The Way Home EPs Explain 'Open-Ended' Series Finale: Casey's Reveal, That 'Important' Last Scene, And More — Grade It!

The Landry family took one last dip in the pond on Sunday with the heartbreaking, century spanning series finale of Hallmark Channel's "The Way Home."

Let's dive right in with two of the finale's most anticipated moments: Casey is revealed to be Jacob and Abby's child from the future, and Elliot finally gets around to putting a ring on Kat's finger. Is it the perfectly timed proposal he envisioned? Maybe not, but if there's one thing this show has taught us, it's that timing is rarely perfect.

Naturally, the pond also plays a key role in the finale, providing the happiest endings possible for some of the show's more tragic storylines: Fern goes back one day to tell Cliff about her pregnancy, so at least he would know he was going to be a father before dying in the mines; Jacob returns to 1820 to check in with his old family, who help him release his anger towards the pond and embrace his future with Abby; Del jumps back to 1999 for one last dance with Colton, giving her the closure she needs to move forward with Sam; and Elliot learns that his mother actually survived the explosion.

Alice also gives a long-overdue apology to Evelyn for essentially gaslighting her all these years, then encourages her to reconnect with Max. Speaking of Max, even though Alice chooses to prioritize herself moving forward, she still confesses her feelings for Max before she leaves for college.

It all culminates sometime in the future with the town's founding families coming together for Jacob and Abby's wedding, along with a few familiar faces from the past watching (spiritually) from the sidelines. But it doesn't end with the exchanging of vows; before the finale cuts to black, we're left with Kat and Alice jumping back into the pond for another adventure. After all, "every ending is a new beginning."

Below, "The Way Home" showrunners Heather Conkie and Alexandra Clarke answers some of TVLine's burning questions about the series finale, including the story behind Casey's big reveal, why we didn't get to see Kat and Elliot's wedding, and what time the ladies might be off to next.

TVLINE | For a family drama, this show is incredibly complicated, with a lot of unanswered questions to keep track of. What was your biggest challenge in putting this finale together?

CONKIE | [Laughs] Keeping track of it! I remember Alex [Clarke] making a list of all the outstanding questions, and it was so long. I said, "How are you going to do that?"

CLARKE | Exactly, "how are you going to do that?" Because then I had to go write it! [Laughs] No, it was a labor of love. We did make a list, and we are so grateful to Hallmark that they gave us extra time to answer the questions that needed to be answered. I don't know how we would have done it in the time that we normally have, which is 41 minutes and 57 seconds. We had about 20 more minutes this time, which was so incredible and such a gift.

TVLINE | I wouldn't say you gave everyone a "happy" ending, but for characters like Fern, was your goal to give them the happiest ending you possibly could, given how we know their futures turn out?

CLARKE | Yes, and it's such an important thing to stay true to your rules that you set when you're dealing with this kind of a show. You can't break them. What happened will always happen. Colton died. I know a lot of fans ask, "Why can't they bring him back to life somehow?" And as much as we are a bit of a fantasy show, we're not that much of a fantasy show. We're trying to be as real as possible with this beautiful gift of time travel in this little pond on their property. So I think you're exactly right, we needed to give the best possible endings that also stayed true to the rules and true to what our characters really needed.

Del, through all four seasons, has never had that closure with Colton. They were at odds when he passed away, then she found out the money was all gone, and she thought he was having an affair. She thought that for 20 years until Kat came home and started to solve these mysteries. Anyone she's met, be it Byron or Sam, she has subconsciously held them at arm's length because she's never been able to say the words she needed to say to Colton, which were that she's sorry for not trusting him. And she's never been able to hear the words from Colton that are so key in that scene, which are, "Please be happy. Be happy for me." Now that she's gotten that, I think her story can really begin.

CONKIE | It certainly wasn't a happy ending for young Fern, but she got her five more minutes, and Kat was able to do that for her. That scene is heartbreaking, and the actress [Bianca Melchior] is just stunning in it. She does such a good job pretending everything is fine, knowing this is her last time to see him. So I think that's her form of a happy ending, because she did get that moment with him and he knew he was going to be a dad.

CLARKE | From the happy ending perspective, we've all been rooting for Elliot and Kat through the seasons, and to see that proposal, to see the ring go on her finger, that was such a beautiful moment to shoot. It felt like this perfect way — in an imperfect way — to finish that story for them. That was a really lovely moment to write. The other one is the Jacob and Abby of it all. Seeing Jacob find peace and love in present day, and seeing him feel like he finally fits somewhere after so long, was a really lovely moment.

TVLINE | Yeah, let's talk about Jacob and Abby. I loved seeing everyone, past and present, at their wedding. Just to be clear, they weren't physically there, right? They didn't all jump forward to attend the wedding?

CLARKE | [Laughs] No. On our show, we have flashbacks, we figments, and echoes. A flashback is when we go back in time and remember a moment; an echo is when you're in a space and remember something happening there in the past, and that figure kind of runs in and out; and a figment is something we conjure up in our mind to help us when we're missing someone. Del has had a lot of figments of Colton on the show, and Kat had a very infamous one with with Thomas down at the pond. So those are figments. They're there because our characters are imagining that they couldn't do this wedding without them.

TVLINE | OK, I thought so, but I didn't know if you just decided to throw out the rulebook at the very end.

CLARKE | [Laughs] Can you imagine? ... Surprise!

CONKIE | The rule book was thrown into the pond.

TVLINE | And now we know that Casey is Jacob and Abby's child! The fans have been cooking up a lot of theories about Casey over the seasons. Have you had fun seeing what everyone has guessed?

CLARKE | Yes, it's crazy.

CONKIE | And we actually played with different things in the first couple of seasons. We went back and forth a couple of times. But it was the thing we wanted to do for sure. And then when we cast [Holly Deveaux] as Abby, I mean, she had the blue eyes and pale skin. And there's Jacob with his blue eyes and pale skin.

CLARKE | We were actually worried it was giving it away too much, but at the same rate, the chemistry between Holly and Spencer was just too good. We couldn't pass it up. But yeah, we were very worried when Holly came on board that the jig would be up very fast. It's been really fun to see the various theories about who Casey could be, how they play into the family, and just how far in the future they're from. Hopefully people are satisfied with the actual answer to that.

TVLINE | Does Casey actually go by Goodwin, or was that just a name they used to throw people off their trail?

CLARKE | That's just what they say to everyone there because they're well-versed in the rules of the pond, what you can and can't do as a time traveler, and the etiquette of not telling someone their future. If they wanted to be part of Kat's life when they came in as an intern, they couldn't say their last name was Landry because that would immediately tell everyone that they're part of their future. Casey was very sneaky and very smart that first season. I think what's so great is that it tells the audience that in Casey's time, the pond is not a secret. The pond is very similar to how Fern was raised. It's a constant dialogue in the family. It tells the audience that Kat, Alice, and Jacob have made sure that the lore is a part of the dialogue now, rather than being this secret.

TVLINE | It was wonderful to finally see Kat and Elliot get engaged, but I'm sure the fans would have enjoyed a wedding as well. Did you ever consider taking us all the way down the aisle with them?

CLARKE | We considered everything when we first realized it was going to be a finale finale, but I think Jacob's wedding bizarrely outweighed Kat and Elliot's in that it gave us the most closure about what's going happen with all of these families moving forward. All three founding families are part of that wedding, and they're finally all at peace with one another.

We really did explore this season, in the '70s and '80s, that there was this really beautiful time when it was Vic, Tessa, Dylan, Colton, and Evelyn around the kitchen table having kitchen parties — and then it all fell apart. To see these founding families all come together for this wedding was a really important thing for us to leave the audience with. There's peace there. There's love there. There's a lovely foundation again, and that's a result of Jacob and Abby getting married. So he was kind of "The One" all over again. He was the one that saved the family and made it able to exist, and then he was the one who brought all the feuding families together.

TVLINE | And what can you say about what the future holds for Alice and Max now that they've expressed how they feel about one another?

CONKIE |It's hard to know at that age. Have you heard of a turkey dump? 

CLARKE | It's this idea that high school sweethearts leave for college, they sort of go off in their own worlds, then they come back for Thanksgiving and someone gets dumped because there's been this thing of freedom in the college life.

CONKIE | There could be a turkey dump in her future, who knows! 

CLARKE | What's nice is, regardless of the fact that they kissed, regardless of the fact that they do end up expressing this desire for one another, Alice chooses herself. She goes to New York. We were very careful at the wedding not to have them coupled up. They're on either sides of the aisle, and yes they share a really lovely smile, but it's up to the audience to interpret whether that means they're together or it means they've just kept in touch. They were really good friends, and I think Max says it best: "I'll be wherever you need me to be, but the road you're on leads to you, not me." I think that's exactly how they go into college. He's in Toronto and she's in New York. If their roads them back to each other, great, but if they don't, OK.

CONKIE | I think it would be very cool if they were together and living at Lingermore eventually.

TVLINE | The finale leaves us on a cliffhanger of sorts, with Kat and Alice jumping back into the pond. Where are they headed? Do you even know, or was that just a fun way to close out the series?

CLARKE | We have our idea of where they wound up for sure, but that scene was always going to be the way our show was going to end, with the idea that they're going to go on another adventure. They're going to go on another jump, we just don't get to go with them this time. We wanted to leave it open-ended in that way. This was never going to be a show that ended by saying, "Well, that's it for the pond. Thanks, we got what we needed."

CONKIE | Not even if they wanted to. They're completely addicted [to it].

CLARKE | It was important for us to show that that was going to continue. They've made such beautiful relationships in all these different eras, there was no world where they would just walk away. So to have them jump at the end and say that an ending is just another beginning was so important to us because we want people to come away from it thinking that they're still doing that.

OK, let's talk: What were your favorite moments from "The Way Home" series finale? Were all of your questions answered? Grade the episode below, then drop a comment with your full review.