What happened to Jacob in The Way Home? "Not an open book," says the show's own creator
Hallmark's time-travel drama opens with a hole in the middle of a family. Eight-year-old Jacob Landry walked away from a carnival in Port Haven in 1999 and never came back — Kat's brother, Del's son, presumed dead for two decades.
He wasn't dead. He fell into the pond on the family farm and surfaced in 1790, where he was taken in by his own ancestor, Elijah Landry, and raised in the 1800s. He comes back to the present as a grown man in the season 3 premiere, played by Spencer MacPherson.
Where he actually went
The pond doesn't explain itself, so the show doles the answer out across three seasons. The sequence:
- 1999 — Jacob chases the family dog into the pond during the summer carnival and vanishes at age eight.
- 1790 — He surfaces two centuries earlier and is taken in by Elijah and Rebecca Landry, who raise him as their own.
- 1814 — Now an adult, he's engaged to Susanna Augustine, an ancestor of Kat's love interest, Elliot.
- 1816 — Wanted by Cyrus Goodwin, he goes back through the pond. Not by choice.
- January 2025 — The season 3 premiere puts him in Del's kitchen, 25 years late.
The "open book" line
The reunion isn't the tidy part. Showrunner Heather Conkie told TV Insider in 2025 that the character had learned to survive in the 1800s by being slippery, which is why he shades the truth even with his own family:
"Jacob isn't an open book."
The Landrys also have to explain a missing man to the outside world. Their cover story for the news crews: Jacob fell off a cliff the night he disappeared, was rescued by an off-grid couple with no internet access, lost his memory, and only learned where he came from when one of them was dying. Kat later finds out he didn't want to come home at all — the 1816 exit was an escape from jail.
Then he leaves again
Season 3 doesn't let him settle. Hired to run the Goodwin vineyard, Jacob tries to burn it down; Del stops him in the driveway. Lewis Goodwin threatens arson charges, and Casey turns up with Susanna's will to dig him out of it. In the finale, Jacob finds the threatening letters Del has been receiving, decides he's the reason for them, and disappears — leaving a letter of his own on the table.
How it ends
Season 4, which premiered April 19, 2026, was the last. The series finale hands Jacob the ending the pilot didn't suggest: he marries Abby Goodwin at the pond, with both families watching, which formally retires the Landry–Goodwin feud. Kat and Elliot get engaged. Elliot survives being shot at Lingermore because Kat drags him to the water in time. Cliff doesn't make it out.
For the record: the kid who fell into the pond in 1999 closes the show getting married next to it.