Inside Jacob and Del’s Reunion

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” the Season 3 premiere of  Hallmark’s “The Way Home,” which streams on Hallmark+.

“The Way Home” is back on Hallmark Channel, though it took a circuitous route to get here. On the show itself, the important news from the Season 3 premiere is that Jacob (Spencer MacPherson) is back in Port Haven in the present timeline, and has reunited with his biological mother, Del (Andie MacDowell). Yes, the new season kicked off with the highly anticipated reunion that fans have been waiting for since discovering that Jacob fell into the pond near the end of Season 1 – and it did not disappoint. There were tears and hugs all around as the Landrys finally welcomed Jacob home. 

However, Jacob’s return also meant explaining time travel to Del and creating a story to tell the rest of the world about where Jacob had been for the last 20 years. They told news crews that Jacob fell off the cliff near the fall carnival the night he disappeared and was rescued by an off-the-grid couple. His amnesia from the fall prevented him from telling them where he was really from, and the lack of internet left a young Jacob none the wiser about his family urgently looking for him in Port Haven. Kat (Chyler Leigh) told reporters that it wasn’t until Jacob’s parents were on their deathbed that they revealed where he came from, and he was able to make his way home.

A nine-month time jump skipped over the immediate follow-ups to the story, but the drama is only just beginning. Del is receiving threatening letters accusing her of lying. Viewers may assume that the letters are referring to Jacob’s return, but with this show you never really know. The school year is about to begin, and Alice (Sadie Laflemme Snow) is determined to make the most of her senior year. 

However, the pond is beckoning. Even though Jacob has returned and there’s no apparent reason for Alice or Kat to go jumping back in the water, the family listens to an old demo of Colton’s from the 1970s and Kat realizes that Alice is singing on the record. The realization comes as Alice is mysteriously pushed into the water, presumably to return to the era when Colton and Del first fell in love. 

Variety chatted with “The Way Home” creators and showrunners — and mother-daughter team — Heather Conkie and Alex Clarke to talk about that emotional reunion, Season 3 overall and exploring a new timeline. And yes, we also asked about the mysterious baby drop-off that opens the season. 

Jacob’s return is something that fans have been looking forward to for two seasons. What was it like shooting that scene and putting it together?

Heather Conkie: It’s interesting, because everyone on set was waiting for that moment as much as the fans are right now. It was so cathartic and so incredible — and then even more cathartic and incredible to go back to that footage in the edit room. We were so overcome that it was hard to get through it. We’ve been waiting for two seasons to finally see it, and it’s so beautifully shot. And the performances are so incredible. 

Alex Clarke: It was amazing to be on set that day, because everyone, even from the office, came to watch at least the wide shot of the reunion to see the first part of it. Obviously, once we got coverage on Andie and Spencer, it got a little quieter. It was very cathartic for all of us. Everyone on the crew is so invested in the scripts. To see this moment come to fruition and have everyone be present — we were all hugging, and we were all crying. 

Conkie: I think it’s lovely to give them this fairy tale moment at the top of our season, and what’s so exciting is seeing what happens after the happily ever after throughout the rest of the season. We say in Season 2 that the idea of happily ever after isn’t really a thing. Things happen after the happily ever after. What are those things? It’s not all happy, so give them a happy moment, but you also give a little pain. 

Del is accepting of time travel and the pond early on, but what is her relationship going to be with it once the shock of having Jacob back wears off?

Conkie: Like any mother, you’re so thrilled at the beginning that you don’t really care about how it happened. Then you start thinking back, and it’s really put her family through it right from the get go. It’s more than love-hate. There’s a lot of big hate for having it happen in the first place. The big questions keep rising: Why did it put my daughter and my granddaughter at risk? This thing is not good. It’s not a gift. Maybe it’s a gift for Kat and Alice — every once in a while they come home and they’re exhilarated by what they’ve seen and it’s helped heal them, and all that stuff. To Del, it’s really hard to accept, and even harder to understand and take it in at first. It’s really hard to accept and forgive. 

Clarke: There’s a key line in her first interaction with Kat after being told the truth, where she says that a mother should have known. I think that, “I should have known” is a theme for her throughout the season, as Alice starts to go back to another part of her life and see it from Alice’s perspective versus a Del perspective, and how that impacts Del as things start to become quite personal now that she’s in on the secret. 

They come up with a story to explain how Jacob is back, but it’s not like they have your writers’ room white board to explain everything. Is it going to come back to haunt them that there aren’t a lot of specifics about Jacob’s disappearance?

Clarke: That’s the beauty of those letters that we establish in Episode 1 that Del has been getting. There’s a whole drawer of them already, after nine months. We certainly will be pulling at that string. Yes, to your point, we were in the writers’ room and we were kind of imagining that path. They sit down with Kat and Elliot, and say “What’s the story?” Kat comes at it from a very journalistic point of view and says, “Here’s what we could say that won’t raise too many questions.” I don’t think they’ve thought it through completely. 

They’re leaning on the fact that the best lie is the closest to the truth. They’ve told the world that he lived in a very primitive community that didn’t have any access to the internet, kind of Amish-style. That’s actually where he was. He’d forgotten because of the trauma of falling off the cliff. It wasn’t until one of his parents were on their deathbed that they told him the truth, which is actually kind of the truth. In Season 2, Elijah said that it wasn’t until his wife was on her deathbed that she told him she found Jacob coming out of the pond and he’s from a different world. They are trying to cling to the things that they know, but trying to skew it for the modern day. Whether or not they are successful in that, we’ll have to wait and see. 

Well, speaking of mysteries, this season actually starts with a baby being left by the pond. Is this a season-long mystery or is it going to extend further into the series?

Clarke: You’ll know more about the baby by the end of this season. 

Conkie: We can confidently say that it is kind of a driver, but we often put something at the beginning that will drive us into another season. We’re tricky that way. 

Even though we don’t see the new timeline in the premiere, we do know that we’re going back to the ’70s because of Alice’s voice on Colton’s demo. What can you tease about that timeline and what we’ll find there?

Clarke: With the 1800s, with the costumes and the sets you were immediately transported. With the ’70 fashion being in, it has been more of a challenge to feel immediately transported. We really leaned into the costumes. All of the clothes that our key actors wear are vintage or Patricia Baker, our costume designer, made them herself. We didn’t go out to the stores and buy replicas of ’70s stuff. We leaned into the cars. We leaned into the music. 

Speaking of music, Alice comes back from Minneapolis in the premiere and says that she’s going into PR, and that music is just a hobby. Obviously, the cliffhanger reveals she’s not completely done with music, so how is that relationship going to evolve over the season?

Clarke: We love the idea of spending the summer with her dad, Brady, and coming back Brady-ified with the sense of “I’ve got a five-year plan. I’m really going to focus at school.” We realized that she’s going into her last year of high school this year, and that’s a bit of a wake up call. She’s a character that has spent so much time in the past, but what does her present look like? Even scarier, what does her future look like? It was really fun to talk about that for this season and the idea that she hits the ground running back in Port Haven and says, “I need to be practical. Music is a hobby and I want to do PR. I need to get good grades.” I think the ’70s for her are a reminder that she’s still young. She can still have fun and be carefree. The time for seriousness might not be there just yet. It’s another example of her falling down the rabbit hole. I think the ’70s are going to be a really lovely inspiring place for her this season. 

Conkie: She learns to not let go of dreams and to hold on to new ones. I think those lessons are learned while she’s there with teen Colton, a teen Del and a teen Evelyn. 

The ’70s are very important for the Del and Colton relationship, but how significant is it for the town of Port Haven? 

Clarke: It’s more about the world orbiting around Colton and his upbringing. We certainly have ’70s stuff that’s going on in that era peppered throughout. But really, the ’70s story was about our characters and their world. 

Conkie: And the development of a true love story between Del and Colton, and seeing it from an outsider’s perspective. 

Clarke: That’s what’s so interesting about Alice’s, and Kat’s to a certain extent, presence in the ’70s. All of a sudden, Del’s cherished memories aren’t just hers and what does that do? What does that mean? It’s also so interesting to see Evelyn through all of this, and how Alice’s friendship with Evelyn develops, because we know that Evelyn is the one that gets rejected. Alice sees this love story between Del and Coltonfrom a completely different point of view. 

This interview has been edited and condensed.