‘The Way Home’ Stars Talk ‘Traumatic’ Moment That ‘Shatters’ Kat & Elliot’s Relationship (VIDEO)
[Warning: The below and video above contain MAJOR spoilers for The Way Home Season 2 Episode 2 “Hanging by a Moment.”]
It’s a lot of one-step forward and two-steps back for (Chyler Leigh) and Elliot (Evan Williams) on The Way Home. They had a fantastic first kiss in Season 1, only for him to leave in the finale to figure things out after knowing so much about his future thanks to the time-traveling Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow) meeting him as a teen. Then, Elliot returned at the start of Season 2, and he and Kat shared a kiss in the premiere, only for her to stop them. The next day, he deleted a text saying he should’ve kept kissing her. But in Episode 2, “Hanging by a Moment,” Elliot reveals why he really had to leave town.
Things are already tense between the two when Kat calls him out on not telling her that Alice returned to the past, and Elliot, in turn, argues that she lied about time traveling again and telling her daughter about their relationship. (Both happened after they talked.) Kat accuses him of bailing because she couldn’t focus on him, and that’s when Elliot reveals that he left because he couldn’t deal with her father Colton’s death and her involvement in it. Colton was like a father to him, and while Kat got five more minutes with him, he didn’t. She set out to fix that just like she’s trying to do with her missing brother Jacob (whom she’s realized has time-traveled via the pond), but she broke it instead. Could he have been that honest if he hadn’t left?
“I don’t think so. I think Elliot really earned the ability to start being honest with himself first, and then the sort of the domino effect after that is that he gets to be honest with the world around him,” Williams told TV Insider when he, Leigh, and Laflamme-Snow recently stopped by our office. “I think it’s especially difficult to be honest with Kat because he has such strong feelings, and they have such history, but it’s kind of a traumatic moment between them, and it really kind of shatters their relationship for a moment. But also, the truth needs to come out. So I’m glad he said it.” Leigh agreed.
As for Kat’s search for Jacob, during her time in 1814, she encounters Elliot’s ancestor, Susanna (Watson Rose), who says she called out for Jacob while she was recovering from her gunshot wound. She knows him: He’s on the Landry farm with his family. But even with that, “I don’t think Kat really feels hopeful about it until quite later just because [like] the one step forward, two steps back with Elliot, it’s kind of the same thing when she’s in the 1800s, and she goes, but is it actually going to happen?” Leigh admitted.
“She’s trying to believe really hard, but she still struggles with it,” she continued. “Everything that happens in the 1800s, it’s heavy. It’s very weighted. So I think Kat wants to keep that hope alive, but she still struggles a bit.”
Watch the full video above for much more from the stars, including about Kat and Elliot’s relationship as well as Alice’s dynamic with both the teen and adult versions of Williams’ character.
The Way Home, Sundays, 9/8c, Hallmark Channel
