‘The Way Home’ Season 2 Episode 2: Kat Looks to the Past While Del Considers the Future [Recap]

Time travel is a tricky thing. In The Way Home’s first season, Kat, Alice, and Elliot thought they had figured out some of the pond’s rules, including that you couldn’t change the past and that it would always send you where you needed to go. But it turns out the pond still has plenty of secrets, as we’re beginning to discover in season 2 of the Hallmark Channel series. In episode 2, “Hanging By a Moment,” Kat and Alice go on separate journeys, while Del and Elliot face their own challenges in the present. 

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Way Home Season 2 Episode 2.]

Kat travels to 1814 in ‘The Way Home’ Season 2 Episode 2 

The Way Home’s season 2 premiere ended on a dramatic note. Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow) and her mom Kat (Chyler Leigh) jumped into the pond together, thinking that it would send them both back to the 19th century, where they hoped to learn more about what happened to Kat’s missing brother Jacob. But the pond ripped them apart. Alice ended up in the year 2000, while Kat went all the way back to 1814, where a man shot her as she emerged from the pond. 

Thankfully, Kat’s wound wasn’t fatal. But she’s in bad shape, fading in and out of consciousness as a woman (Watson Rose) cares for her in the basement of a general store. She’s also a prisoner. The man who shot Kat orders the woman to keep her locked up. But Kat makes a break for it. As she flees, she runs into a stern man who identifies himself as Cyrus Goodwin (Tim Post). (The Goodwin family founded Port Haven, as we learned last week.) He’s ready to toss Kat in jail for making a spectacle of herself, but fortunately, Kat’s nurse rides up on a horse and whisks her away.

Who is Kat’s savior? Her name is Susannah Augustine. Elliot’s last name is Augustine, so this has to be one of his ancestors, right? Susannah’s a little prickly, to say the least, but she does reveal a few key pieces of information after she takes Kat to the pond. The man who shot Kat is named Thomas, and he thought he was shooting a deer. That sounds suspicious. Does he know something about the pond that would lead him to hang out there with a gun and shoot whoever emerged? More importantly, Susannah reveals that a boy named Jacob lives on the Landry farm. 

Has Kat finally found her missing brother? It sure seems that way. But she’s so frantic to find Alice that she does not look for Jacob right away, so we don’t know for sure.   

Alice tries to make peace with Elliot 

As Kat gets to know some of Port Haven’s original residents, Alice is frantically trying to find her mom. But rather than connecting her with Kat, the pond keeps sending her back to 2000, even though Kat had told her that she didn’t make any more visits to the past after Colton’s funeral. 

In 2000, Alice meets young Elliot (David Webster), who is having a rough time. He’s still mourning Colton (Jefferson Brown), who was a father figure in his life. (Elliot’s real dad took off for Mexico at some point.) Plus, teen Kat has left Port Haven to be with Brady. In short, he’s miserable, and at first, he takes it out on Alice, whom he blames for ruining his life. But later, they bond over their feelings of loss. 

Back in the present, Alice also turns to adult Elliot (Evan Williams) for help. But he’s not exactly sympathetic. He’s upset with both Kat and Alice for not giving up time travel and tells Alice he isn’t interested in playing “the Giles to [her] Buffy.”

Del fights to save the Landry farm 

As Alice and Kat flit from present to past and back again, Del (Andie MacDowell) is dealing with her own problems. She’s at risk of losing the family farm. But rather than open up to either Kat or Alice about what’s going on, she turns to Elliot. She asks him to help her work on a business plan to turn her extra acreage into a communal farm. Unfortunately, despite Elliot’s help, the town council rejects her proposal. 

Del is also the only member of the Landry family with whom Elliot has a solid relationship at this point. Things between him and Alice are still tense. And despite that kiss that he and Kat shared, they aren’t exactly ready to pick up their romance. Elliot’s angry that Kat is still time-traveling. Meanwhile, once Kat realizes that Elliot never told her about Alice’s other trips to the past, she’s livid. A blow-out argument ensues. 

Kat tells Elliot she thinks she has a chance to bring Jacob home. But he doesn’t think it’s possible to change the past. 

“When has that ever worked?” he says. “Look what it did to you. Look what it did to me.”

Kat’s not interested in Elliot’s woe-is-me lament. 

“You just wanted me to love you,” she replies. “You wanted me to focus only on you. And when I couldn’t do that, you bailed.”

Elliot says she has it all wrong. 

“I left because I couldn’t deal with Colton’s death and your involvement in it,” he says.

Elliot’s words hit Kat where it hurts. She’s already carrying guilt over feeling like she and Alice caused Colton’s fatal accident. To hear Elliot say he blames her has to hurt. And while Elliot’s anger is understandable, it’s hardly fair. As he himself has pointed out, changing the past seems impossible. Time is a loop, and Kat was always going to go back and be present at her dad’s death. But Kat still hasn’t given up hope that she can change things.

“Just watch me fix it,” she tells Elliot. The episode ends with Kat emerging from the pond in 1814, where she catches a glimpse of a laughing boy. Is it Jacob? 

Other takeaways from this episode of The Way Home: 

• Alice decides to stay in Port Haven rather than spend the summer in Minneapolis with her dad. 
• One of Elliot’s ancestors wrote an early history of Port Haven. Could it include clues about Jacob? 
• What happened in the Goodwin mansion when Kat and Elliot were young? The place obviously carries some big (and seemingly not good) memories for both. 
• Del has several imagined conversations with Colton. In one, he urges her to tell Kat “everything … no more secrets.” Is he just talking about the farm, or are there other things she’s hiding from her daughter? She looks pretty nervous when Kat says she wants to write a book about the Landry family history. 
• Del gives Alice a copy of Through the Looking Glass. Is this another clue that she knows about the pond? 

New episodes of The Way Home Season 2 airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel. Episodes also stream the next day on Hallmark Movies Now. 

For more on the entertainment world and exclusive interviews, subscribe to Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s YouTube channel.