Given all of the ensemble show’s characters, there are a lot of questions still up in the air, and not a lot of time left to resolve them all. While there’s been buzz about a possible This Is Us movie down the road that might continue the Pearson family‘s story, we still expect the series to end on NBC with most of its long-arching mysteries and questions neatly wrapped up, even if we don’t yet know exactly how each storyline will end. Of course, considering how much This Is Us loves to surprise its audience, we anticipate that the drama will still squeeze in a few more shocking twists before its finale airs on Tuesday, May 24. All of that adds up to a lot of uncertainty, but here’s everything we know (and theorize) about how the This Is Us series finale might end.
What will happen on the finale of This Is Us?
Since its very first episode, This Is Us has been strategically setting up big questions and slooooowly doling out the answers. Many of those questions have been answered over the years, but there are still a lot of loose ends to tie up before we say goodbye to the Pearson family. The second half of Season 6 has already delivered quite a few answers, including the circumstances of Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Toby’s (Chris Sullivan) divorce; the beginning of Kate’s romance with her second husband, Philip (Chris Geere); the identity of Kevin’s (Justin Hartley) wife, Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge); and the fate of Miguel (Jon Huertas). But there are still a few major dangling threads, including:
Who is the father of Déjà’s (Lyric Ross) baby?What happens to Kate in the future?Will Rebecca (Mandy Moore) die?
The good news is that series creator Dan Fogelman has gone on the record that all of these questions and more will be answered by the end of the series. “My hope is that by the end of the series, there is no stone left unturned,” Fogelman told EW in a 2021 interview. “You would have nothing left to ask me about spoilers. You might want to call me and say, ‘I don’t like what happened to such-and-such. I don’t like who such-and-such wound up with.’ But you won’t be going, ‘Who?’ If we’ve done that, I feel like we’ve done our job and we’ve made the choices that we thought were best for the characters and for the story. But by the end of it, I don’t think there will be any of these timeline mysteries left. Hopefully, it will set us up for a very beautiful and simple ending to the entire venture.”
Who does Kevin end up with on This Is Us?
After playing a shell game with the many women in Kevin‘s life for most of the series, Season 6 seemed to narrow down the candidates for his future wife to three possibilities: his best friend Cassidy (Jennifer Morrison), his ex-fiancé and the mother of his twins Madison (Caitlin Thompson), or his ex-wife Sophie. After numerous episodes that seemed to lay the groundwork for any of the three to be a viable option, we finally got a definitive resolution to Kevin’s love life at Kate’s wedding to Philip, when Kevin and a recently divorced Sophie admitted their mutual love for one another and got back together. In the episode following the wedding, which skipped forward a few years in time, we see that Kevin and Sophie are now happily married, spending their holidays together at the family cabin once again, just as they did as teenagers. Sophie is also expected to be around for the finale based on comments from Breckenridge, who said in an interview with PEOPLEthat we’ll get to see some of the role Sophie will play in Kevin’s life in the final episodes. “I think you’re going to see how that [co-parenting] dynamic is going to play out between her and his kids, and Madison and Elijah (Adam Korson),” Breckenridge said. “But as we close in on the end of the show, and we have this looming deathbed that’s been teased over the last few seasons in the future, Sophie’s going to be a great sense of support and stability for Kevin.”
Does Kevin quit acting on This Is Us?
Career-wise, we last saw Kevin coming up with the idea for Big Three Construction Homes, and it sounds like that’s going to be his focus going forward. Speaking to EW following the episode “The Guitar Man,” Hartley said, “I think it becomes obvious that [Big Three Construction is] his passion, it’s his project, and he’s funding it. To start out with, he’s using his acting money to fund the whole thing. And then he can raise money. It’s a non-for-profit so he can raise money from private parties. It becomes pretty clear that it’s his thing. It’s not really a family thing… necessarily? It was inspired by the family and his dad, but he’s running it and it’s his thing and it’s his passion. It’s what he focuses on—his kids and his nonprofit. That’s what he’s doing.” Does that mean he’ll be giving up acting by the end of the series, or will he find a way to do both? We’ve seen Kevin grow increasingly dissatisfied with his acting career as the series has progressed, but giving it up entirely would be a major shift for a character who has made acting his life since he was a teenager. Still, we have seen a flash-forward that Big Three Homes is enough of a thing five years in the future that Kevin practices Kate’s wedding speech on a page ripped from a Big-Three-Homes-branded notepad, so if he commits to one career by the end of the series, it will probably be that one.
What happens to Randall in This Is Us?
We also know that Randall and Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) are still married—and in the same flash-forward as the one referenced above, we saw an article labeling Randall as a “rising star” in politics. Later, in Kate‘s wedding episode, we learned just how far Randall’s star has risen with the reveal that he was recently sworn in as a senator for the state of Pennsylvania. Since then, Randall’s political storyline has taken a backseat to Rebecca and Miguel‘s journeys, but we expect that the newly minted Senator Pearson will reveal at least a few big goals he hopes to achieve during his term by the time we get to the series finale.
What happens to Kate in This Is Us?
And then there’s the question of Kate. She has yet to appear in the cabin flash-forwards, but we do know that she is alive and well in the future, having seen her in a flash forward with Philip, Toby, and Toby‘s second wife Laura (Alexis Krause) as they all come together to watch their son Jack (Blake Stadnik) perform a concert. We don’t know if Kate sticks with teaching or moves on to another career, but it seems like she has a long and happy marriage with Philip. Since they met at the school, and he was the one to give her a full-time teaching job, it seems like a safe bet that she continues to thrive in her teaching career. That doesn’t answer the question of why we haven’t seen her by her mother’s bedside yet, but based on what we now know about her relationship with Toby following their divorce, and we’re willing to bet that when he said back in Season 3 that he’d spoken to Jack and “they’re on their way,” he was likely referring to Kate, Philip, and the children.
Does Rebecca die in This Is Us?
Obviously, the flash-forwards have been centered around the family returning to the cabin Kevin builds for his mother and Miguel (and, based on comments in the flash-forwards, moves into with his own family at some point) to gather around Rebecca as she enters her final days. By the time of the flash-forwards, Rebecca will have been living with Alzheimer’s for around 15 years, so the implication is that she is finally succumbing to the degenerative disease, and will soon pass away. Some fans are speculating that Rebecca’s death will actually occur in the penultimate episode of the series, titled “The Train,” following her husband Miguel’s death in Episode 15, “Miguel.” We’ve already seen that Rebecca’s Alzheimer’s has progressed significantly by the time Miguel dies, and that she requires full-time professional care and gets easily agitated. Miguel was always a calming presence for her, but in his absence, caring for her is likely going to get substantially more difficult for the Big Three. Adding fuel to this theory is Mandy Moore’s admission that she threw up when reading the penultimate script for the series, telling Today, “It was so beautiful and upsetting. That was my physical reaction.” Chrissy Metz agreed, saying that she had a similar reaction to the script for “The Train.” “I couldn’t breathe,” she said. “I couldn’t catch my breath.” Chris Geere also promised viewers will experience big emotions while watching “The Train,” telling NBC Insider, “the fans are just gonna go crazy. It’s one of the sweetest, saddest episodes of TV I’ve ever done—so much so, people are genuinely crying their eyes out during various takes.” If this is indeed the episode where Rebecca dies, we can see why that would be the case.
What happens to Miguel in This Is Us?
After years of wondering why we hadn’t seen Miguel in the flash-forwards, we finally got the heartbreaking answer in the Seaosn 6 episode titled “Miguel,” which revealed that after lovingly standing by and caring for Rebecca for many years following her Alzheimer’s diagnosis, he preceded her in death. We don’t know precisely what caused Miguel’s death, although we know his doctor was concerned about his heart. What’s more important, though, is that Miguel spent his final years not only with the woman he loved, but also finally reconciled with his own children from his first marriage after Kevin decides to pay his son a visit. Miguel’s son, daughter, and grandchildren all join Miguel, Rebecca, and the Pearsons for at least one final Christmas holiday before he passes away, which was undoubtedly the best present Miguel could have ever asked for. Following his death, Kevin accompanied Miguel’s son to Puerto Rico to spread some of his ashes, while Kate, Randall, and Miguel’s daughter spread the rest at the cabin he shared with Rebecca.
What will happen to Rebecca’s grandchildren on This Is Us?
This Is Us started out primarily as the story of Rebecca and Jack’s (Milo Ventimiglia) nuclear family, and has followed the couple and their three children throughout its run. However, as the show has gone on and Rebecca and Jack’s grandchildren have gotten older, they have received more and more of the focus, with Randall‘s children getting the most fleshed-out storylines. But even Kate’s young children have been spotted as adults in flash-forwards, which presumably take place sometime after Rebecca‘s death. It seems fair to assume that a natural way to close out the series would be shifting the focus from the Big Three to their children, moving Kate, Kevin, and Randall into the spots that Rebecca and Jack have occupied throughout the course of the show. In the flash-forwards, we’ve seen that Tess (Iantha Richardson) grows up to be a social worker, Déjà (La Trice Harper) is pursuing a medical internship, and while we don’t know what Annie (Iyana Halley) is doing professionally, we at least know she’s still close with her family, especially Déjà. Kevin’s two children are still young, somewhere right around the beginning of their teenage years, so we don’t know where they’ll wind up yet. But although Kate’s two children are close to the same age as Kevin’s, we have seen them in an even more extended flash-forward where we learned that Jack (Blake Stadnik) grows up to be a successful musician who marries a waitress named Lucy (Auden Thornton) and has a daughter named Hope, and that Hailey (Adelaide Kane) works at an art gallery near her brother. Now that we’re quickly approaching the end of the series, we actually passed one of the flash-forwards when we witnessed Kate’s wedding to Philip. We expect the remainder of the series to lead up to Rebecca’s final days at the cabin, and then likely jump ahead, catching up to the far-future timeline that has previously centered mainly around Jack and Lucy. With the title “Us,” we anticipate that the finale will center the legacy of the Pearson family rather than focusing on individual storylines, showing how Jack and Rebecca’s family tree branches out over the years. According to Milo Ventimiglia, the ending feels like “an infinite loop of where things start and how it all kind of tailors back into one another.” Perhaps that means we will get to see each of the Big Three as grandparents, or even great-grandparents, as their children and grandchildren find love, experience loss, and explore their passions in life. After all, while we don’t know anything for sure, we can’t imagine a This Is Us finale without time jumps, big surprises, and a whole lot of heartwarming family moments.
Are there any spoilers about how This Is Us will end?
Moore has described the This Is Us ending as “a slow goodbye” as opposed to an abrupt one, while Ventimiglia similarly told the AP, “We’re going to start to see loops closing as we go through these episodes that are released and start to finish up and understand where characters were going and where they end up. But at the very end I think we’re gonna find ourselves in a very simple place, simple kind of day, simple kind of way and something more so deeply connected to everybody and their experience in life.” But even simple, everyday life can be pretty darn emotional, and Ventimiglia assures us that the finale of This Is Us will deliver on the feels, telling Us Weekly, “[the finale] is probably gonna wreck people in the most heartfelt way. It’s beautiful. I’m so excited.” Meanwhile, Chris Geere let slip to NBC Insider that the last scene of the series will feature a scene with “everyone.” Of course, we don’t know exactly who he means by “everyone,” and whether that only includes people who are alive in the present-day timeline, or whether he truly means all of the main cast members of the show (which brings up quite a few questions when it comes to characters like Jack, Miguel, and probably Rebecca). Will This Is Us find a way to magically bring characters from multiple time periods together for its final scene, or will it simply be a reunion of Pearsons and their loved ones in the future? Either way, we’re sure to need a lot of tissues.
How sad will the end of This Is Us be?
“You can expect to be satisfied and sad,” was how Moore described the upcoming This Is Us finale in an interview with Access in early April. This Is Us developed a reputation as a tearjerker early on, and has only leaned into that reputation more as the show has progressed. So rest assured, the end of the series will almost certainly make us all cry. “People were crying to the point that I wasn’t sure if I should keep going or not,” Fogelman admitted during a Deadline Zoom event, recounting the reaction of NBC studio execs to his pitch for This Is Us Season 6. “Cameras were shutting off, and I thought I’d lost people.” But don’t worry; they won’t necessarily be sad tears. “I think there’ll be contentment,” Metz told Us Weekly, regarding how fans will react to the finale. “I think they’ll feel that bittersweet feeling that I think a lot of the episodes leave you with. Like, I think they will feel like a sense of closure and some bittersweet memories.” Regardless of how we feel once the final episode is over, though, we can know that this was always the way the show was supposed to end. Fogelman has long insisted that he’s had the series’ ending completely planned out, and hasn’t wavered in that claim. “We’ve had it very carefully mapped out,” Fogelman said. “So, love it or hate it, we get to go out the way we’ve always planned on going out and executing the plan.” Already feeling nostalgic about This Is Us? Relive some of the show’s most moving moments with these 50 beautiful This Is Us quotes.
