in the almanac: Elijah thought he deserved more than one line and wrote a whole page about how Jacob came into their lives. Elijah’s wife Rebecca lost a baby and wanted to leave Port Haven. But then she went to the pond and a little boy with their same last name appeared. She thought the pond granted her wish and kept his origins secret even from Elijah until she was near death. Jacob was sent to heal what was broken, and he’s why the Landrys remained in Port Haven, Elijah tells Kat. Jacob overhears the conversation, and in a fit of anger about being kept in the dark, he rips out the page from the almanac.
Even still, Jacob doesn’t want to come home with Kat, much to her dismay. For him, this time and these people are his home and family. He worries he might break apart if he returns to the present. He promises Kat that he’ll make sure that Del understands and writes the message about the stars in the almanac.
Someone who does want to go to the present: Susanna. She confesses to Kat that she won’t let Jacob marry her because it wouldn’t be fair to either of them. Then she asks Kat if there are more women like her in the future. But the pond doesn’t let Kat return home with Susanna. As Kat prepares to leave on her own and says her goodbyes, she thanks Thomas for keeping Jacob safe, and Thomas asks if she’ll allow him to carry that part of her heart.
Back in her time, Kat tells Elliot that she wanted to go to London, and that night on the staircase, she saw him and “fell a bit in love.” But like their kiss the other night, whatever was happening between them in 2007 was over before it started. For his part, Elliot says he very much meant that kiss, and to uphold his promise of no more secrets, he gives Kat his time travel journal. Kat wonders what the point is when she already knows how the story ends, then reveals that she tried to bring Susanna with her. (That detail seems to raise Elliot’s eyebrow.)
The two of them begin lamenting about Rita’s ghost tour and the spirit of the escaped smuggler who supposedly haunts the lighthouse when Kat has an epiphany: What if the convict, who was executed by British soldiers, wasn’t rattling his chains, but coins? She rushes to look in the ledger and sees Thomas’ name there. Elliot says she can’t prevent this, but Kat insists that she has to go back to at least say goodbye.
The Way Home fans, what did you think of this season’s penultimate episode? Were all your almanac questions answered? And what burning Qs do you still have ahead of the finale?
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