“Maybe just a little time travel on the side,” Kat says to Elliott and I have to wonder is the time travel a good or a bad thing?
After this episode, I am leaning to bad. Very bad.
The truth about The Way Home is that it’s made me wonder if I would ever want to know the past. The holes in the past seem to be something that I can deal with because what if it’s worse than what I know? What if the holes are something that we all need in order to live with choices that we have made?
I am not sure.
When it comes to this episode of The Way Home, grief plays a big part. Grief and understanding. Kat’s lied to her Mom and Alice and said she’s gone to a spa for the weekend. But what she’s done has gone to Elliott’s and has a little time travel on the side.
She needs to know what her Dad did. She needs to know what he was doing. And it turns out that what Colton was doing was going to grief support. What I felt like was an invasion of his privacy was Kat sitting in. Though you would think that it would be enough for her, to know he wasn’t cheating, for Kat it opens the door to her wanting to go back again to figure out the accident.
Alice wants to be done with the past, but I don’t think that anyone truly ever is. When Del tells her that the pond freezes over for the winter though, she finds herself on their doorstep. Kat is with Brady, but Del and Colton invite her in so she can dry off. She finds her way to Kats room, where she underlines a passage in Alice in Wonderland.
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
– Alice in Wonderland
Is that her goodbye to the past? Her last time seeing her Grandpa Colton? She asks him to play a song he taught her and he admits he hasn’t played much of anything lately. One has to wonder, has his grief consumed him to the point where existence is his only way to be? He’s looking for a way to find a way to his wife, to his daughter, but he’s lost.
He misses his son.
I think that Alice going to the past has changed both her and her grandparents. I think to a certain point Del knows about her time travel. When she returns she heads straight into Del’s arms, in tears, and tells her that she’s glad that she’s still here.
I can appreciate the love that she feels for Del. I can appreciate that she needs her. Del and her have a girls night, where Del wants to listen and do the best she can. Alice admits that she understands why she put the stuff in the basement.
Alice calls her Grandma, and Del is thrilled.
The time that Elliott is spending with Kat is making Elliott want to remember the past even more. He heads to the archives and then home. The pond wouldn’t let Kat go and she’s worried about it. She tells Elliott that she trusts him and explains that she should have kept holding his hand (she grabbed it when they were kids) and never let go.
Kat says she’s never seen more clearly and kisses Elliott, but I think she’s blinded. She’s blinded by her want to see her Dad. When she finally gets back, it’s the day that Colton is heading to grief therapy and asks Kat if she wants a ride.
There’s just something about her listening to her Dad at his most vulnerable is intrusive. He’s talking about trying to protect Kat and how she is everything that he wishes that he could be. He is open to telling Kat and Del about the group. Maybe that – maybe that is the way back home.
Coltons grief is paralyzing. I couldn’t help the tears falling down my face. I couldn’t help how hard it was to watching her talk to her Dad in the truck, and how she lost her Dad in accident. She tells him how this person that she depended on the most, was just gone. Colton letting her express her emotions was a lot.
“Our future is stronger than our past. It’s our legacy.”
-Colton
Alice sees her Mom running and now knows that she time traveled. Kat is heading back to Elliott’s and telling him about the past. Kat notices that the grief group was on a Thursday, and she wants to go back and be in the group, and save her Dad. She wants to go back and try to save her Dad.
Elliott goes off on her and tells her that he needs her in the present. Elliott needs her now, to plan a future. To be here. When I see him in so much agony, I wonder, will things with him and Kat work out.
I don’t believe that if it doesn’t that it would be Elliott’s fault. I don’t wanna place blame, but Kat is so stubborn that she doesn’t see straight. Alice shows up and asks her Mom to come home, to stop going back. After all you can’t change the past. It’s inevitable.
But Kat has hope and there is a funny thing about hope – once you feel it, it gets into your blood, your heart, and soul and never leaves you.
But Kat, she’s driven by Alice, and wanting to be there for her. So she does as she asks, and goes home. Though I think that she goes home to show Del that she knows something about her Dad, the grief support group, everything. Kat wants her Mom to remember the right version of the past, not the wrong one. Not the one that will leave her devastated and questioning everything.
Colton loved her. I can see how much Del loves him too, when she imagines that Colton is there and they are dancing. I really love seeing the side of her that has emotion, because sometimes she just seems so cold and distant.
She seems so cold.
When Alice asks Kat to stay the night with her, I loved the mother/daughter moment, and I love that she shows her the Alice in Wonderland quote she underlined. But I hate that Kat couldn’t leave the past in the past and journeyed back.
And I hate more what happened next. Kat went back to the past to try and stop her Dad’s death. Elliott reads that witnesses saw two women running through the woods. He knows that is Kat and Alice. And he knows that he can’t help them.
Alice goes back to try and stop her Mom. But what happens is that they struggle and Colton swerves to miss hitting Alice. If Kat hadn’t gone back – what would have happened? My heart broke in a million pieces.
I don’t think I have ever cried so hard. Kat goes to try and get her Dad, and his last words are that he loves her. I broke. Like completely broke down seeing her tears. Colton dies in Kat’s arms.
Alice tells Kat they have to go and reaches out to her. When the two take off running, I cried for them to run faster. I wanted them to go back to the present. I don’t know how they will ever recover from this moment. I don’t know how the viewers ever will.
