However This is Us is famous for skipping around to different time periods, it’s the look into the future that has everyone talking.
The scene was set way back in the third season: The family is gathered at Kevin’s (Justin Hartley) very nice home and it’s around the year 2032 — 12 years after the Big Three’s 40th birthday. The group appears to be there to say goodbye Rebecca (Mandy Moore), who is lying in bed with Jack’s brother, Nicky (Griffin Dunne), by her side.
Rebecca’s husband, Miguel (Jon Huertas), is nowhere to be seen, and Nicky is noticeably wearing a wedding band on his left hand — two facts that have created a theory on the Internet: Rebecca, who is sick with dementia, believes that Nicky is actually Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and they are letting her believe this, despite Jack dying years prior.
“I mean, that’s pretty cool. Speaking as Jack, it breaks my heart that Miguel is not around because that’s his best friend,” Ventimiglia 43, told Us WeeklyOnly of the theory in Oct 2020. “But maybe that means that maybe Jack and Miguel are just, kind of, hanging out in heaven together. I don’t know.”
The theory wasn’t exactly what happened. Nicky met a lovely flight attendant. He now lives at the original cabin with his wife. Rebecca, however, is a widow again after Miguel’s heart failure.
Kate (a second person who is not present in flash-forwards) is another.Chrissy Metz), but Toby (Chris Sullivan() is with the family. Although he has referenced that “they” are on their way, it hasn’t been determined if he’s referring to Kate or his kids, who are also noticeably absent.
At the end of a February 2021 episode, a car pulls in the driveway and Randall says, “Hey, look who’s here!” That mystery will be revealed soon. It seems that he is referring now to Kate and Phillip (Chris Geere).
During the sixth and last season, the answers started to appear. Kevin built the house Jack envisioned right by their cabin. Nicky and wife Edie moved into the cabin while Rebecca and Miguel lived up in the big house with a nurse’s aide. After Miguel’s death — and on the heels of his TV show ending — Kevin and his family moved to Pennsylvania so he could live with Rebecca.
“In a way, Kevin is taking care of his siblings as well, because he’s telling them they need to get here and bring the kids, bring everybody,” Hartley told The Hollywood ReporterThe show moved almost entirely towards the future timeline in May 2022. “He does the right thing and gives everybody the opportunity to say goodbye in their own way. It’s a tough one.”
Kevin is finally maturing after years of being the Big Three’s hot mess. He is the one calling the Pearson family to say their goodbyes.
“I think he’s always been really good at — and he’s underestimated his ability to — take care of other people and be sort of the man with the plan,” Hartley added. “I think [Kevin]We were just finding him when we found him. People can find themselves. I love this character and I feel really good about the fact that the man that he always wanted to be, and thought that he could be and has been sort of striving to be, is absolutely the man that he turned into.”
Scroll through the gallery below, which we’ll be updating regularly, for everything we know about those flash-forward scenes.
