‘The Way Home’ Season 2 Episode 3: Kat Finds More Clues About Jacob, Del Makes a Connection [Recap]

Has Kat finally found what (or rather, who) she’s been looking for? In the Jan. 28 episode of Hallmark Channel’s The Way Home, she seemed to get confirmation that her long-missing brother Jacob was alive in 1814. But finding him – and bringing him home – might not be as easy as she hoped, as she discovers in season 2’s third episode, “When You Were Young.” Meanwhile, Del finds herself reflecting on her own past, while Alice deals with challenges in the present. 

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Way Home Season 2 Episode 3.]

Kat gets surprising news about Jacob in ‘The Way Home’ Season 2 Episode 3 

Kat is back in 1814, chasing after a young boy she thinks is Jacob. But he turns around, and she realizes it’s not her brother. However, the boy still has a connection to her family. He’s the Jacob Landry that Susannah Augustine mentioned during Kat’s last visit to the past. He’s also the grandson of Elijah Landry, whom Kat meets just after she emerges from the pond. 

Kat tells Elijah that she’s a traveler searching for her lost brother. He invites her into his home, where Kat spots a carving on a table that she recognizes as Jacob’s special symbol. And as Elijah prepares some food, he hums Colton’s song. Kat asks how he knows the tune, and he says his son used to hum it when he was young. 

As Kat talks with Elijah, she learns that Jacob is alive, but he’s no longer a child. After he appeared on the Landry farm more than 20 years earlier, Elijah and his family took him and raised them as their own. (The younger Jacob Landry is the child of Elijah’s other son, William.) Unfortunately, Jacob is not in Port Haven. He’s away delivering a ship for the war effort. 

Kat decides to reveal a partial truth to Elijah. She explains that Jacob is her younger brother, but she’s vague about how he was separated from his family. Elijah doesn’t question this story, which seems a bit odd. Is he just trusting, or does he know (or suspect) there’s something unusual about Jacob’s origins?

Elijah appears to take Kat’s odd tale at face value, but Jacob’s fiancee, who is none other than Susannah Augustine, suspects there’s something else going on. When she walks Kat back to the pond, she points out Kat’s odd clothing and that she vanished the last time she saw her. Also, Kat told Susannah she was looking for a little boy, not a grown man. Plus, Jacob has never mentioned having a sister. Susannah draws a dagger and demands answers, but rather than trying to explain herself, Kat jumps into the pond and vanishes again. 

Kat wants to bring Jacob home 

Back in the present, Kat opens up to Elliot about what she learned about Jacob. She’s determined not just to go back to the past again and meet him, but also to bring him home to the present. But Elliot points out that Jacob is no longer the little boy that she knew. He’s an adult, and he’s built a life for himself in 1814. There’s a chance he might not want to return to Kat’s time. That’s not what Kat wants to hear. 

“This is where Jacob belongs. With us, here, in this time,” she says. 

At the end of the episode, Kat makes a discovery that seems to further complicate Jacob’s story. She finds a stack of Polaroids of the pond taped underneath a desk. We don’t know for certain who took the photos. But Jacob had a Polaroid camera he used to take pictures before he disappeared. Could he have taken these photos, and if so, why? Was he drawn to the pond, rather than falling in by accident? Could he have even traveled before his disappearance? That doesn’t seem likely, but anything is possible.

Alice takes a summer job 

With her mom once again back in 1814, Alice is spending some quality time with Del. She’s figured out that Del is having some problems leasing her farmland, and she fears that she’s facing financial ruin. While helping her grandma out at the farmer’s market, she blurts out something about Del losing the farm. Del tells her everything is fine, but unfortunately, everyone in town has overheard, leading to an outpouring of sympathy (and pies). 

Since she decided not to spend her summer in Minneapolis with her dad, Alice has been planning on helping her mom out at the paper. But Kat hires the new-in-town Casey Goodwin as an intern. (Casey is the late Evelyn Goodwin’s grandchild.) Alice takes a job at the cafe instead, but she isn’t exactly a natural when it comes to the food service industry. 

Alice and Casey don’t exactly hit it off when they first meet, but given that all of Alice’s friends are out of town for the summer, our guess is that it won’t take too long for a friendship to blossom between them. Kat has assigned Casey the task of digging into the archives her grandma left the paper, which could lead to more clues about Jacob and the Landry family. 

Del reflects on her past 

While Del downplayed her concerns about the farm’s future to Alice, it’s obvious they’ve been weighing on her mind. But she gets some solace thanks to a strange horse that’s shown up in her fields. The mystery animal sparks some memories for Del, including her late husband’s promise to buy her a horse and his dreams for the land. She also opens up to Alice about how she lost her horse as a child when her father ran into financial trouble. 

The always practical Del knows that she should sell the Landry acreage that she can’t farm herself. But she can’t bring herself to do it. “Colton had such big dreams for the farm,” she tells Alice. “A legacy to leave for the next generation. I don’t know if I have the heart to let go of that dream.”

Other takeaways and questions from this episode of The Way Home: 

• Jacob built the Port Haven lighthouse.
• Elliot apologizes to Kat for blaming her for Colton’s death.
• We get more details on Elliot’s lonely teenage years, particularly his lack of a relationship with his distant, absent father. 
• Elliot slips up and mentions a pact that he and Alice made when he was younger. But Alice knows they haven’t made a pact, which means she must make another trip to the past.  
• Elliot doesn’t provide a straight answer when Alice confronts him, but he does offer a warning about not rushing to go back in time. “You can never go back to the way things were,” he says. “People grow up.” 
• Del meets the horse’s owner, Sam Bishop, who happens to be the new neighbor who doesn’t want to lease her farm. But even though he’s not interested in her land, he’s clearly interested in Del, setting the stage for a potential romance for her character. 
• Why did Elijah and his wife not put Jacob’s name in the family almanac?

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.