While fans of “The Way Home” now know what’s next for Kat and Elliot and the truth about Jacob and Abby’s child, not to mention what could have happened in season 5 had the Hallmark show not ended, it turns out that there are a couple of things the bosses behind the story weren’t able to do once the series was canceled.
That includes both Rita’s past and captivating time periods that could have been explored.
Fans Could Have Seen a Young Rita in the ’80s
HallmarkWhile speaking to “The Way Home” executive producers Heather Conkie and Alexandra Clarke (who also happen to be mother and daughter), TV Insider asked, “Once you knew this was the last season, you realized, OK, we need to build to the end, did you scrap anything that you had planned for Season 4 or is [there] anything over the years that you had scrapped that you can talk about, significant storylines?”
“I know one that we knew we couldn’t end up doing, which was seeing Rita in the ‘80s,” said Clarke.
If you need a little refresher, Rita is a Port Haven resident and Del’s best friend.
“Del sort of briefly mentions it at the lunch with everyone in Episode 8 that she met this new girl Rita at art school and she’s a hoot and everything,” she added. “We would’ve loved to have seen Rita join those kitchen parties and see the young version of Rita. That would’ve been really fun.”
Although Conkie claimed “[t]hat would’ve been hard to cast,” Clarke continued by acknowledging the reality of the show’s situation, saying, “But that went away for sure in the writer’s room, knowing that time was of the essence.”
Would You Have Wanted to See the 1800s, ’20s, ’50s…?
On top of opening up about not getting the chance to explore Rita’s past, Conkie and Clarke also discussed what time periods they may have delved into if “The Way Home” had continued.
When Variety asked the pair if there were “any time periods left on the vision board that [they] didn’t get to visit,” Conkie admitted, “One hundred percent. There are a million eras.”
“I actually would have liked to have seen more of the ‘20s, because I thought the ‘20s were fabulous,” she added. “It would have been fun to draw that out a little more as we usually do. We usually do two seasons for an era, and this one was cut a little short for me.”
As for Clarke, she explained, “If you really look at the show, there are two generations of that family that are a bit blank right now. One is Colton’s father, so the ‘40s and ‘50s. Then there’s the era that Tessa and Griffin fell into, which is the late 1800s and early 1900s. It’s after Thomas and Susannah, and those areas are the big question marks still. I think it’s fine that they are, but they are certainly two areas that would have been interesting to go to and explore.”
