Warning: This article contains spoilers from Tuesday’s episode ofThis Is Us.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house after the latest episode ofThis Is Us.
Tuesday’s episode, “The Train,” brought fans on an emotional journey through the final hours of the life of Rebecca Pearson (Mandy Moore).
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Below,This Is Uscreator Dan Fogelman, who also wrote Tuesday’s penultimate episode, breaks down Rebecca’s final moments, why he included two beloved characters, and what’s to come in the series finale.
Justin Hartley as Kevin, Sterling K. Brown as Randall, Mandy Moore as Rebecca in This Is Us.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
PEOPLE: You wrote the episode and knew what to expect, but how did you respond seeing it all come together with the actors on screen? Did it exceed your expectation? Did it make you cry?
DAN FOGELMAN: It did exceed my expectations. That’s happened pretty consistently for me since the show started. Every time I get really excited about a big [episode] and think I know what to expect, when I see it up on a screen, the actors always really surprise me. And the way our crew puts things together makes it all so seamless and beautiful. It always catches me a little off guard, especially when I think I know exactly how it’s going to look and feel.
Sterling K. Brown as Randall and Mandy Moore as Rebecca on This Is Us.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
In terms of crying, this past month or so has definitely been, everything’s at the tip of your throat right now for all of us, because we’ve had such a life-changing experience from the show, and we’re treading in content that is obviously very emotional and, for me, very personal. I’ve developed a way of creating a little bit of a forcefield around myself so I can do the job properly and look at it as a piece of work rather than letting myself just fall to pieces and not have any perspective.
Justin Hartley as Kevin and Mandy Moore as Rebecca in This Is Us.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
Why did you select a train to symbolize the final journey of Rebecca’s life?
I always had in my mind that Rebecca was going to pass at the end of our penultimate episode. And I knew that we would potentially be revisiting a family and the child who survived on the night of Jack’s death. I just wasn’t sure about what the device would be in terms of how we would show Rebecca’s mind’s eye and crossing over.
I was talking about that and setting our first episode at that very Travel Town and how Rebecca would start losing her first word, “caboose,” and not be able to find it. And then one of our executive producers and writers who’s been with me since the beginning, K.J. Steinberg, said, “I have a crazy idea. What if that’s the device you’ve been searching for, the train? And as we walk through the train, this thing she romanticized as a child, we’re kind of walking her to the last car on the train.” I immediately jumped up, and I said, “That’s it. That’s what we’re doing.” I wish I could take credit for the original idea, but it K.J.’s.
Justin Hartley as Kevin, Sterling K. Brown as Randall in This Is Us.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
What about choosing William (Ron Cephas Jones) as the conductor/guide? Why him?
He’s just been such a part of this thing from the beginning. I always talked about how in the very end of the show and in the final season, I wanted to go back a little bit. It was very important to me to get William as this spiritual guide, taking Rebecca from the front to the back of the train, and have Dr. K (Gerald McRaney) be a big stop on it, and get those two guys and to show them in a meaningful and important way, and not just as a flash.
I feel like when your life is flashing in front of your eyes, it’s often these giant figures who I believe would [come up]. So it felt to me like this man, William, whose story was so tied to Rebecca’s, even though they were virtual strangers, and even though they crossed in a very unusual way that wasn’t always perfect, it felt like a fitting conclusion that he would be there at her side, driving her along, because it was such a complicated and fraught relationship and co-existence for the two of them.
And then, watching Gerald a couple of weeks ago be that special with Rebecca again, it gave me a similar feeling that did bring it back to six years earlier shooting the pilot.
I love the way that it also came back in a full-circle form when Jack gives Dr. K’s lemonade advice to another family at the hospital. Did you always have the idea to bring in Marcus' family and have a parallel of how one life ends, another begins or restarts?
I did. I always thought that this second to last episode, in a way that hopefully surprises, would tell the story of another person, potentially a child, who had survived in that same moment that Jack had been lost. It’s very much at the center of the show.
There’s a lot of talk about how much the show makes people cry, and that often comes with it being sad. Obviously when you’re dealing with the death of a beloved character and the matriarch of the family, it’s going to be sad, but we also wanted to try and capture something that’s beautiful and a little hopeful about the human experience. Which, even in death, there’s laughter and a family can gather in ways that are sad, but [that] are also joyful. The human condition is that we keep moving forward and stories keep moving forward.
So, on the very night that the beloved patriarch of the family died, he passed on advice that translated to a whole other family he’d barely know, for the family of a child who was saved that night. It felt important to us to have that story inside this very episode.
Susan Kelechi Watson as Beth, Sterling K. Brown as Randall in This Is Us.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
In terms of having Kate be in London and not there for most of the episode, why was it that you selected her to be the person who Rebecca was waiting on before she dies?
I’ve always been so enamored with the relationship between Kate and Rebecca, this mother-daughter dynamic that is equal parts fraught and complicated, and in the later years of their lives, really incredibly beautiful and simple.
Justin Hartley as Kevin, Alexandra Breckenridge as Sophie in This Is Us.Ron Batzdorff/NBC
It’s funny because I wasn’t actually thinking about this show. Obviously, when you watch it now, you think about the show and the fact that it has this meta quality because he’s speaking about something that you love coming to an end, and that’s okay. It’s just at the exact time that the show is coming to an end.
I think at the moment when I was writing it, which was quite a while ago, I was actually thinking of my experiences losing people and how in the moment, when I’ve lost somebody, I would’ve been hard pressed to believe I would’ve been able to smile again or feel the joy that would come to me weeks, months, years, decades later. Only with time and a bit of perspective, you say, “Hey, the reason that loss affected me so deeply is because it was a really, really good person in my life and a good force in my life.” That perspective doesn’t come necessarily on the day of the funeral or the week of your loss.
But it comes often with time. It’s why people are able to move forward with their lives, trying to live their lives in service of what their parents may have wanted for them or their children or their siblings. So I think that’s what I was thinking about when I wrote it.
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As for the series finale, what can fans expect? You said we might get a little bit of Nicky, but is there anything else you can hint about the final farewell ofThis Is Us?
I’m really proud of it. I’m finishing it as we speak. I think our cast and crew and writers and everybody that works on the show put together a very confident finale that was long-gestating and long-planned. It’s very simple.
I think this show hopefully will leave people with the feeling that, of course, has a little bit of melancholy in it, because it’s about loss and time, but it’s also something beautiful that I think is captured and said at the end of it all, and I hope it speaks to people who have stuck with the show for six years. I’m excited and sad at the same time for the end, but I think it’s going to be really good.
The series finale ofThis Is Uswill air Tuesday, May 24, at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.
source: people.com
