When it comes to The Way Home is that it is always going to surprise us and there are sometimes where we’re very confused. This episode – color us confused, because what the actual hell is happening? What are the clues that we’re missing? WHO IS TESSA?
I think that there are a lot of clues through the season that we have missed and if I had the time I would do a big rewatch. Unfortunately, I don’t so I am trying to remember all of the things that I have seen.
JACOB
Every time this show cuts to Jacob in Toronto I feel like I personally am being gaslit. Like sir… what exactly are you doing here? Because right now it feels less like “finding himself” and more like “avoiding literally every emotional responsibility tied to his family.”
Jacob is CONFUSING.
And the Thomas visions? Absolutely making me think that he’s gone insane. The show keeps framing them like they’re meaningful breadcrumbs, but I don’t trust this show. At this point I’m standing in the woods with no flashlight trying to figure out if we’re headed toward revelation or a full breakdown
. Maybe both.
What’s interesting though is that Jacob seems convinced distance means that he’s protecting his family. He thinks staying away is helping Del, helping the family legacy, helping Kat and Alice — meanwhile Del is emotionally disintegrating in real time. She needs her son. The irony is very The Way Home: the harder someone tries to outrun the family story, the deeper they accidentally fall into it.
And Jacob needs his family.
Even that random flirtation with the woman on the blind date felt suspiciously intentional. This show does not waste scenes. If someone makes prolonged eye contact in Port Haven, it probably means they’re connected to a 200-year-old mystery.
Don’t judge me, I don’t make the rules. I just follow them.
And then Elliott showing up in Toronto? The hostility from Jacob felt way bigger than “I don’t want to come home.” It felt like fear. I need to know what he’s afraid of. I think that Jacob knows something that would completely shift everyone’s understanding of what’s happening. We’re running out of episodes, which means the show is either about to answer everything or somehow create twelve new questions.
Again, I don’t make the rules.
RELATED: The Way Home Season 4, Episode 1 Review: Show Me The Way To Go Home
FERN
Fern might genuinely be the most important person on this show and also the person I understand the least. Then again, I don’t think that the characters in the show Every scene with her feels like the writers dangling a key in front of us while refusing to tell us what door it opens.
Her admitting that she drugged Kat and got her arrested “for protection” somehow raised MORE concerns than it resolved. Protect her from the Augie boys… okay sure… but what exactly does Fern know that makes everyone else look mildly terrified all the time? Because this woman carries secrets like they are federal documents. She’s Fort Knox. Well, maybe Fort Fern.
And then there’s Tessa. WHO IS THIS WOMAN REALLY? Because Fern seeing her in 1979 and absolutely unraveling emotionally was one of the biggest “oh this is deeply important” moments of the season. Fern and Tessa’s relationship is sending me into the WTF IS HAPPENING part of my mind. The reaction was too visceral to be random. It wasn’t dislike — it was fear, anger, recognition, trauma… all four at once.
The frustrating thing is that Fern clearly understands the bigger picture in a way no one else does. She’s operating three steps ahead while the rest of us are making conspiracy boards out of yarn and hoping we don’t look crazy. At this point I fully believe the entire mythology of the show is sitting inside Fern’s brain and we lost some stuff when she passed so downloading the info from her brain is important.
NICK
Nick returning somehow manages to be comforting and deeply chaotic at the same time. Which honestly feels correct for him. Nick is chaos for everyone.
I still cannot fully process the Alice/Nick dynamic without my brain buffering for several seconds. The show insists on keeping their emotional connection alive, but every interaction comes with this strange time-travel aftertaste that makes me go “hmm… okay… anyway… weird.”
But analytically, Nick serves a really important role now: he normalizes the pond mythology. Elliott, Kat, and Alice don’t have to constantly explain or defend themselves around him. He accepts it. Actually, he’s excited by it. That changes the energy completely because for once there’s someone responding to time travel with curiosity instead of existential exhaustion.
And honestly? Him wanting to travel feels inevitable. If your entire life has been emotionally shaped by a time travel event, of course you’d eventually want answers. The pond has been haunting Nick long before he knew it existed.
It’s changed his life.
Now HIS BIO FATHER showing up? That feels loaded. A famous stage actor suddenly appearing with charm and emotional availability feels almost suspiciously polished for this show. And the flirtation with Del immediately made my alarm bells go off. Nobody enters Port Haven casually anymore. Every new person feels like they’re either hiding a devastating secret or about to accidentally expose one.
RELATED: The Way Home Season 4, Episode 2: Want Answers, Get None, More Confused Than Ever
DEL
Del is carrying this entire family on her back while simultaneously carrying about forty years of unresolved trauma, and it’s becoming impossible to ignore how much she’s suppressing.
The reveal about her pregnancy in 1979 feels massive. Not just because Kat knows nothing about it, but because this show never introduces family history without a larger purpose. The secrecy around that baby immediately changes how we view Del’s emotional isolation. If she lost the baby, that grief clearly became something she buried so deeply that even her children never fully understood her.
And honestly? The fact that Alice witnessing that moment happened alongside Fern’s breakdown about Tessa feels narratively connected. The show keeps layering these timelines together for a reason. 1979 isn’t just a nostalgic backdrop anymore — it’s starting to feel like the fracture point for literally everything.
Also Sam continues to stress me out. I need him to back away from the farm immediately. His insistence that Del leave the land feels weirdly aggressive, especially in a show where homes and places carry generational meaning. The farm isn’t just property — it’s identity, memory, history. It is Colton.
Asking Del to leave it feels like asking her to abandon herself.
And then the ending. DEL ON THE GROUND? EXCUSE ME? The image of her seeing Cole in the woods before being thrown from the horse felt almost ghostlike, like the show is blurring memory, grief, and reality again. Which means now I’m left wondering if Cole is actually there, if Del is hallucinating, or if this family genuinely cannot walk outside without encountering time travel temporal event.
KAT
Kat being “grounded” from time travel was maybe the funniest thing in the episode because absolutely no one — including Kat — believed that was enforceable for even five minutes. Time travel is not just a tool for her anymore; it’s become compulsion, coping mechanism, obsession, and emotional escape all wrapped together.
And honestly, that’s becoming her biggest flaw. Kat’s intentions are almost always good, but she’s increasingly disconnected from the life happening directly in front of her because she’s consumed by solving the larger mystery. She keeps chasing answers while unintentionally neglecting the emotional fallout around her.
Her distrust of Fern is completely justified though. Fern operates like someone who knows the ending of the story but refuses to tell the class. The problem is Kat is now desperate enough for answers that she’ll keep going back anyway.
Closing the newspaper to write a book about Port Haven’s history feels symbolic too. Kat is no longer interested in documenting current events — she wants the truth underneath the town itself. Which honestly feels like the entire thesis of the series at this point: history is not dead here. It’s active. It’s breathing. It’s interfering.
And Elliott… listen. I still don’t fully buy into them romantically, but I do understand why they feel for each other and circle each other constantly. Their relationship works less like a romance and more like two people trying to survive. They understand each other in ways nobody else can. But to me, it just feels forced and I hate that.
But Del clearly knows something about Elliott. The show keeps hinting at gaps in his story, and every time we get close to answers, it pivots away. Which naturally means whatever reveal is coming is probably catastrophic. This series loves withholding information until the exact moment it can emotionally devastate us, and frankly I am tired but also seated every week regardless.
OTHER THOUGHTS
- I don’t trust Tessa. She’s hiding something. What it is, I am not understanding
- Tessa and Alice making a deal is weird to me
- Alice getting Nicks advice to time travel – weird.
- Jacob needs to go back to Port Haven
- The way Jacob treated Elliott isn’t okay
- I like Nicks Dad
- Nick being so excited to time travel was FUNNY.
RELATED: The Way Home Season 4, Episode 3: We Can’t Even Trust Grandma Fern
