The time has come to leave the small town of Port Haven and its magical time travel granting pond.
Though, not if the fans have anything to do say about it but more on that in a moment.
It was January 2023 and Hallmark was ready to premiere a new slot of drama series. The short-lived Ride and the time-travel epic The Way Home. A new series starring Andie MacDowell, Chyler Leigh (Grey’s Anatomy), Evan Williams (Versailles), and Sadie Laflamme-Snow. Snow plays Alice, a disgruntled teenager, whose mother (Leigh) has moved them both in with her grandmother (MacDowell) after losing her job and divorcing her father, Brady (Al Mukadam). Then something amazing happened. Alice fell into the pond and emerged in 1999. A time before the family broke, before her uncle (still a child) went missing and her grandfather died in a car accident. Here she meets and befriends her mother as a teenager. A concept discussed by Kelly Clarkson and Andie MacDowell on the June 17 episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show.
It has been nearly three-and-a-half years since Elliot told Alice that he would not be the Giles to her Buffy (RIP Anthony Stewart Head). Now, we have been to the 1990s (and early 2000s), the 1800s, 1970s, and the 1920s—It seems only fitting for these characters that we have grown to love to be permitted to move forward.
A bit of a recap before I get to the finale. Season 4 began with Alice and Kat at the pond before a wedding wishing that someone could be there to see it. Back in the present, the audience has been left with a scene of two mystery characters (now identified as Tessa Augustine and Griffin Landry) jumping into the pond. The action of the final season alternates between Alice visiting a younger version of her grandfather, Colton, and Evelyn Goodwin while Kat travels back to 1925 to meet a younger version of Grandma Fern (portrayed by Bianca Melchior).
Season 4 introduced audiences to a whole new cast of characters. New actors in the final season include Dan Jeanotte (The Bold Type), Kelsey Falconer (Doc), Megan Follows (Reign), Charles Vandervaart (Outlander), and Hannah Swensen Mysteries Alum Gabriel Hogan as Greyson Goodwin.
On the penultimate episode, Elliot had just been shot by his mother and the tunnels beneath Lingermore collapsed in an explosion on New Years Eve 1925. Leaving a broken-hearted Fern and Kat. Melchior provides a truly heart wrenching performance, you can tell that Fern is just numb. Painfully so.
A huge theme of this “special extended finale” (as Hallmark marketed it) is the idea of 5 more minutes. Fern gets her five more minutes with Cliff before his untimely demise, Jacob (Spencer MacPherson) gets his 5 more minutes with his found family in 1821, Alice gets her five more minutes with Evelyn and, possibly the most important of all, Del (MacDowell) is granted five more minutes with the husband she lost too soon. Loose ends are tied up, but not before the writers give the audience one last mystery to ponder. How did the clock end up in the wall? What if Tessa didn’t die in the tunnel explosion? The fans may never know.
At the end, Jacob and newcomer Abby Goodwin (Holly Deveaux) get married as the ghosts of those characters who have been lost look on and “Somewhere Only We Know” plays (a lullaby cover performed by The Night Owl). The screen reads “Port Haven, New Brunswick. The Future.” The final scene is fittingly of Alice and Kat deciding to jump into the pond—to look for a new adventure. As Kat says, “You know what they say, every ending is just a new beginning.”
The fans—They call themselves ponderers—have been doing everything in their power to get the show picked up by someone else (they’re really plugging for Netflix right now) from scheduling Netflix rewatches (season 1-3 are available to stream on Netflix) to trending on Twitter to launching a Change.org petition that currently has more than 26,000 signatures. For this writer, personally, it was a good way to end it. I felt a disconnect this season that I haven’t felt before. However, for those still fighting, I say keep it up. There is hope.
Once upon a time, there was another time travel series that NBC tried to cancel after one season. The fans reversed that decision in a record 48 hours—no joke! However, beware of Netflix—They can be flighty, oftentimes cancelling a series after one season, whether it’s their own development (see: The Buroughs) or not (see: Girls 5 Eva).
Only time will tell what happens next.
Photo courtesy of social media
