'The Way Home' Season 3, Ep. 1 Recap: Jacob Reunites With His Family & Kat Uncovers a Whole New Mystery

With a show so full of twists and turns like The Way Home, it’s no secret that fans were at the edge of their seats to see what happens in season 3. But, luckily, the long-awaited season premiered on Friday, Jan. 3 on Hallmark (and Jan. 4 on Hallmark+) and it’s answered some cliffhangers, and only added to the mysteries.

To get us started, season 3 started right where season 2 left off: with adult Jacob (Spencer MacPherson) returning to his home in the present with Kat’s (Chyler Leigh) help.

“Mom?” Jacob says and he walks in the door and recognizes his childhood home. “Jacob is that you?” his mom Del (Andie MacDowell) says with tears in her eyes. “How is it possible?”

Knowing how much Del suffered with Jacob’s absence and Colton’s (Jefferson Brown) death, it’s safe to say fans have been rooting for this moment since the beginning. Del needs a bit of good news for a change, right?

Now that Jacob is back, it also means that Kat and Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow) can’t hide the pond’s time-traveling abilities from Del any longer. “The pond isn’t just the pond,” Kat tells her mom, passing him his handwritten life story from Elijah (Stuart Hughes), “This is Jacob’s story.”

While Del and Jacob are having their long-awaited reunion, Kat runs over to find Elliot (Evan Williams). While announcing Jacob’s return, she lets it slip that her love interest in the 1800s, Thomas Coyle (Kris Holden-Reid), faked his own death. Of course, Elliot’s a little shaken by the news – but Kat quickly swoops in. “I choose you,” she says, taking him in her arms. “I choose here and now.” It’s like everything fans have always wanted for them!

Another sweet moment happens when Elliot barges into the Landry home and hugs Jacob. “Oh I see,” Jacob jokes as Kat gives him a kiss on the cheek. “Took you long enough.” Jacob, we couldn’t agree more!

Later on, while Del and Kat are taking a breather on the porch, Del admits she’s still having a hard time wrapping her head around all the time travel. “Why didn’t you tell me Katherine? Why didn’t you let me in?” she asks her daughter. “Because I didn’t want to hurt you even more if I couldn’t bring him home,” she responds.

A scene later, Elliot and the Landrys sit down together and come up with a plan for how to tell the world about Jacob’s return. Their solution is to lie and say that Jacob left, was found by an “off-the-grid” family and was only told the truth by one of the parent’s deathbeds.

Then, as surprising as it is, we got a “9 months later” time jump.

Nine months later, not only are Kat and Elliot still together (yay!) but they’re as cute as can be before Kat heads to work. There, she unwraps the novel Susanna Augustine (Watson Rose) had written about the founding of Port Haven. “Your name in print, finally,” she says.

Back in the Landry home, Del gets some menacing mail. “Your lie is known,” the letter reads. “Time will tell.”

“You gotta tell someone Delly, the police,” her vision of Colton says after she opens it. “What would I say?” she responds. “Because whoever is sending these is right. We are a lie. There are holes and someone’s poking at them.”

Another major plot point in episode one is about whether Colton could time travel or not. While poking around Alice’s room, Kat uncovers a secret message in one of her dad’s books. “No curse is on the water,” it reads. “Believe in magic. Come to the pond.”

“If Colton had known about the pond all that time, he would’ve said something,” Elliot says as he and Kat brainstorm.

As the episode goes on, Jacob is also riddled with moments where Colton tells him to not enter the pond and that he loves Jacob “no matter what happens and no matter what will happen.” “Never come here, do you hear me?” he told young Jacob about the pond. “I think Dad knew something about the pond,” Jacob tells Kat later on.

Also in this episode, Kat returns to the 1800s on a mission to let Elijah and Susanna know how Jacob is doing. “Please heed what I say: you need to go, now,” Susanna angrily says in return. “You coming back here, it needs to end.”

Startled at the reception, Kat heads back to the pond, only to be met by Thomas himself. “You made me feel things for you that day, real things,” she tells him. “You were just lying the entire time? You knew you weren’t gonna die?”

Then, as viewers could’ve guessed, Thomas goes in and kisses her. Luckily, Kat quickly turns him down. “This is impossible, you are impossible,” she says. “Whatever this is, it’s over.”

To wrap things up, the episode left us with some intriguing cliffhangers. Kat goes to listen to an old recording of her father only to hear Alice singing alongside him. “Yes, that’s Alice,” Elliot says, equally as confused. “Singing with your dad in a song he recorded in the 1970s.”

In the meantime, Alice follows someone she saw running to the pond, and she’s pushed right in.

Some mysteries are getting clearer, and some are only beginning! Talk about starting the season with a bang!

Before you go, click here to see more time travel movies and TV shows that will take you on a magical ride.