The Way Home Season 3 Episode 5 is based on a shocking true story

TV shows on Hallmark aren’t all about magical ponds and trips back to the past to meet your dead relatives. The Way Home Season 3 is about to explore a shocking historical true story.

That intro explaining what happens in The Way Home might seem far-fetched, but it’s completely factually accurate. As we approach the halfway point of Season 3, the chaos only continues to grow with the 1974 timeline holding more secrets than we know.

Now, we’ve got to decode what Fern’s “65” riddle means, if Del is pregnant and possibly had more than one son, and whether adult Evelyn is actually still alive in the present. All in an episode’s work!

Thankfully, Season 3 Episode 5 is giving us a brief reprieve from the endless theories. A real-life historical event is about to be explored, and it could change The Way Home’s past as we know it.

“The Year Without Summer” wasn’t just in The Way Home Season 3

As you can see in the below teaser, Kat, Elliot, and Jacob are delving deeper into The Year Without Summer, which was a “volcanic winter” that actually happened in 1816.

In reality, the summer was the coldest on record for many territories in the Northern Hemisphere due to volcanic ash and gases being released into the atmosphere blocking sunlight. This led to global cooling, crop failures, and major food shortages.

In the US, there was also a “dry fog,” contributing to a nationwide frost that set off a chain of economic distress. Many farming families, like the Landrys, left their homes to move westward in search of work.

Interestingly enough, records in The Way Home dodge 1816 altogether. As Jacob points out, Susanna’s book doesn’t include the year at all, even though it’s clear the family didn’t die out in the famine.

“They must have thought the world was ending,” Kat explains, before realizing the family artwork is what will tell the real story of what happened to them.

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Don’t forget – Jacob has returned home from 1814, meaning the relatives who brought him up would all be directly affected by what happened two years later. Obviously, we don’t know exactly how this plays out yet, but Episode 5 holds the answers.

“It’s cool that they’re going to be bringing this up, and especially that Kat mentioned they needed to focus on the art of the time,” one fan mused. “Painters from this time would be a resource to show what the world looked like in a similar sense to photographers during the Great Depression.

The volcanic winter also charged some artistic creativity in writers (Frankenstein was written due to this winter), so I wonder if they will find anything else beyond the song they mention.”

The Way Home Season 3 is streaming weekly on the Hallmark Channel. Find out more about who the mystery couple could be, and how the show could improve with three simple changes.