We also learned the sex (and name!) of Déjà’s (La Trice Harper) baby, had a visit from a familiar face from the past, and learned what followed that bittersweet “hey“ that Jack and Rebecca exchanged at the end of “The Train.” Unlike most previous episodes of This Is Us, “Us” wasn’t interested in setting up new mysteries or subverting expectations, focusing instead on simply reminding viewers why we love this family, why they love each other, and that even though will miss them when they’re gone, the time that we spent together was good. Here is how This Is Us wrapped up its six-season family saga in its series finale, “Us.”
This Is Us Series Finale “Us” Recap
What was the memory Rebecca didn’t want to forget on This Is Us?
When Rebecca’s memories first started to slip in the earliest stages of her Alzheimer’s disease, she told Miguel (Jon Huertas) that she wasn’t afraid of losing her memories of the biggest moments of her life, but rather, that it was the small ones she most wanted to hold on to. As an example of the type of memory she’s talking about, she mentions a lazy Saturday that she and Jack once spent playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey with the kids. So naturally, “Us” makes a point of showing us that memory, so that we’ll remember to. But first, some backstory: When the Big Three were still babies, Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca came across a Pin the Tail on the Donkey game in the store, with a picture of three children on the box: a white boy, a white girl and a Black boy, immediately calling to mind the Big Three. Jack was ready to just pass it by as a neat coincidence, but Rebecca insists they buy it. “When the world puts something this obvious in front of you, you don’t just walk away from it,” she says. “You could be missing out on something very important.” A few years later, in scenes that were filmed four years prior to the finale a bit of time travel magic, Jack and Rebecca lie in bed, with Rebecca recounting one of her favorite childhood memories of being pushed on the swings by her dad. We then see many generations of Pearsons pushing their kids on the swings: Jack and Rebecca with the Big Three, Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) with a tiny Tess and Annie, Kevin (Justin Hartley) with his twins Nicky and Franny, Toby (Chris Sullivan) and Kate (Chrissy Metz) with Jack and Hailey, and then a grown-up Jack (Blake Stadnik) and Lucy (Audn Thornton) with their daughter Hope. The swing conversation then shifts to excitement about the possibility of a rare free Saturday, now that Randall’s Mathlete’s event has been canceled. Kevin (Parker Bates) and Randall (Lonnie Chavis) are less than enthused, but Kate (Mackenzie Hancsicsak) says she has “several ideas” of what they could do. As Kate and Rebecca finish up their chalk drawings in the driveway, Kevin and Randall refuse to participate in family foursquare, preferring to complain on the porch. Later, Kate tells Jack that she just likes when they can all be together. If only her brothers felt the same. Watching home movies, Kevin and Randall are, once again, determined party poopers, but Jack can’t be dissuaded from breaking out a tape of the very first Big Three chant (which took “less than potty training, longer than the ABCs” for the tots to learn). Yet while Kate and their parents are delighted by the memory, the brothers refuse to ditch the grumpy attitudes, and storm up to their rooms. Rebecca follows Kevin, prying out of him that his bad mood is because he wasn’t able to do any pull-ups in the Presidential Fitness Challenge the day before in school, and he thought everyone was laughing at him. “Not everything is going to come easy for you,” Rebecca tells him, but promises that hard work will make the big victories feel even more special. Meanwhile, Jack pulls the truth out of Randall, who admits that he lied about his Mathletes event being canceled. Turns out he was embarrassed that another kid has been calling him “fuzz” thanks to the peach fuzz on his upper lip, and got him back by pulling a chair out from under him, getting himself suspended from Mathletes. Since Jack feels as though Randall has already punished himself enough, he instead offers to teach him how to shave. Before Randall can make the first swipe of the razor, Kevin sees what’s happening and decides he wants to learn to shave too. As the boys commiserate that they don’t want to do the “baby stuff” that Kate enjoys anymore, Jack disagrees, saying that Kate “gets it.” “When you’re young, you’re always trying to be older. Then when you get old, you’re always trying to go back.” “It’s strange, the things you remember,” Jack muses, to which his boys tell him he’s being weird. “One day, you’ll get it,” Jack says. After shaving, the boys finally agree to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey, where Kate pins the tail perfectly on the first try. Her secret? Making note of where all her family members are before putting the blindfold on, and then listening to where they are after she spins, since she knows they never shut up. “As long as I know where you are, I always know where I’m going,” she says.
How do the Big Three handle Rebecca’s death on This Is Us?
In bed, Randall works on his mother’s eulogy, but isn’t able to come up with anything beyond “Mom was magic.” Meanwhile, Kevin debates between ties for his mother’s funeral, and Kate looks wistfully at a photo of her and her mother at her wedding. (Interestingly, newer Pearson spouses Sophie and Philip are almost entirely absent from the finale.) Randall and Beth prepare for the funeral, less than two hours away, and he still hasn’t written anything. Beth says it’s time for the worst-case scenario, and before Randall can even figure out what they are worst-case-scenario-ing, she’s launched into hers: after burying his fourth and final parent, Randall loses it and spends the rest of his life seeking out other people’s parents’ funerals. He buys an RV and spends the rest of his life visiting his parents’ graves. Randall decides to travel to Puerto Rico and learn all about Miguel’s history. But Randall insists that he is “centered,” and that he is looking forward to the next “quiet” chapter of their lives. Do we buy it? Not really, and neither does Beth. Meanwhile, as Toby and Kate watch the kids play foursquare outside, Toby warns her that he’s about to say “three things that will surely cross multiple ex-husband lines and protocols.” “Proceed,” Kate says, which Toby does without hesitation: 1. Rebecca was extraordinarily proud of Kate. 2. Toby is extraordinarily proud of Kate. 3. “I love you, kid.” An exchange that could have felt extraordinarily awkward, but instead feels sweet and earned. At the funeral, Nicky (Griffin Dunne) tells Kevin that before he came to his trailer, he had it “pretty good,” because he didn’t care about anything, and therefore didn’t care when it was gone. “You really effed up my life, kid,” Nicky says with a totally straight face. “Your mother and father would be ashamed if they knew what you did to a sweet and sensitive old man like me, you dick.” Nicky may only get one real scene in the finale, but he definitely makes it count. As the service begins, the Big Three each give their eulogies for Rebecca, with Kate singing at least part of hers, and although we don’t hear what they say, we can tell it was from the heart.
What does Déjà name her baby on This Is Us?
After the funeral, Randall’s daughters come to check on him at the cabin, where he admits that he doesn’t actually remember anything he said in his eulogy. He is struggling with the idea that he spent so much of his life afraid of losing his parents, and now that they’re both gone and life still continues, everything just feels pointless. But Déjà reminds him that it’s not pointless. After all, he’s going to be a grandfather. And she just got the email telling her the sex of the baby: a boy that she and Malik would like to name William. “I know him because I know you,” Déjà says of the grandfather she never met. Earlier, in a flashback, we see William (Ron Cephas Jones) saying goodbye to a younger Tess and Annie before leaving for Memphis (another scene filmed four years prior to the finale), before telling Randall how strange it is for him to be a grandfather when that was never something he saw for himself. He thinks it is strange how much he loves his grandchildren, knowing he won’t be a big part of their story, and how little they’ll probably remember him. Wherever William is, we know it would warm his heart to know that the granddaughter who has no memories of him at all decided to make him a big part of her story anyway. Learning about his grandson is what Randall needs to snap out of his funk, as he starts dancing in celebration of the long-awaited boy. “Finally!” he shouts triumphantly, telling his daughters that he loves them, but after raising three girls, he is more than ready for a boy.
What’s next for the Big Three?
When his siblings come to join him outside the cabin, Kevin asks what the Big Three are going to do now that their parents are gone. Kate answers right away, saying they’re going to do what Rebecca wanted them to do: “We’re going to live fearlessly.” Her dream is to open a large number of music schools for the visually impaired. Kevin wants to focus on Big Three Homes, so that he can be home more. “I like my home. Took me a long time to get it.” Randall has been asked by the DNC to go to the Iowa State Fair, which would be the first step in testing the waters for an even bigger political leap, all the way to the White House. He thinks he’s going to do it—for Rebecca. Kate then voices her biggest nightmare: “We drift.” Not that they would become estranged, but just that they wouldn’t be as close. But Randall shares that when he closes his eyes and pictures his family, the first image that comes to mind is not his wife and kids, but the Big Three as children with Jack and Rebecca. The siblings then share a tender and reserved Big Three chant. “Hey Kate, if you drifted, we’d drift right after you,” Kevin promises. Randall then tells his siblings that right at the end, Rebecca squeezed his hand. He wonders what that was.
Is there life after death on This Is Us?
It turns out that there was more to Jack and Rebecca’s reunion on the train beyond their initial “hey.” After some sweet catching up, Rebecca admits that she’s scared. “Don’t be,” Jack assures her. “We did good. You did so good.” “There was so much left I wanted to do with them,” Rebecca says. “You will,” Jack promises, as we see Nicky pinning the tail on the donkey in the house that Kevin built. “It’s hard to explain, but you’ll do all those things with them.” “I mean it’s not like I want to be there for anything weird,” Rebecca clarifies. “I don’t want to watch them shower or anything.” “You won’t,” Jack says. “But you’ll be there.” When it’s finally time to go, Jack asks if she’s ready. “I don’t want to leave them,” Rebecca says. “You won’t,” he promises. After telling each other they love each other, she squeezes his hand— on Earth, she squeezes Randall’s hand—and goes. But as we see the Pearsons all gathered together, laughing and having fun after the funeral, interspersed with shots of Rebecca and Jack playing with the kids on that lazy Saturday afternoon so many years ago, we know that as long as the people who loved them remain, no one is ever truly gone. Will we see the Pearsons again? Find out everything we know about a This Is Us movie.
