Entertainment
Netflix’s 3-Part Time Travel Series Is the Perfect Weekend Binge Before Its 2026 Return
Time travel makes for an excellent subject for television because it can lead to mysteries that span multiple seasons, as well as set up some really compelling character development. Drama series like Outlander and Dark have shown the more dangerous stakes at play when one travels to another time period, while dramedies like Undone and Paper Girls dive into the personal and emotional stakes that time travel can have.
A severely underrated time travel show is Hallmark’s The Way Home. The family-centered small-town dramedy series is now three seasons in, with its fourth and final season airing this coming April. The first three seasons are now available to stream on Netflix, and now is the perfect time to binge-watch The Way Home and catch up before the series comes to an end.
What Is ‘The Way Home’ About?
At the start of The Way Home, Kat Landry Dhawan (Chyler Leigh) has hit an impasse in her life. Her teenage daughter, Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow), has been acting out since Kat’s amicable separation from her soon-to-be ex-husband, Brady Dhawan (Al Mukadam). One day, Alice takes it too far and pulls the fire alarm at her school, getting her expelled. On top of this, Kat has just been laid off from the journalism job that she loves. When Kat receives a heartfelt letter from her estranged mother, Del Landry (Andie MacDowell), she decides to pick up and move back to her family home on a farm in the tiny Canadian town of Port Haven.
The three generations of Landry-Dhawan women are struggling to adapt to this new living situation, particularly because of the family tragedies that led Kat and Del to lose touch in the first place. When Kat was a teenager, her little brother, Jacob (Remy Smith), went missing and was never found. Soon after, Kat’s father, Colton (Jefferson Brown), died in an accident. Del has worked hard to leave everything in the past and move forward, but Kat is desperate to connect with the memories of the family members she lost. Kat’s move back home is already a major adjustment, but everything is turned upside down when Alice discovers that the pond on the family’s property is a portal that leads back to the past.
VIDEO: Chyler Leigh Breaks Down That Epic ‘The Way Home’ Moment We Were All Waiting For
Leigh also revisits meeting her husband in an audition, learning her work can make a difference via ‘Supergirl,’ and more!
Alice starts regularly traveling back in time to the same period in time when Kat was a teenager in 1999, soon before she met Brady, got pregnant, and lost Jacob and Colton. As Alice befriends her mother as a teen, she starts to become immersed in the past, a time before everything fell apart. Kat, meanwhile, struggles to confront the pain of her history, while also coming to the startling realization that her best friend as a teen, Alice, was actually her daughter this whole time. The only characters aware of the pond’s powers are Alice, Kat soon after her, and Kat’s childhood best friend, Elliot (Evan Williams), who has known since he met and helped Alice 15 years ago.
‘The Way Home’ Is the Perfect Time Travel Binge Watch
The Way Home is perfect for fans of small-town, family-centered shows like Gilmore Girls and Sweet Magnolias. The show tells the heartwarming and emotional story of the Landry family slowly healing and coming together again after their major tragedies 15 years before, set in a small town with beautiful sights and a fun ensemble of characters. What really makes the show such a perfect binge-watch, though, is its time travel twist. The Way Home sets up a number of overarching mysteries early on, making it impossible to stop watching after each episode’s cliffhanger ending. As Alice gets more tangled up in the past, surprising reveals start to come to light about how the time back then is connected to the present day.
While The Way Home‘s two main timelines are the present day and 1999, the show teases a third timeline in the very first scene. Before the Landry-Dhawan family is even introduced, The Way Home follows a woman escaping a witch hunt in 1814 by jumping into the pond and seemingly transporting somewhere else. The Way Home is detailed and creative in the lore surrounding the pond and its magic properties, making for a really entertaining addition to the time travel subgenre and filling the show with exciting twists and turns throughout.
The Way Home is available to stream on Netflix. Season 4 will premiere April 19 on the Hallmark Channel.