The season two finale of This Is Us left us with multiple cliff-hangers. Toby has severe depression; Kevin’s now dating Beth’s cousin, Zoe; and far into the future, Adult Tess and Old Man Randall are dreading visiting a woman whose identity isn’t known right now. It could be Beth, or Deja, or Annie, or maybe the spirit that lives inside Rebecca’s grandma wig—we have no idea. Your guess is as good as ours.
In fact, much of This Is Us‘ third season is still shrouded in secrecy. The show-runners did reveal a smidgen of what’s to come to Glamour, but there are still so many things we don’t know. Will Jack play a big role? Are Toby and Kate going to run into newlywed problems? How many times will Kevin take his shirt off? These are pressing questions we need answers to.
So, we scoured the Internet and asked the cast and crew of This Is Us to tell us everything they can about what’s to come in season three. We’ll periodically update this post when more tea comes out, but, for now, here’s what we know:
It will premiere on September 25. NBC confirmed this on June 19, 2018.
There will be 18 episodes. Season two also had 18 episodes.
Season three will be big. Fogelman told us it’s the show’s “most ambitious yet.” “We’re going for it in season three, and it’s really ambitious and really surprising,” he said.
Kevin and Zoe’s relationship is a central story. “There’s a very interesting familial dynamic there, as well as a racial dynamic that’s going to be interesting to explore,” Fogelman also explained to us at SXSW.
Rebecca and Miguel’s backstory will be fleshed out more. Co-showrunner Elizabeth Berger told TV Line the new season delves into the interesting romance between Rebecca and Jack’s best friend, including “its origins, and what Miguel and Rebecca’s life in present times is like a little bit more behind closed doors.”
We’ll also learn more about Jack. “I think season two was so much about Jack’s death obviously, and I think season three, in a really cool way, is going to be more about his life and sort of focusing on these chapters that we haven’t yet seen,” Berger revealed in the This Is Us finale after show, according to E! Online. “I think Jack has alluded to Rebecca that he has a lot of secrets and there are parts of his life that even she hasn’t been privy to, and we’re going go get to really explore those parts in a really exciting way.”
And the Present-Day Jack hypotheticals will play out more, too. We first saw this in the finale, when Kate dreamed about what Jack and Rebecca’s 40-year renewal ceremony would’ve been life if Jack were alive. This same format will continue. “Obviously a wedding is going to bring up so much for Kate especially in regards to her dad not being there, so we were sort of like how can we incorporate him into this and make him part of this day?” Berger said, also according to E! Online.
The year after Jack’s death won’t go unnoticed. “[Jack’s death] happened in February of [the Big Three’s] senior year of high school, which is a seminal time no matter what,” executive producer Isaac Aptaker and co-show runner told Glamour. “They also had this tragedy occur, which affects the rest of their lives, so we’re going to dive into that year where there’re so many stories to tell about the decisions they make[,] and the way they react to their father’s death shaped the trajectory for the next 20 years of their lives.”
Vietnam is a big part of the next season. Remember, we saw Kevin and his girlfriend, Zoe (Beth’s cousin), fly there at the end of the finale for unknown reasons, and this is where Jack served time in the military. “[Season two is] big Vietnam season for us. We’re doing some cool stuff. Milo will get a real showcase as younger Jack and there will be more Jack and Rebecca origin stories,” show creator Dan Fogelman said at SXSW, per Deadline.
Beth and Randall will run into more relationship problems. “There will be a bit of an exploration of marriage with regards to Randall and Beth going through times that aren’t all sunshine and rainbows,” Sterling K. Brown told People. “That’s not to say that they are in danger of parting ways, but marriage is real and takes work.”
We’ll get to meet Déjà’s father, too. “Obviously, Déjà has had almost no relationship with him, but she may know more about him than we previously let on,” Berger told Entertainment Weekly. “So, we’ll get to know a little bit more about what that relationship is moving forward.”
We don’t know who Adult Tess and Old Man Randall are talking to in that flash-forward,. “It’s safe to say they’re talking about someone extremely close to them, but I don’t think [the audience] is meant to think any particular person is dead or alive or ill,” Fogelman told us at SXSW. Hopefully this puts all those “Beth is dead” rumors to rest. “There’s a lot of possibilities of what Randall and Tess are talking about,” he added. “I think by the end of next season, you’ll have a general consensus where it’s going.”
Speaking of which, there are no deaths planned for the third season as of now. “We don’t have any other deaths coming in a present day storyline anytime soon,” Fogelman also told us. Thank God.
Randall and Kevin will get more screen time together. Looks like their little road trip from the season finale paid off. “There is something about the two brothers together, you see a lot of it in the finale, there is something so real about them as brothers,” Fogelman said at SXSW, according to People. “So I go ‘Sh*t, we need to get Randall and Kevin on camera more.’”
Kevin will most likely remain sober. “He seems to be headed in the right direction,” Hartley said at SXSW. “It’s part of who he is, and stuff doesn’t go away, but it’s about managing and figuring it out. He’s got a great support system.”
We’ll learn more about Toby, as well. Including why his brother didn’t attend his wedding. We also saw in a flash-forward that Toby’s suffering from severe depression, so that will be addressed as well.
More characters will receive backstories, too. “Chris Sullivan, and we’re going to be going into [Toby’s] backstory and we’re really excited about it,” Berger told Glamour at the TCAs in August 2018. “We’re going to be going into Susan’s (Beth’s) backstory for the first time, which we’re really excited about. It’s the pitfall of having such a brilliant cast is you’re always, ‘give them more, give them more!’”
They’re changing up episode structures. “A typical episode of This Is Us has three sibling storylines and then a past episode, and every now and then we’ll devote one [episode] solely to one character, but this season we’re really throwing everything out the window and saying all bets are off, so maybe we’ll do an episode where every act is a different time. Maybe we’ll have something that jumps five timelines in an episode. We’re just really pushing the limits of what people can comprehend,” Isaac Aptaker, a writer on This Is Us, told Glamour.
We’ll learn about Toby’s depression quickly. “Sort of within the first half of our season, we’re going to be seeing Kate and Toby go through various challenge,” Berger said. “Obviously last season we showed their journey to have a family…that’s a journey that we’re going to be continuing this season and there’s going to be the stresses of your first year of marriage. It’s something we’re going to be building towards.”
And we’ll learn why Deja acted out in the finale. “The immediate question for Beth and Randall is what do you do with this foster child who you’ve fallen in love with deeply who does something like, pretty frightening like that? (She smashed the windshield of Randall’s car with a baseball bat at Kate/Toby’s wedding),” Berger said. “And that’s one of the immediate things we’re picking up with in season three. [We’ll explore why she did it], absolutely.”
One thing you won’t see: Toby and Kate’s honeymoon. “I was really trying to [push for a honeymoon]! Like, can’t we go on a little trip?” Chrissy Metz tells us. “It’s alluded to that we went on one.”
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