The Way Home Season 4 Episode 3 Turns Up the Heat on Max & Alice, While Kat Lands in Jail!

Critic’s Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

3.5

The deep dive into Tessa Cooper Augustine and her disappearance into the past continues on The Way Home Season 4 Episode 3.

And while this is Elliot’s story, and he’s one of the main characters, I still can’t say I’m as invested in this new time travel pursuit as I was when we were seeking answers about the Landrys.

For some reason, this storyline, which will seemingly close out the series, isn’t as exciting.

I think there are some valid reasons for that.

The first is that, if you’re anything like me, you’re watching this unfold with trepidation and disappointment before the story even has a chance to launch.

The cancellation makes me see every choice as the choice to not travel down a path I’m more interested in seeing through.

We have entire generations of Landry history left unexplored. The Goodwins? Also still a mystery. We’re getting some answers, but if we don’t learn at some point what went so terribly wrong that Evelyn and her family were estranged from the Landrys again, it won’t sit well with me.

And while The Way Home Season 1 through The Way Home Season 3 focused on budding relationships and solidifying others, everyone seems comfortable, more or less, with their romantic choices right now.

And frankly, even with someone as unromantic as myself, it makes a considerable difference in my desire to see how it all plays out.

If the most important part of reality is cemented, then the rest is just in the details. And, unfortunately, the details just aren’t as scintillating as what we experienced in previous seasons. At least not yet.

There is some tie-in between Tessa’s disappearance and the Landry family other than Elliot’s search for his mom, of course.

For instance, Kat’s suddenly concerned about any possible romantic connection between Alice and Max now that she thinks Fern’s baby daddy was Grayson Goodwin. 

Someone in the comments or out there on the interwebs clocked the probability of Inspector Cliff being the daddy, and when we meet Griffin and look at Jacob now, that seems inevitable.

Cliff’s dark, brooding look makes much more sense than Grayson’s blonde when it comes to the family line. And Fern can’t be such a dolt that she’d seriously fall for Grayson, who will, sadly, wind up being far more sketchy than she realizes if Kat is correct.

And let’s be honest. There is zero chemistry between Alice and Noah, who seem to be together simply to alleviate Alice’s fears that she is on some kind of fate-driven future she can’t change.

Who could blame her? She has tried again and again to change the past, but she’s been unsuccessful. However, she was successful in changing the future. She proved it by mailing Del the conciliatory letter that led to her and Kat moving back to Port Haven.

It’s also interesting that Noah doesn’t challenge Alice. He’s there for her, but that’s all there is to it. They spend more time wondering about how they’ll make it through a long-distance relationship than they do about anything real.

Noah’s flying blind. He doesn’t have a path carved out for himself like Alice and Max. He’s following in his family’s footsteps, but he’s doing it without passion. 

Still, it’s not nice for Max to play down Noah’s idea to buy a restaurant to expand beyond the food truck industry. It makes me wonder if he’s unwilling to commit or settle down. 

He has a little of his grandfather in him in that respect. He’s got an artsy-fartsy mindset of expanding knowledge and challenging himself, and he wants Alice to do the same. Apparently, it’s what they’ve been talking about while Noah isn’t around.

So, I guess that story has the blossoming romance side covered, but I can’t help but compare it to Kat, Elliot, and Thomas, wondering if Kat choosing Elliot is less out of love and passion and more out of comfort and expectation.

How much of Kat’s traveling is just to bring home Tessa for Elliot? I think that even if she gets all the answers, she’ll never rid herself of the compunction to jump. Who could? 

I’d be spending less time at home and more in the past. If you’re driven by knowledge and love diving down rabbit holes to piece together mysteries, it would be impossible to give up.

And Elliot was foiled by the past AGAIN. His great getaway to the mounted fish cabin did nothing but taunt Kat with its history-filled bookshelves. Unless they leave Port Haven forever, I don’t imagine she will ever be fully satisfied in the present.

Elliot’s inability to commit is also concerning. I don’t buy the “I’m waiting for the right moment” BS anymore. If he’s unable to see how time waits for no man, then he’s not the right one for Kat.

She’s going to the ends of the earth for him (supposedly), and he can’t even propose. Their future doesn’t look so bright. Not that we’ll be around to see it without a last-minute save by Netflix. Seriously, write those letters, folks.

It’s good that Elliot finally broached the idea of children before popping the question. How on earth did they not have that conversation? The good news is that Kat only has one child. The bad news is that she’s got plans for other things in her life and knows how hard it is to raise children.

More good news: Elliot and his father are reacquainting themselves. I’m still not sure what the big secret was that Del was keeping for him. Elliot clearly knew his mom had taken off.

But understanding Vic a bit more is helpful for all of us. He seemed genuinely hurt that Tessa wouldn’t even leave Elliot in his care, as if she didn’t trust him to raise his own child. 

Even worse, it was Elliot’s own misunderstanding of the situation, stemming from his father’s actions after that event, that led to it in the first place. Talk about cyclical trauma playing out before our eyes.

Vic really loved Tessa. It wasn’t a ruse, and the pain he felt when she left was significant. You can see how he lit up asking her on a date, and you can hear it in his voice as he tries to explain it to Elliot in the present.

But given all of that, why didn’t Del and Colton try harder to reach him and help him work through the pain of her loss, even if only for Elliot’s sake? Something about that still doesn’t make sense. 

Yet even though Vic talked about Tessa like she was the sunshine in every room, it’s hard not to consider that she’s got issues we haven’t uncovered yet. She steals money from the register at Coyle’s, and that doesn’t sit well with me.

Maybe she’s not the person anyone remembers. Maybe she covers darkness with light, and the best way to protect Elliot was to leave him behind.

Her letter sure makes it sound like things turned out for her as she planned. “They tell me I don’t have long. In my heart, this feels like a fitting punishment for what I have done,” she supposedly wrote. Or someone wrote for her, which is a possibility in this world, even without the letter being typewritten.

Tessa wasn’t an Augustine by birth, but if she’s tied to them, you can understand why she might not have been a great person later. And why wouldn’t she drift toward the Augustines? If she were stuck in time, it would be natural to sidle up to them, given she’s one by marriage.

It still doesn’t explain anything about her before she left or why she left.

And yet… the 11:11 “make a wish” business regarding the clock makes me wonder whether she was a frequent traveler with Griffin before disappearing forever. As I said in my review of The Way Home Season 4 Episode 2, we have a lot more questions popping up than we have time for answers.

Yes, the Augustine brothers are pains in the butt. But they’ll clearly be less unsavory than they seem on the surface, or else the family wouldn’t have lasted in Port Haven for generations.

Still, they’re always plotting something, and this time around, Kat got caught in the melee. I’m pretty sure it was Fern who drugged Kat, though, to protect her rather than hurt her. 

Fern knows that Kat’s from the future and a relation, which might make her act more impulsively. After all, she knows the Landrys live on no matter what she does in her own life. 

Was Fern’s rendition of Tainted Love a testament to the fact that she knows Tessa, and possibly very well? It sure seems that way. And hello… matching bracelets in different time periods? That’s something.

And can we talk about Griffin for a second? First of all, he’s a handsome dude. Second of all, what a dud of an appearance after we’ve been pondering Colton’s brother for years!!

One scene is all we get? Of course, Grandma Fern loves the boy dearly, as does every mother or grandmother for the kid who walks away without looking back. 

I have no idea why it works that way, but in every family, there is at least one Griffin who is beloved well beyond his ability to reciprocate.

Maybe we’ll see more of Griffin as The Way Home Season 4 continues. 

Alice is currently ping-ponging around the 1970s, fearful one moment that her time with her friends is ending because she can’t explain her lack of aging, and the next moment, back within a time frame where that doesn’t matter.

Thank goodness for baby Lewis, or we’d have no idea what time period she was in! But it could mean she’ll end up back there during Griffin’s visit, so we’ll know a bit more about him before all is said and done.

I’m not backing down from my stance that this won’t end satisfactorily, and that all of our questions won’t be answered, or that it’s part of the reason I’m dissatisfied with the current storytelling.

Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about that. But I do appreciate how closely the various time periods are feeding into one another, even if the teasing (like with Griffin) is driving me batty.

I do have some good news while you wait for The Way Home Season 4 Episode 4. I watched it after writing this review, and we’ll see some familiar faces that will bring a smile to yours.

Until then, let me know what’s on your mind! What did I miss? Did anything stand out to you that you think will help the story move forward?

There was nowhere to logically discuss Sam asking Del to move in with him, but it felt spontaneous, right? Particularly right at the path to the pond? And is anyone really concerned about Kat’s incarceration? Pfft. Hardly, right?

Anyway, you know what to do. Share your thoughts in the comments below!