The Way Home Season 1: The Metaphysical Mystery Drama on Hallmark
If you have not seen The Way Home, then you have missed out. The Way Home is a Hallmark Channel original series. It premiered on January 15, 2023. Hallmark describes the series as “a time travel drama about the lives of three generations of strong, willful, and independent Landry family women who embark on a journey to find their way back to each other while learning important lessons about their family’s past.” You might wonder why what looks more like a female-driven family melodrama would find its way here, onto a blog featuring mysteries and female detectives. That’s because not every mystery involves a death, nor is it without melodrama. Some of the best film mysteries of the 1940s were female melodramas (okay, they involved death but the melodrama was far more important in many ways). Don’t believe me? Then take a look at Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945) or The Man I Love (Walsh, 1947).
The mystery in The Way Home is not as straightforward as it might first seem. Our narrative starts like any great melodrama, with trouble in the home. We meet Kat Landry (Chyler Leigh), and Alice Dhawan (Sadie Laflamme-Snow), a mother and daughter with a strained relationship that isn’t helped by the fact they are moving back to a small town in New Brunswick (Canada). More stress ensues when we learn they will be living on the Landry family farm with Kat’s estranged mother (Andie MacDowell). But that isn’t the worst of it. Twenty years earlier, Kat’s little brother, Jacob (Remy Smith), disappeared without a trace and shortly after, her father, Colton (Jefferson Brown) died in a tragic car accident.
Once Kat and Alice start to settle in, Alice discovers a lake in a forest. Her bracelet falls off her wrist and she jumps in to get it—only to emerge in the same spot, twenty years before. She meets her mom, at 16. A friendship ensues but this time-travel sets off a chain of tragic events that reverberate through time.
Alice starts jumping back and forth through the lake time portal to try and solve the mystery of her missing uncle (who is still a little boy in the 1990s). She eventually confesses what she is doing to her mother, Kat, who decides to prevent her brother’s disappearance. Does her plan work? You’ll have to watch to find out.
While you can certainly start watching Season 2, I strongly suggest watching Season 1. It is only 10 episodes and you could easily binge-watch them. For anyone who grew up in the 1990s, you will enjoy all the music and simpler times, before social media.