Warning: This Is Us spoilers ahead.
This Is Us closed out the first half of season three with not one, not two, but three major cliffhangers for the beloved Pearsons.
After nearly a year of guessing, viewers found out that the “her” in question in the future is actually Rebecca, not Beth or Kate. “The reveal is one piece of the larger picture in terms of what happened with our family as we move through the rest of the series,” executive producer and co-showrunner Elizabeth Berger tells Glamour.com.
However, what wasn’t revealed was the state of Beth’s marriage to Randall or Kate’s marriage to Toby. Considering that both Randall and Toby aren’t wearing wedding rings in the future, what does that mean for the fan-favorite couples? “Everyone is going to have to see what becomes of them,” Berger teases.
And if that wasn’t enough to make viewers sweat, then the big reveal that Nicky Pearson is actually alive most certainly did. “Yes, there’s a lot going on,” executive producer and co-showrunner Isaac Aptaker says. “I can promise we’ll have some very satisfying answers in the immediate episodes when the show returns. It’s worth it.”
Until then, Aptaker and Berger do their best to explain everything that went down in tonight’s fall finale, and where the show will pick up in the new year.
PHOTO: NBC
Glamour: Nicky is alive! Who is the actor that plays him as an older man? It actually looked like it could be Milo Ventimiglia, but perhaps wearing prosthetics.
Isaac Aptaker: That’s top secret! But I promise you it’s not Milo with prosthetics. However, we’ll get the full story on older Nicky very, very soon. We’re going to be along with Kevin as he’s on this quest, with this little nugget of information he’s been given, to try and figure out what the story of his uncle was, and his whereabouts in the present day. We’re going to pick up on this right away, so fans won’t have to wait months and months. ‘All about Nicky ‘will be told by the end of the season.
Bradford, Pennsylvania (where Nicky now lives) is about a four-hour drive from Pittsburgh, so what significance does that town hold?
Elizabeth Berger: You may be seeing some version of that drive in the near future!
Aptaker: Bradford is actually a town where my mom grew up, and I’ve been there once, and it felt like exactly where I would have imagined Nicky would have settled down.
Is that how you decided on Bradford, PA then?
Aptaker: Yeah, well we knew the type of place, and I was like, ‘Actually, I’ve been somewhere that I think is perfect!’
What should viewers take away from the quick glimpse we got into Nicky’s life? Obviously we see him living a rather reclusive existence, and there is a bottle of alcohol on the table.
Berger: Obviously we’re not showing too much, but I think in the brief glimpse that we get, it’s someone that is living somewhat of a solitary existence, and like Isaac said, when we return we’ll find out the full story very quickly.
Is Nicky past the point of being able to acclimate himself into the Pearson family in the present day? Is he past the point of being saved?
Berger: That is a very good question. And knowing the type of family that the Pearsons are, you can guess that the Pearsons are probably going to want him to try and acclimate, and probably not be able to stay away once some of them learn about his existence. I think we’re going to be finding someone that has been living a very specific type of lifestyle, and there may be limitations there in terms of what he can do.
When might he meet some of the other Pearsons?
Aptaker: Kevin is pretty determined to get to the bottom of this story. He bought two tickets to Vietnam, so it’s all-consuming for him. I think it’s a matter of how long does it take to being told from a hotel clerk that your uncle is alive to actually tracking him down. I can promise that we’ll have some very satisfying answers in the immediate episodes that we come back with.
PHOTO: NBC
When did Milo first find out that Nicky was going to be alive, and what was his reaction?
Berger: We crafted our whole Vietnam arc [prior to] the beginning of the season and so as soon as we figure everything out, we let the actors in on it so they know the larger scope of what they’re playing. And I think he dug it. Milo loves the time period and he’s been having an amazing time working with Michael [Angarano, who plays Nicky].
Aptaker: He and Michael already knew each other and had worked on a project together, so they had a brother dynamic down so quickly. I went to their first day on set, which was that scene where Jack is working at the autobody shop and they are waiting to see the draft, and they felt like brothers instantly. They just had this dynamic that was so perfect.
What can you say about the Vietnamese woman? We obviously didn’t get the answers to who she is, but will we? How much emphasis should we put into who this woman is?
Aptaker: Honestly not a ton. For us, that was more a story of how, in life, you think you’re pursuing one thing, but it leads you to a much larger question that you didn’t even know you should be asking. In a little bit of a way, she was a MacGuffin [Ed note: essentially a red herring]. She was certainly important to Jack and they had that connection, but Kevin thought there was going to be this great, salacious love story with maybe an illegitimate child, and it turned out that ultimately this was more a story about brothers that he didn’t even realize.
Berger: But we will be learning a bit more about what happens with her in the past. Obviously, we still have so many questions about what happened actually during the rest of Jack and Nicky’s time together, and she obviously is involved [in their lives], so we will be getting a satisfying answer there in that time period.
Let’s move on to the question everyone has had since the season two finale: Who is “her” in the future? We finally see Beth in the future, so we know it’s not her. But when Beth says she’s going to visit Randall’s mother—thereby answering who “her” is—my first thought was that she was referring to his birth mother, and not Rebecca. Did you purposely want to make it unclear about which mother she was going to see?
Aptaker: You’re the second person that brought this up, especially because we thought, ‘Let’s just try to be really clear for once about who ‘her’ is!’ I guess we weren’t! That was not us trying to be clever. So [when Beth says she’s going to visit] Randall’s birth mother, she’s referring to Rebecca.
That makes sense,because otherwise why would older Randall call up older Toby (as he did in the season three premiere) to say “She wants you there, Toby,” if he was talking about his birth mother and not Rebecca.
Aptaker: That’s hilarious. Yes, we can answer the question that “her” is Rebecca, so that no longer has to be looming over people. And also, Beth is OK [in the future]. She has survived and is healthy and thriving in the future.
And as sad as it is knowing Rebecca is probably not doing well, at least we know that, for the most part, she has lived a long, healthy life. Is she in her eighties?
Berger: Yeah. Yes, that is true. There wasn’t some untimely death here, and this reveal is giving one piece of the larger picture, in terms of what happened with our family as we move through the rest of the series. It’s one little piece in terms of the larger plan that we’ve had in our minds since the beginning.
This must be hard for Tess, too, especially after seeing the touching scene she shared with Rebecca about her coming out.
Aptaker: Exactly. As young Tess was coming of age, Rebecca was clearly becoming such an important person in her life, and they developed a strong bond over the years and that would make it particularly painful for Tess to see Rebecca in whatever circumstance she may be in.
PHOTO: NBC
Speaking of the future, what kind of solace can you give to Beth and Randall and Katoby fans? Now we’ve seen both Randall and Toby not wearing wedding rings in the future, so either you guys have something against wedding rings or both men are not with their present-day spouses. This is very disturbing.
Aptaker, jokingly: In our future, jewelry is outlawed.
Berger: I think we can’t say too much on it. We have two incredibly strong, lovable couples that are going to be put through the pieces, and everyone is going to have to wait and see what becomes of them.
So should fans automatically not assume that Beth and Randall are divorced or separated?
Aptaker: I think you have to look at those scenes and make what assumptions and connections and guesses you want to make, because I would say we certainly haven’t shown them in any sort of affectionate, married way yet. We only know these very limited, very intentional moments that are [playing out] every so often, and it could certainly go either way.
Berger: I don’t think people should assume the best or worst. They’re just going to have to go on this journey with us a little longer.
There’s no way Beth and Randall split up over their argument involving his political future, right? They’re too strong of a couple for that.
Aptaker: I certainly don’t think they’re splitting up over that argument, but we’re over a decade into the future, so a lot can go right or wrong in the marriage in that much time.
PHOTO: NBC/Ron Batzdorff
How has Beth changed in the future? What are we meant to take away from that quick glimpse of her as the boss of a dance company?
Aptaker: Exactly. I think it’s a little bit of a head-scratcher right now for us, but it’s something that we’re going to be getting into the second half of the season. We’re doing an all-Beth episode that we’ll be starting to shoot in a week or two that will really dive into her backstory and give us a lot of answers about who Beth was before she met Randall. Once we explore that backstory, the future flash[forward] will start to make a lot more sense.
In the future, Beth’s assistant hands her a Pin the Tail on the Donkey game. Remind viewers how that played into Rebecca’s past.
Berger: It’s something that we showed in our birthday episode in season one, so the game is part of the Pearson family history.
Finally, what can you say about where we pick up in January?
Aptaker: We actually just watched the first cut of the episode and it’s a really, really cool one. We are going to pick up on election night for Randall, which is about an eight-week jump in our show. But then we’re going to go back in time. It’s one of our specially-structured episodes where we start on election night, waiting for the results to come in, and then we jump back and tell the story of those eight weeks we missed and catch up to where everybody is on election night.
This Is Us will return January 15 at 9 P.M. ET on NBC.
