‘The Way Home’: Is Nick’s Claire Alice?

It’s a theory that fans had long before the, as the showrunners put it, “cheeky” moment in The Way Home finale: After Alice’s (Sadie Laflamme-Snow) time with the teen Nick during one of her trips to the past via the pond on the Landry property that allows certain family members to travel to when they need to go, there’s a reason there’s so much mystery around Claire, his fiancée now in the present. And according to one theory, that’s because she’s actually Alice as an adult.

In the finale, Claire is once again brought up, when Nick (Kerry James), who’s buying the boat from Del (Andie MacDowell), remarks to Alice that he and his fiancée are going to make a lot of good memories on her, be a regular Del and Colton (Jefferson Brown). Alice asks if she’ll ever meet Claire. Nick says he’s sure she will, one day.

The fact that Alice is currently a teenager certainly lends credence to the theory that she’s not Claire. Yes, they knew each other when both were teens, but it does feel like they moved strictly into “she’s his friend’s much-younger daughter” territory (and this is Hallmark). Plus, that would mean that at some point, she’d be traveling back in time and staying there — and leaving behind the rest of her family — for this relationship? The series showed her moving on from Nick and in a love triangle herself, ultimately ending with what looked like a possible future for her and Max (Dale Whibley). That being said, it is possible that Claire is someone who’s connected to the pond or one of the town’s families in some way.

The showrunners even acknowledged to TV Insider that that was them leaning into the theory that fans have had. “That’s us being cheeky because there are some who actually think that Alice is Claire and vice versa. We left that open,” Heather Conkie explained, with Alexandra Clarke adding, “We leave it open because you never know. There’s never say never, as we say, never say never. And we were just being very cheeky.”

Fans certainly have theories about how it could be possible — and why Alice used that name.

Someone on Reddit noted, “You can rearrange the letters in ‘Claire’ to get ‘Alice R,'” and then another user commented, “Del’s middle name is rose and Kat gives Rose as her name to Colton but I’m not sure if we know Alice’s middle name. The boat is the Delilah Rose. That said – I don’t think it’s the name thing at all! (Though Claire is a popular time travel name from Outlander & The Time Traveler’s Wife.) Alice already knows that Nick is with someone named Claire. That leaves 2 options: She (eventually) goes back to the early 2020s and bumps into him. She would know at that point she can’t say Alice because she knows he hasn’t seen her so she grabs the first name she sees which is Claire and then realizes what she’s done and how the pieces fit together, that she is Claire. She figures it out at some point and introduces herself as Claire when she meets him because she knows that’s how it has to happen to keep the secret until Nick learns about time travel. Technically there’s a 3rd option that Nick has known this entire time but I’m inclined to think we saw him learn about the pond & then he went back to Claire & then learned the truth.”

On the other side, one Reddit user suggested, ” If this show gets picked up for a future holiday special or another season on Netflix, the writers could pivot and make Claire Griffin’s daughter. Someone on here noticed when Nick came down from the boat he had Griffins camera strap – he could have found it in the boat – BUT it is a possibility for a future story.” In that same thread, someone else wrote, “Claire is no one. Nick made her up to help Alice move on.”

But what do you think? Let us know in the poll and comments section below.

The Way Home, Streaming Now, Netflix