If there's one thing that This Is Us can do better than make audiences ugly cry, it's make them wait. After all, this is the show that teased the death of patriarch Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia) until midway through its second season, when fans were finally given the absolutely gutting truth about his demise. Fortunately for fans who think another multiple-season mystery is pure television torture (I, for one, exhausted a lot of mental energy on "How Jack died" theories), This Is Us just promised a much shorter waiting period for its next huge reveal.
Phew.
At the very end of season 2, fans were treated to a time jump that involved Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and his adult daughter Tess (Iantha Richardson). In the scene, Randall tells Tess it's time to go see "her." Tess replies: "I'm not ready." Randall admits to his daughter that he's not, either.
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The scene sparked plenty of This Is Us theories. Was the "her" in this scene actually Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson), dying of cancer? Foster sister Deja (Lyric Ross), who is being released from prison?
Well, according to show creator Dan Fogelman's new interview with Entertainment Weekly, the answers are coming sooner than you might expect. This time, a singular season of the family drama promises to give you all the answers.
"It’s a mystery that won’t play out over seasons. There will be answers given in the course of the season." Fogelman told EW of that particular flash-forward. "Part of the fun of any family is looking at somebody in certain time frame or a family in a present-day time frame and hypothetically jumping forward 15 years and [seeing] who’s still in the picture, who’s not in the picture anymore, who has become ill or other. We’ll be slowly getting pieces by process of elimination or more questions…until we get to the answer... and not string it out too long."
In fact, the answers that we do get this season could reveal what the ultimate endgame is for the Pearson family.
"I don’t imagine us going past this time period in the future so in terms of a timeline, this is our ending timeline," Fogelman told the outlet.
Hmm, so could the "her" actually be Rebecca (Mandy Moore) dying in a hospital bed? What would be a more poetic end to the show than Rebecca's spirit greeting Jack in the afterlife? It's very Titanic.
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This Is Us has long planned its conclusion. Fogelman revealed at a For Your Consideration panel in May that This Is Us already shot moments from its series finale, even though NBC doesn't seem to be ending the highly-rated series any time soon.
This Is Us may be a family drama, but it's basically Game of Thrones in all its tightly-wound mysteries. I'm just glad we won't have to wait six seasons for more answers.
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