The Way Home Season 4 Episode 6 Doesn’t Do Elliot’s Story Any Favors With the Tessa Reveal

Critic’s Rating: 2.75 / 5.0

2.75

Just like the end of summer before school starts, The Way Home Season 4 Episode 6 feels like we’re beginning to wind down.

Now, there still aren’t a lot of answers, but the show was never about answers, but next steps.

And everyone is beginning to take them.

Sadly, I don’t know much about horses. But I wondered why Stormy would be so skittish around Del after her fall. She later explained to Jacob that she forced Stormy into the woods without thinking about his feelings.

That’s something she does often, and she did it immediately after that when she told Jacob she didn’t want his help regaining Stormy’s trust because if Stormy begins to trust Jacob and he leaves again, it will all be for nothing.

But it wasn’t that she said it that was problematic; it was how she said it. It was really dismissive. And I know she was just hurt by Jacob’s terrible decision to run off, and his noncommittal nature about remaining in Port Haven isn’t helping.

Yet I can’t help but think that if she were more open with him and kinder in her approach, maybe he wouldn’t consider leaving again. 

I mean, he was a child when he went through the pond. She didn’t raise him. He was stuck (maybe, maybe not) in a foreign time. Can’t she cut him a little bit of slack for not being who she expects him to be?

Thankfully, they worked it all out, and Jacob wants to stay. A lot of that has to do with Abby, though, who is, as many surmised, a Goodwin.

Jacob finally visited with Danny, and until then, I had forgotten that he had taken a job with Lewis Goodwin at the winery. 

The threatening letters stopped when Jacob left, so I guess he wasn’t far off that they were happening because of him. I assume that will be a dropped thread because there’s just not enough time to address them.

After all, it’s more important to solidify the family line, and when Jacob ran into Abby in Port Haven, we seemed to take a step in that direction.

Until he ran into Max and Alice at the coffee shop, Jacob had no idea she was a Goodwin. And thus, yet another level of the Montagues and the Capulets took shape.

And finally, Jacob asked Casey, “Who are you, really?” The response fit right into the reverse Romeo and Juliet scene that followed at the barn.

Jacob and Abby’s pull is too strong for them to resist, and they even used the “what’s in a name” line from the play that Casey had just used in reply to Jacob to nail down their fated relationship.

Does that mean that Casey is Jacob and Abby’s daughter? Since it was said plainly that Casey is not Alice’s, it seems likely. 

Because Alice, too, spent the day with a Goodwin, and there is more to their relationship than friendship.

It’s almost time for them both to take off for school, and that’s an enormous change for kids. 

Kat couldn’t wait to take Alice off to college, hoping to make every moment count. But Alice was pensive. At first, I thought it might have been because she knows that no college experience, which should be incredible, could possibly compare to time travel.

But it was really more personal than that. She’s been carrying the weight of seeing Del’s pain when she lost her baby in 1979.

They hugged it out, and within seconds, Alice got a message from Max to brighten her mood.

Max will be leaving for school in Toronto, and he set up a fun day for Alice so she’d remember him. If anyone thought he wasn’t vying for her heart, he definitely made up for it with the scavenger hunt.

It was a great way for us to understand their relationship and what they’ve meant to each other in our absence. 

Casey showed up out of nowhere, and Alice really hoped to find out what her future held. But Casey wouldn’t play along. The answer was that if you follow your gut, you won’t have any regrets. That’ll have to do, I guess.

But that response did hint that Alice feels more for Max than she’s let on. She’s not worried about school but about losing her connection with Max. Not Noah, but Max. 

That their final clue took them to the place where he realized how much he would miss her was adorable. He’s a very good kid, and you can see so much of Evelyn in him. I guess it skips a generation.

But their argument about going to college apart but doing it together ruined their perfect day. Still, Max is good for Alice even if he thinks she’s still into Noah. She probably thinks she is, too. He challenges her and pushes her to be her best. 

Somewhere, in a time we will never see, I believe they will be together. And that’s sweet.

And then there’s the 1920s of it all. I’m not sold on the latest chapter.

Elliot was scouring the Herald archives for hints of his mother. He’s so involved that he was even ignoring Kat’s calls. He’s even lying to her.

I had just been wondering what happened with Kat moving in with him when they talked about it. But that was the last thing on his mind. He’s all about his mom to the point that it seemed like he decided he might stay behind before they even jumped.

But if anything, he should have realized how important it was to have Kat at his side after she made the connection between the fortune teller and Tessa. 

Something about Elliot’s story just annoys me. He spent so long being so abrasive about Kat and Alice traveling, but now that he wants to save his mom, he’s all for it and being evasive, too.

Have I missed the moment he told Kat how sorry he was for not fully understanding when she was trying to find Jacob or save Colton? Was there a scene I wiped from my memory where he admitted he now understands how cruel it was to want to stop her?

I don’t think so. But seriously. Maybe I did. Please tell me.

Their trip in time was kind of… embarrassing. The “Elliot?!” “Kat?!” of it all as they lost each other at the fair. Come on. They both sounded very cartoony. And as if that wasn’t enough, Elliot was then exchanging fisticuffs with his ancestors?

The 1920s weren’t absurd to the people who lived them. We just sometimes look at them that way. I wish The Way Home writers had played into its reality rather than its absurdity.

I wonder if that’s why people haven’t taken to 1920s Fern. She’s living a movie version of real life instead of real life as it probably was.

Grayson and Cliff also make the 1920s feel absurd instead of real. It’s as if Kat genuinely fell through the rabbit hole to discover all of these enormous personalities instead of the real people from history.

Sure, it makes sense that Tessa ended up as a fortune teller in a circus, but it just makes me care less about Elliot’s story. 

Even revealing Megan Follows as the elder Tessa didn’t pay off for me. If it paid off for you, I hope you let me know in the comments below.

And if discovering she is the big bad who has been controlling the Auggie boys was supposed to be exciting, uh, pass.

It’s just not. I admit we’ve been shown that Tessa is of questionable character all along. From leaving her baby beside a pond to stealing cash from a till at her job, she’s really been a pain in the ass. But she is Elliot’s mother, so I was trying to be graceful.

I take exception with her having Elliot knocked in the head with a piece of driftwood. Who wouldn’t? How are they going to make her worth caring about?

We only just learned she’s been stuck there since the 1800s. She’s an older woman now, and her life has been unique. Can they justify the person she was and who she’s become?

Do I care? Not really. And that’s the rub. I would much rather spend more time with Nick or Thomas (thanks for the reference, Jacob), or even with Alice and Max or Jacob and Abby. 

This 1920s farce has taken me right out of it, which is a shame, because when Kat first got there and met Fern, I was on board. 

Oh well. You can’t always get what you want, or the pond always takes you where you need to go. Whatever. In this case, it’s taking me to the end of the show, and this isn’t how I wanted to spend my final season with characters I love.

But what about you?

I know the fandom is getting frustrated, but it’s mostly been about being confused about the number of characters.

I’m fine with that. It’s what they’re doing with them that I’m finding painful.

Drop a comment below to let me know what’s circling around in your mind! I’m especially interested to hear from Elliot fans. Was this what you had in mind for his mother’s story?