Why ‘The Way Home’ Didn’t Reveal Casey’s Identity in Finale, Plus Season 4 Scoop

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Way Home Season 3 finale “If You Could Read My Mind.”]

With all the reveals that we did get in The Way Home Season 3 finale, there’s still a major one we’ve needed since the previous finale left up in the air: Who Is Casey?

Vaughan Murrae’s character is a time traveler — they’re no longer hiding that — but they reveal to Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow) in the Season 3 finale that they are not her kid from the future with Max Goodwin (Dale Whibley). Below, executive producers (and mother and daughter) Heather Conkie and Alexandra Clarke explain why Casey’s identity remains a mystery and answer other burning questions while looking ahead to Season 4. (Read part 1 of our deep dive into the finale with the EPs here.)

Jacob (Spencer Macpherson) left, but Sam (Rob Stewart) tells Del (Andie MacDowell) it’s going to be okay. So first of all, can you say if Jacob went back to the 1800s? Anything about where/when he is?

Alexandra Clarke: Not really.

Heather Conkie: What we loved about the Sam scene is if you recall, he’s in exactly the same place that Elliot [Evan Williams] stood by the pond in the end of our pilot episode, and he says the very same words, so it was more to spread mystery about Sam in that moment.

How long have you known that Sam knows about the pond? Was that from the introduction of the character? 

Clarke: When we’re introducing someone into our world, we know the full arc of them throughout because look, we’re a show that’s 41 minutes and 57 seconds long. When we introduce a new character that’s going to take up time on screen, we are very purposeful in why and the reasons behind it, and Sam is no different. I mean, we definitely have the ideas for who he is, how he’s involved, and we’re looking forward to sharing a little bit more about that.

Peter Stranks / Hallmark Media

I think the very fact that we took the time to put him in the same position, to have him say the same words as Elliot said to Kat [Chyler Leigh] when she was so worried about where Alice had disappeared to in our very first episode and getting so angry at him for being so sure that she’d come back, the fact that we’ve done that again with Sam, I think in and of itself should tell fans something about who he is.

Yeah, I’m thinking a confidant of Casey’s — they did go to him for help. Should we be wondering if he’s a time traveler, too? That would really complicate matters because of his and Del’s relationship…

Clarke: I think all of those possibilities are very valid for Sam. He’s got a few tricks up his sleeve, that’s for sure.

Casey’s now not hiding they’re a time traveler. Why have them talk to Jacob?

Clarke: We were fascinated by that pairing. I think it felt like in a weird way, by the end of our season, Casey was only kind of coming up against Alice and Kat and we’d never actually had them come face-to-face with yet another time traveler. And Jacob, we’d realized, had really only probably heard about Casey through the stories the others are telling. So it was really fun to have them come face to face. And really it’s because this mystery that we’d seeded even in Season 2 of Casey being hired as an intern and going through those boxes and while they found something actually really, really interesting, but never got a chance to tell Kat about it because of the pond and you skip forward in time when you’re gone. But ultimately, the thing that they found was about helping Jacob, and so it was really nice to have a moment where they actually in person could help him versus doing it through Alice or doing it through Kat. Because at the end of the day, this is, as Jacob even says, his salvation, finding this will. So it was nice to have that be an earned moment between the one needing the saving and the one being able to save versus doing it through third parties.

Casey then tells Alice that Alice is not their mom, but doesn’t answer about being a Landry and a Goodwin. What can you say about their identity? Because there is still the matter of them having Kat’s ring…

Conkie: Yep.

Clarke: I think we realized early on that there was a way we could of reveal all about Casey in our Episode 10, but we held back because it is such a lovely reveal and we didn’t want it to just be yet another reveal in this episode of reveals. There’s so much more story to tell with Casey. Casey is the most mercurial, incredible character. I love the Casey character and Vaughan Murrae plays them so perfectly, and they really could be anyone is the best part. They’ve got a little bit of Goodwin, they’ve got a little bit of Augustine, they’ve got a little bit of Landry. And I think it’s lovely to see the viewers continue to guess at who they actually are. The answer will be shared, of course it will. But I think there’s more story to tell and there’s more story to earn us that reveal rather than just kind of throw it away. It’s too big and important a reveal to just throw away in a quick scene in a finale episode. So I will say that they are telling the truth about not being Alice’s kid.

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'The Way Home' Bosses Break Down Major Reveals of Season 3 Finale

Casey also told Jacob that the will will help stop Dell’s letters. What did they mean by that?

Clarke: It reveals that they know about those letters. And so that’s a clue as well to maybe who they might be.

What can you say about the identity of who’s been sending those letters?

Clarke: All shall be revealed is what we can say. [Laughs]

Then there’s Fern (Jill Frappier), who continues to be this very mysterious character. We got that interaction between Fern and Kat, and clearly their conversations are far from over. What can you say about when they’re going to be seeing each other again? Is that song about ’65 a clue to when they see each other again or is that something else?

Clarke: I think anything Fern says is a clue about her and her relationship to this family. Jill Frappier, who plays Fern, we all fell in love with her from the moment she set foot on set, and I’m so glad the audience has done the same. I love that they love her. I mean, I’ve seen fan art, it’s just fabulous. And she’s so flattered as well. She’s so excited. Yes, there’s certainly more to tell with Fern, for sure. I think she’s such a fascinating character, and that, I think, is what we can say.

How does Alice finding out that Casey is not her and Max’s child now factor into how she feels about him? She was worried that that was influencing her before, but now to find out that Casey’s not their kid will also maybe influence her. Then there’s the Noah (Alexander Eling) of it…

Clarke: It’s a really great question, and it’s one that we’re asking ourselves right now. We leave all three women on a new sense of freedom at the end of Season 3. One way we always like to talk about our three main gals in the writers’ room is each one kind of representing the past, the present, and the future within a season. And this season we certainly looked at it as Del questioning what she remembered about the past as a result of Alice being there and kind of interfering with all of that. It was Kat really questioning where she was in the present now that she brought Jacob home, she’d published Susanna’s book, what the heck do I do now? It was a focus on the relationship with Elliot for sure. And Alice was sort of questioning her future and not only because she’s about to go into her last year of high school and you’ve got Brady [Al Mukadam] saying five-year plan, five-year plan, but also because of the knowledge, or at least the theory, that Casey was her kid.

Peter Stranks / Hallmark Media

And now that I think a lot of questions have been answered for these women in regards to those three — past, present, future of it all — they’re all kind of in a moment of pure freedom going into next season where it feels like their life is their own, and Alice is no exception. We are going to be going into her end of high school experience in Season 4, and there’s lots of questions that come along with that, none of which are related to a pond. So at the end of the day, she’s still a teenager living in 2025 and needing to go to university if she wants to and all that stuff. So I think apart from it being a time traveler, she has a lot of life questions to ask herself.

Is Del going to want to time travel again or has she gotten what she needed? It feels like she’s the one person who can be like, “You know what? Once was it.”

Clarke: It does. Yeah, she’s very — I think even Nick [Kerry James] says it, a no-nonsense woman. I think the Del of it all in regards to time travel will be an interesting thing to explore in Season 4 — when she wants to go, why she wants. I feel like no matter what, she will always have a very — she’s never going to be like Kat, where it’s like, well, wake up and feel like jumping in the pond. It will never be that. If and when she does time travel again, it will be for a very good reason, well thought out. Kat leads with her heart. I think Del leads with head and heart combined in a very equal, lovely way. So it will never be impulsive, I guess, is the bottom line.

Conkie: It will be for a damn good reason.

So what can you tease about Season 4?

Clarke: It will answer questions. That’s such a weak answer. I’m sorry.

Conkie: I know. Well, it will answer the questions that we ran out of time to answer.

Clarke: I think it will be like any of our other seasons if we do it right, which is answering a lot of lingering things, but also asking a lot of new interesting questions, introducing a lot of new kind of compelling mysteries. The pond’s going to pond, and we’re excited to see where it takes our cast this year for sure. Because as I said, I think they’re all starting from a really new fresh perspective off the top that we’ve never really had before: that sense of freedom, that sense of possibility and that sense of closure. So I think that in and of itself is a really exciting thing.

Conkie: Anything goes.

Are there any questions that you can say will definitely be answered in Season 4?

Clarke: I don’t want to be beholden to anything. I think we can safely say that the Casey of it all — their identity, their story — the curtain will be pulled back on that in a bigger way next season for sure. I think the other lingering questions about Sam or the letters or all the things we let hang at the end of this year, they will be addressed, no question about it. We are very aware of the questions we left unanswered at the end of Season 3 going into Season 4, and I hope that our viewers trust us enough to know that we will 100 percent address ’em all.

The Way Home, Season 4, 2026, Hallmark Channel