At the ATX TV Festival on May 31, Hallmark presented fans with a special surprise: an early screening of season 4 episode 7 of “The Way Home.” After the episode ended, Chyler Leigh (Kat), Evan Williams (Elliot), and Sadie Laflamme-Snow (Alice) took part in a Q&A panel to answer questions. They started the Q&A session by reacting to the big cliffhanger at the end of the episode.
WARNING: SPOILERS for the latest episode of “The Way Home” are below.
Williams Said It’s Good for Elliot to Have the ‘Shoe on the Other Foot’
HallmarkThe cast members sat in the theater and watched the episode with the fans. There were shouts of laughter, gasps, and lots of applause while the episode aired.
But the last few minutes are one of the points that will stick with fans and be the source of heated discussions this week. At the end of the episode, Kat realized that Elliot had been lying to them and hiding some pretty big secrets.
Leigh said about watching that part with fans live: “I was on the verge of losing it over there!”
Emily Longeretta of Variety was the moderator for the panel. One of her first questions was asking Williams when he found out that Elliot was keeping such a big secret from everyone.
“I think I found that out when we read the episode,” Williams said. “And I was like, ‘Oh no. Oh noooo.’ But it’s also fun… It’s also fun to have the plot thicken a little bit, especially because Elliot spends so much time being like ‘No, don’t time travel, don’t be reckless.’ And then to have the shoe on the other foot a little bit was exciting and fun to play.”
Leigh said that this arc is a great opportunity for Elliot to know what Kat and the others have been going through since the show began.
“One of my favorite things about this season and that arc was just for Elliot to really experience it himself and kind of have a deeper understanding of what it’s like knowing that ‘What happened will always happen,'” she said. “And just how helpless you feel when you can’t go back and change things, and you have to watch the whole thing unfold. It’s like, Alice creeping around in 79 and … just knowing and watching the whole thing. And even when Colton and Dell were saying, ‘Maybe this will be our worst New Year’s ever,’ but we know that clearly it won’t be.”
Chyler Leigh Got Emotional Talking About Elliot and Kat’s Relationship
Later in the panel, Longeretta asked about Elliot and Kat’s relationship and what it meant to Leigh and Williams. The question opened up a sweet moment between the two cast members, as they talked about how much they meant to each other.
“They are two characters who have so much pain and loss in their past,” Williams reflected. “And I think what could be a trauma bond is so beautifully examined in this show. We see these characters obviously make lots of mistakes and miss each other… I think it’s beautiful the way the writers have brought the characters to a healthy kind of nutritious understanding. Notwithstanding the most recent frames, but there’s still more to play.”
Williams had nothing but wonderful things to say about Leigh.
“I learned about relationships through the process of playing this role opposite of Chyler and it’s just been an absolute pleasure and an honor…” he said. “I have never met anybody who’s more emotionally available… It was really easy to go there with you and I wish we could do it for 20 more years.”
As for Leigh, she got emotional speaking about just how much the roles meant to her, and how much she loves Kalliot.
“These last four years on a personal level have really been wild…” she said. “I just remember there was this scene in season one where Elliot and Kat are … calling it quits… It’s the one where underneath the score is Evan singing the cover ‘Time After Time.’ And we just had a moment — well many moments — doing the scenes [where] a lot of the words that I was saying were my real-life kind of circumstances to an extent… I could just see in his eyes that connection, that understanding on a human level, which then triggers that emotion to come out as a character. He was someone that I could always rely on in life and also in character, and I will forever be in love forever with Kalliot and Evan Williams.”
‘The Way Home’ Has Been Canceled, But the Cast Still Has Hope
“The Way Home” was canceled by Hallmark in November, but the cast still has hope. During the panel, Leigh hinted to fans that they should give a “shout out to Netflix” about a possible renewal.
