Although 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 has been set: 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 is seemingly there to say goodbye to an ailing 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 Weekly exclusively of the theory in October 2020. “But maybe that means that maybe Jack and Miguel are just, kind of, hanging out in heaven together. I don’t know.”
Another person who is still not present in the flash-forwards is Kate (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.
“[The reveal] is not way off. I think viewers will continue to get pieces of the puzzle of the future, and that will certainly be by the end of this season,” coexecutive producer and writer Julia Brownell told Glamour following the episode. “They’ll be able to put a couple more pieces together of who might be in that car and who might be arriving. Of course, there’s only a few people left that we haven’t seen at Kevin’s future house so they can probably start to guess. But it might be someone you don’t know as well.”
In the season 5 finale, which aired in May 2021, fans saw a separate flash-forward of Kate preparing to tie the knot with her coworker Phillip (Chris Geere), although in the present she was still married to Toby.
“It does feel like she’s doing something she shouldn’t do,” Metz told Us of the story line in August 2021. “Who is this guy? Like, I really like you and you’re really nice and you’re English and whatever and charming, but, like, this feels wrong!”
For more hot celebrity news, listen to Us Weekly editors dish on top topics & trends with these clips from the Hot Hollywood Podcast!
Scroll through the gallery below, which we’ll be updating regularly, for everything we know about those flash-forward scenes.
