Hallmark’s The Way Home, Episode “How to Save a Life”, has the mark of a witch! A twisted event that births a two-hundred-year-old myth of the Port Haven White Witch comes to life when Kat (Chyler Leigh) encounters Jacob’s capturer in 1814. Back at home in the present day, a phone call regarding the possibility of Jacob’s remains being found sends Del (Andie MacDowell) into a series of flashbacks.
The British Are Coming? | It is the first day of harvest and the much-anticipated ship, the Bella Donna, has docked after weeks at sea making a delivery to England. Together, Kat, Susanna Augustine (Watson Rose), and Elijah Landry await the arrival of a small boat of Bella Donna passengers rowing to shore. Among the travelers is Jacob Landry, Kat’s long, lost brother whom she hasn’t seen in more than twenty years. Upon first sight of her brother, Kat calls out to Jacob. When they meet eyes, the expression on Jacob’s face is that of confusion. Does he not recognize his sister after all of these years? Just as the boat reaches the shore, British soldiers swarm in on horseback and swoop to take him into custody. Kat falls to the ground sobbing in confusion. “Where are you taking my brother?”, she demands. Alas, her cries of desperation are not acknowledged by the uniformed men. They throw Jacob on the back of a mare and ride off.
Thomas Coyle (Kris Holden-Ried) leads Susanna and Kat to the jail to speak with Jacob, but they are met with a guard who informs them that they did not receive a new prisoner. Susanna pleads with Kat to return home to the present-day search for any records pertaining to Jacob’s incarceration. Kat remembers that her intern at the Harold found records listing numerous people executed by the Crown in Port Haven in the nineteenth century.
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O.M.”G”. | Upon her return to the present day, Kat rifles through the boxes Elenor Goodwin left to Port Haven’s Harold. She finds the same leatherbound book that Casey Goodwin (Vaughn Murrae) had shown her that morning and she scours the pages looking for the date Jacob would have been jailed. Kat releases a sigh of relief when she doesn’t find her brother’s name scribed among the many unfortunate souls who did lose their lives to the death penalty.
Back at the homestead, Kat is contemplating her next move when she glances at the pile of Polaroid pictures Jacob had left behind before going missing. Her gaze falls onto a photograph of a large, iron key laying at Jacob’s feet. She recognizes the symbol with a “G” inscribed at the top of the old fashion key as the same symbol on Cyrus Goodwin’s (Tim Post) ring, as well as the imprint on the boots of the soldiers who took Jacob into custody on the beach! In a cardboard box filled with Jacob’s belongings, Kat finds the key her brother found that day.
Kat returns to 1814 and confronts Thomas after her dawning realization of Cyrus’s involvement in Jacob’s capture. Thomas admits to her that Jacob and he had sparked a deal in which her brother would skim off the rum being shipped to England in exchange for payment of passage on the ship home. What Thomas didn’t foresee is that Cyrus would learn of their scheme and hold Jacob captive as punishment. Alas, there is more to Cyrus’s motive than a slight shortage of his rum shipment. Susanna and Thomas agree that Cyrus is also punishing Jacob for being betrothed to Susanna after she broke off her engagement to Cyrus when her father died. With the help of Susanna and Thomas, Kat devises a plan to break Jacob free from Cyrus’s jealousy-fueled kidnapping.
The White Witch | The threesome arrives at the Goodwin mansion, known as Lingermore. First to approach the home is Thomas with a crate of his finest rum. Cyrus’s men welcome him in and the bottles are eagerly passed around room. Little do they know, Susanna has dosed each bottle with a potent herb called jimson weed to put them to sleep. Susanna is the next guest to show at Lingermore. Her task is to distract Cyrus while Kat moves in and looks for Jacob. A short while passes before the jimson weed has taken affect and all of the men, Cyrus included, fall asleep where they sit. Kat and Susanna, dressed in white gowns, explore the dungeon like underbelly of the mansion. With an unpredictable window of time to find Jacob behind one of the many closed doors lining the maze-like halls, the air is thick with tension.
Suddenly, Cyrus stumbles his way into the hallway. Kat and Susanna take advantage of his delirium by running end to end, trading places as soon as Cyrus begins to orient himself. The “double” vision of Susanna as he perceives it, sends him into a state of hysteria. “Stand still, witch!” he shouts at the two women. Kat is able to break away to continue the search for her brother. Just as Kat begins to lose faith of finding her brother in Cyrus’s grip, she opens one last door. Kat gasps in horror to see Jacob sprawled shirtless on the cold ground – his back covered in thick, bloodied lesions from repeated lashings. She rushes to his side and attempts to wake him but is unsuccessful.
While Cyrus us fetches his men from the parlor, Susanna stays to wake Jacob and usher him away to safety. Kat stands in as a decoy to draw Cyrus away from her fleeing brother. Finding Kat in the front of his home, Cyrus accuses her of bewitching him and men. “You’re a witch!” he screams at her. “You stole Susanna’s face.” Cyrus then orders his men to kill “the woman in white”. In her ghostly white dress, Kat runs out towards the woods with an armed mob close behind. Just before plunging into the pond to safety, Kat declares into the misty forest surrounding her that she will be back for Jacob.
A Shoulder to Cry On | While Kat was working to save Jacob from certain death and cementing the legend of Port Haven’s White Witch, Del was at home in the present-day suffering from flashbacks after the local police called her with news about a possible link to Jacob’s disappearance. The hope for answers sends Del into a spiral of heartache. Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow) struggles to keep Jacob’s whereabouts a secret as she watches her grandmother unravel. For days, Del remains within earshot of the phone waiting for the police to call her with confirmation of evidence. When Del learns that the police didn’t find evidence of Jacob’s remains, she breaks down and finally embraces Alice’s offer of her shoulder and support. As soon as Alice and her mother Kat understand Jacob’s fate, they must tell Del the truth about Jacob and the magic of the pond.
Catch Hallmark’s original series The Way Home on Sundays at 9/8c, and join us for PopWire’s WitchSlapped Aftershow immediately after on the PopWire YouTube channel for a deep dive into each episode as Season 2 unfolds.
Dani grew up on the West Coast in sunny California. With a passion for film and television, she’s always on the hunt for binge-worthy flicks with diversity and positive representation of Womxn, the LGBTQIAN+ community, and other marginalized groups. Favorite genres include supernatural dramas, sci-fi, fantasy, horror and magical realism. Dani’s current favorite shows are Motherland: Fort Salem, Killing Eve, Dickinson, and Euphoria.
