NBC's flagship drama series This Is Us returned tonight for its sixth and final season. After building to a season finale centered around Kevin's wedding to Madison, the current timeline ends with Madison calling off the wedding after forcing Kevin to confront the fact that he is in love with the family they've created, but not with her. In the previous episode, Kevin overcame his doubts about Madison by heeding stepfather Miguel's advice that not every love story is an epic Hollywood tale.
"Some love stories are written in the stars and other love stories are written together," he told the groom-to-be, comparing his marriage to Rebecca after the death of Jack to Kevin and Madison being brought together by her unexpected pregnancy. But Madison tells Kevin that she deserves to be marrying a man who is in love with her, and not just as the mother to his children. After present-day Randall makes a comment about not knowing what really happened when William left him at the firehouse, we see a young William holding a newborn Randall.
Randall's mother Laurel is unconscious — or worse — from an overdose. When one of them implies Laurel is dead and calls on the radio for police to come to address the drug and childcare issue, William bolts with Randall. Later in the episode, William leaves Randall at the firehouse, has second thoughts, and goes to a hospital to find him. When he finds Randall, he goes to the hospital chapel and apologizes to God for giving Laurel drugs after the birth to ease her pain and for not keeping Randall. Pre-birth Laurel doesn't get the promotion she wanted, her and William's friends are arrested, and things are looking bleak when she asks William to promise to give Randall a good life if she can't be the mother he deserves. When Rebecca has labor troubles, Jack goes to the chapel — passing William on the way in — to reflect on his father and lack of religious faith, and how he's always tried to be a better man than his father.
He calls his father and the two have a mostly tender conversation and some reconciliation. A significant takeaway from this is the juxtaposition between Jack, who dedicated himself to being better than his father, and Kevin and Randall, who dedicated themselves to living up to their father. After various events make Kevin realize how much he wants a family, he vows to be married and on his way to fatherhood by his 40th birthday in one year. Then he has a one-night stand with Kate's friend Madison and she winds up pregnant with twins. Meanwhile, Kate and Toby go through a rough patch because Toby struggles to deal with baby Jack's blindness.
However, Toby turns himself around, and at the end of the season, he and Kate decide to adopt a second child. Elsewhere, Randall suffers another massive bout of anxiety issues and Beth convinces him to go to therapy. Speaking of Rebecca, she is diagnosed with what's effectively early-stage Alzheimer's. Randall wants Rebecca to do a clinical treatment trial in Missouri, but she wants to live out her remaining good days with the family.
Randall pressures her, and when Kevin furiously confronts him about this, a lifetime of unresolved issues between the brothers seeps in, creating a catastrophic explosion. They trade insults and it ends with Kevin saying the worst thing that ever happened to him was his parents adopting Randall. This high-intensity verbal fight looms large in the season 5 opener. While Randall, Beth and the girls watch the unrest on television, Kate's off protesting with Toby and Little Jack – though Randall and Beth seem pointedly more exhausted than inspired by his sister's sudden proper white protesting. At the cabin, he finally voices his weariness, and wariness, to his sister, pointing out that George Floyd was far from the first black man killed by police on camera.
In the sixth and final season premiere for the NBC hit drama, the Big 3 — Randall (Sterling K. Brown), Kevin , and Kate — ring in their 41st birthdays just as their younger counterparts experience the trauma of The Challenger explosion. Flashbacks help show just how much change the Pearson siblings and their mother Rebecca have gone through since the show debuted. More problematic is how the show is trying to retcon its plot to these new times. Rebecca's medical trial has been canceled now thanks to COVID, which kills off one of the major storylines from last season with a somewhat blaise shrug. Meanwhile, the gathering at the cabin is now for quarantining purposes, not just for a birthday escape. Sure, it fits more with reality today, but it's sacrificing storytelling and coherence in the process for what can feel like "ripped from the headlines" detail for the sake of "ripped from the headlines" detail.
In a Q&A with Deadline, This Is Us creator/executive producer Dan Fogelman speaks about the personal experience behind "The Challenger" and how the events in the premiere set up the final story arcs for Rebecca and the Big 3. The final season premiere of NBC's time-hopping family drama aired Tuesday, setting up fans of the show for one final emotional run with the Pearson family. This Is Us has delivered five seasons of heart-wrenching, roller-coaster drama on-screen, and now the pandemic has created drama off-screen in the form of disruptions, episode trimming, and delays. But with the sixth and final season of the show finally kicking off tonight, so begins the closing chapter of the story — a chapter that star Chrissy Metz told EW will be the most emotional one yet.
"Never Stop Fighting" was a rare thing for a second season premiere, which is to say it was really the first season finale. But this opening installment really was about tying off some loose ends from last season and pushing prisoner-turned-lawyer Aaron Wallace into a new status quo. Finally free, but by no means out of trouble, this setup promises a very different run of episodes from the ones we enjoyed last year. But first Aaron had to get free, which is what this episode was mostly devoted to. The tagline for Peter Weber's season of The Bachelor is "Expect Turbulence," and man, they aren't kidding. But one of the most exciting moments was the explosive sneak peek of what looks like the Season 24 finale that kicked off the episode.
You can watch the full episode ofThe Bachelorseason 24 premiere right here onABC.comor in theABC app, or read on for highlights and spoilers to find out what happened when Hannah Brown showed up not once, but TWICE during Peter's premiere. It's a great period for us because as we talk about the nostalgia of the show and being in the final season, it's nice to go back to our kids at their youngest age, and so, that's a period we're leaning on heavily. After a longer-than-usual wait between seasons, fans will finally reunite with the Pearson clan when the fifth season of "This Is Us" premieres tonight on NBC.
And because of that longer-than-usual wait, we're willing to bet that even the biggest Big Three lovers might not remember exactly where we left America's favorite family when the Season 4 finale aired back in March. Her momentary disappearance is enough to bring Randall to the cabin that he's been avoiding. He solves the mystery of what caused her episode and tries to leave, but Kate stops him to ask if their relationship is OK and apologizes for the state of the world. Randall tells her it's not enough – that he felt alone in their family growing up when the police killed other Black people and that he never talked about it for fear of upsetting everyone – and it's a harsh reality for Kate to face.
She doesn't have much time to "sit with her feelings," as she says, before Toby tells her they've been matched with a potential baby through their adoption agency. As well done as Randall's scenes were in the episode, watching two hours of fictional characters live through the reality viewers are stuck with in real life was exhausting. "Forty" tried to end on a positive note , as Beth assures Randall that nothing is forever and the pandemic and police brutality will one day end. "We fight on," she says, and while it's a rousing cry for Randall, it's hard to take solace from Beth. "Us" is a time-hopping series that likes to offer its viewers the benefit of foresight, but unfortunately its writers can't tell us when COVID-19 will end, or when society will change.
But Kevin catches him at the car and tells him that the twins are a girl and a boy, and that Randall is the first person he's told. There's a lot that's unsaid as they discuss raising girls, then they wish each other a happy birthday and Randall goes. In the car on the way home, he calls Dr. Leigh and tells her that he doesn't feel like he can be completely open with her, so he's going to seek the services of a Black therapist, instead. Rebecca meanwhile decides to head out to buy the birthday cake.
Kate is concerned but Miguel assures her he and Rebecca have a system. Rebecca quickly becomes disoriented when she spies a young man she mistakes for William. Kate panics when she cannot reach Kevin and calls Randall instead. Kevin and Madison arrive back at the cabin just as Miguel receives word that the police have found his wife and are bringing her there. Things are tense but Randall assures Kevin he doesn't blame anyone for what happened and goes upstairs to talk with his mother. He says they never talked about this in forty years and it has been happening to black people for a long time.
He always held back because he didn't want them to say the wrong thing. And normally, he would hug her and tell her everything will be ok, but where does that leave him. He says he can't do that, it has been his pattern his whole life and he is exhausted. Kate is crying, she tells him she loves him, he says the same back and they both wish each other a happy birthday.
Rewatching This Is Us from the beginning, and the biggest thing I took away from the series—and from last season in particular—is that this show is really good at playing the emotional long game. Things like Beth's anxiety over her family's home invasion or Randall's resentment towards his mother seemed to disappear entirely only to bubble up to the surface as unexpected gutpunches. As the premiere brings us up to speed on things we knew were coming, like Kevin and Madison's engagement and Kate and Toby's adoption , it also introduces a new throughline for the season. Along with the pandemic, season five will be addressing the renewed Black Lives Matter activism that happened in response to George Floyd's murder this spring. The premiere uses those events as a jumping off point for Randall to grapple with his own experiences as a Black man raised by a white family—an identity crisis that's been a cornerstone of his character since the very beginning of the series. But This Is Us also smartly uses our country-wide racial reckoning as a major storyline for Kate too.
After all, a big part of what made this year's movement so unprecedented is the way it galvanized suburban white people who had never really been forced to think about racism or white privilege before. Our second episode was very strategically an episode that is propulsively uplifting for Rebecca in the same time period, and I think that's the balancing act both of the show and of our lives. We'll start with Kevin, who had a lot going on when we left him back in March. Had an enormous fight with Randall in which he told his adopted brother that the worst day of his life was the day his parents brought Randall home.
This blowup happened because Kevin and Randall deeply disagree on what is best for their mother, Rebecca, in light of the news that she's probably in the early stages of Alzheimer's. Randall wanted his mother to go to a clinical trial in St. Louis, she agreed, then changed her mind after she spent a day with Kevin and decided she wanted to stay near her family. She then switched her choice back to the clinical trial after Randall called and begged her to reconsider. When Kevin found out that Randall had gone behind his back and asked their mom to do the clinical trial, he was enraged. Of course, just as he's saying this, we cut back to that day in 1980 in William and Laurel's apartment, where William has just run off with baby Randall and the EMTs are ready to quit on Laurel.
And then, you guys, AND THEN one of the EMTs feels a pulse and Laurel gasps for air. I want to say there's no way this show is going to do yet another long-lost family member returning … but the episode ends on A LITERAL GASP. Welcome back to This Is Us, friends. On the one hand, that choice seems inevitable since, disregard of space and time when it comes to traveling from one location to another aside, This Is Us takes place in our reality, and it might have been difficult to just ignore it completely. Plus, the show feels equipped to deal with some of the complex issues and emotions we're dealing with today. But on the other hand, you guys, that means the heaviness of the real world is being tossed onto the heaviness of this show.
All of this is to say that watching the Pearsons go through normal Pearson problems, on top of watching them go through very real and very raw problems, provided two extremely depressing hours of television. If you were looking for a little escapism, you will not find it here. Beth is confused by all the mixed signals until Randall finally confesses what's truly bothering him. What are the odds that he was born, taken to the firehouse, and the hospital, on the same day? And this sets up the flashback portion of the episode as we find out new clues about William and Laurel and how the big three became the big three. The season two finale left us worried about the future of these four beloved characters as they were kidnapped.
The season three finale picks up from where we left off and it's finally revealed who took them in the first place. Later, after a great day spent visiting Joni Mitchell's old house with son Kevin, Rebecca received the MRI results confirming she was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. While in the Big Apple, Rebecca told her sons that she wanted to fill her remaining time with memorable experiences. At the Met, while admiring her favorite "Madame X" portrait by John Singer Sargent, the matriarch decided she would not take part in the clinical trial. However, Rebecca's stance changed after she was guilted into it by Randall.
At her grandson Jack's first birthday party, she informed the family that she would indeed relocate to St. Louis for the trial. After eight long months, This Is Us is finally returning for Season 5 on Tuesday night. But considering it feels more like 80 months since the Pearson family was last onscreen, you might need a This Is Us Season 4 recap before diving back in. Season Two forecasted a dark turn for Kevin as a re-injured knee placed him back on painkillers and quickly into an addiction spiral.
He manages to kick the addiction through therapy, but not before an explosive blow up with his entire family where he bluntly states that he was the child left behind. As the season ends, he heads to Vietnam to reconnect with the past his father never spoke about. However, Dan did admit to EW that Kevin and Sophie's relationship doesn't feel "resolved" yet. Alexandra Breckinridge revealed to Us Weekly that she "did do a scene where they did old makeup, but I don't think it made it to the show." It could still be possible that Sophie pops up in the final season. In the last few years, Alexandra hasn't been able to return to the show as easily because of Virgin River scheduling conflicts.
NBC revealed that This Is Us wouldn't return for its sixth and final season until midseason, which meant a 2022 premiere date. Even though this means a long hiatus, NBC said that the final season would be a "largely uninterrupted run." The final season will consist of 18 episodes. Get those tissues ready.This Is Usis back for Season 6, ready to celebrate the 41st birthday of the Big Three in all its glory. While we're happy to see one of the most beloved TV dramas back on NBC, we're sad to see thatThis Is Usis wrapping things up this season, meaning we won't get any new episodes after Season 6 airs. How many episodes do we have left with Kate, Kevin, and Randall?
Throughout the two-hour premiere, the episode cut repeatedly to young William and Laurel before and after Randall's birth, with William eventually dropping Randall off at the fire station after Laurel died of an overdose. There were hints in the two-minute flash-forward that Kevin and Madison could be writing their love story together. In the episodes leading up to the finale, Kevin came to the realization that he changes aspects about himself in order to please the woman he is dating.
That continues to be true at his wedding, when the actor runs himself ragged trying to give Madison the perfect day and edits movie references out of his vows, per her request. For now, however, I'm choosing to take things one day at a time. This Is Us has a tendency towards unnecessary melodrama, as with Jack's rather theatrical monologue in the hospital chapel during Rebecca's emergency delivery. But it's also capable of incredibly rich moments of subtle character-centric storytelling, like Jack's short yet deeply layered phone call with his father.
Though the former is what earned This Is Us its reputation as America's favorite weepy, it's the latter that makes it a truly great TV show. Hopefully the series won't forget that as it settles into its new normal. While the Big Three must deal with the realities of COVID as they prepare to turn 40, the flashbacks still offer a sense of normalcy—a world where people can hug and share indoor space sans masks. Though my immediate instinct was that the show should've just ignored COVID entirely, this episode handles the pandemic far more gracefully than I would've thought possible.
And then the episode cleverly uses the family cabin as a communal space for the quarantined Pearsons to mostly live like normal. I had a very blessed childhood, growing up, a pretty normal childhood in Pittsburgh, where grandparents, including a set of grandparents who had divorced and gotten remarried, nobody had died. In the show, the Big Three's 40th birthday celebration at the cabin happened on August 31, 2020.
They join Kevin and Madison on a road trip across the country to the cabin to celebrate Kate and Kevin's birthdays with Rebecca and Miguel (Randall doesn't intend to attend). When they arrive, Rebecca asks if they have any adoption news yet, but Kate says they only just posted their video. However, toward the end of the episode, the adoption agency calls Toby about a match. "Never Stop Fighting" was the first season finale more than the second season premiere, tying up some loose ends and finally positioning Aaron Wallace on the outside of the prison walls. Between March 24, when the season 4 finale aired, and Tuesday, when season 5 debuts, the real world drastically changed — specifically with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the cultural reckoning over racial injustice and police brutality.
Season five left off with a leap forward in time that left viewers wondering what happened to Kate and Toby's marriage. The just-released photos show Kate with Philip, Randall and Beth still very much in love, and Kevin back on the studio lot. Plus, we get to see at least Randall and his family celebrating the Big Three's 41st birthday. The teaser trailer shows present-day Rebecca struggling to accept her advancing Alzheimer's.
