Family Ties

As Season 1 of the hit drama draws to a close, all of the Pearsons—past and present—find themselves at a crossroads

- Ingela Ratledge

With the final two episodes of This Is Us fast approaching, let’s begin by stating the obvious: We’re gonna need a bigger box of Kleenex. After all, NBC’s breakout freshman dramedy—which chronicles the highs and lows of the Pearson family using a time-bending narrative that alternates between past and present—is notorious for reducing its 10 million devotees to helpless puddles on a weekly basis. So it should come as no surprise that Season 1 is poised to sign off with a crescendo of emotional pyrotechnics. “Viewers’ heads are going to pop off their bodies,” confirms Chrissy Metz, who plays Kate, one member of the show’s sibling trio. “Nobody is ready for what’s about to happen. I know I wasn’t!”

Well, at least we’ve been warned. The sensory gauntlet commences in the March 7 penultimate episode, as the modern-day crew—including Kate and her twin, Kevin (Justin Hartley), and their adopted brother, Randall (Sterling K. Brown)—bids farewell to Randall’s biological father, William (Ron Cephas Jones). “Coming off of William’s death, everybody is going to be stripped a little raw,” warns creator Dan Fogelman. Naturally Randall, who just recently forged a bond with his birth dad, only to lose him to cancer, will be especially vulnerable. The once buttonedup career man—an executive in the fittingly opaque field of weather derivatives—has been coming increasingly unglued, and he finally reaches his tipping point. “Some of what comes out is surprising,” says Fogelman. “Randall is at a real crossroads, and that’s when we make our boldest choices.”