This Is Us’ Sterling K. Brown Teases That “Big Clue” About Jack’s Death in the Season 2 Premiere
For fans of the hit NBC show This Is Us, the death of family patriarch Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia) has been top of mind ever since the series blindsided us with news of his passing — but few other details about how or when it happened — in season one. By the time the finale aired, we had a lot of questions, and very few answers. But according to show creator Dan Fogelman and star Sterling K. Brown, we’ll get a major clue about Jack’s fate during the season two opener, airing Tuesday, September 26.
“You find out how Jack dies throughout the course of the season,” Brown (who plays Randall) told Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb on the Today show Monday. “You get a big clue in the episode tomorrow night. And then the pieces sort of get filled in throughout the course of the season. But then new sort of mysteries will develop as well.”
Season one ended with Jack and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) deciding to split up. Will it be temporary? Does it lead to Jack’s untimely death during the triplets’ teenage years? And why does Kate allude to her father’s death being her fault? Back in June, Fogelman hinted that this season would fill in at least a few of the blanks, telling People‘s Jess Cagle, “The first episode of the season holds not all the answers but a huge piece of the puzzle.”
So what could that piece be? Entertainment Weekly has been trying to string together everything the cast has said about the show’s sophomore season, but there’s a reason there have been no leaks about the supposedly “huge” clue.
“The surprise is so big that when Dan wrote the script, he omitted the final scene from the script just so it couldn’t be leaked. I know what it is, but he didn’t put it in writing,” Emmy winner Brown told the same panel that hosted Fogelman back in June.
Other cast members have teased the reveal too, but as EW points out, their hints are equally cryptic. Justin Hartley (Kevin) said that it’s “heartbreaking,” and Chrissy Metz (Kate) suggested that it could be something “small” or “subtle” (but with bigger implications, obviously). We’ll just have to tune in to see how the story continues to play out. And while we probably won’t learn exactly what happened in the first episode of the season, the bread crumbs will only get bigger on the path to Jack’s demise.
What do you think happened to Jack Pearson? Tell us @BritandCo!
(Photos via Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images + NBC)
