Ron Batzdorff/NBC Milo Ventimiglia as Jack Pearson.
During the season two premiere of This Is Us, we finally learned when Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia) died. Kevin revealed that the Big Three were 17 years old when Jack died. It appears that Jack died in 1997 in a house fire. However, we still don’t know the exact circumstances behind the death.
In a post-show interview with Entertainment Weekly, actress Mandy Moore said that the fire is “just a piece of the puzzle,” adding “We don’t know the full story.”
Some fans on Twitter aren’t so sure that Jack actually died in the fire. After all, Jack’s watch and personal affects were not burned.
https://twitter.com/justcallme__ed/status/912862822975049728
And we also know from season one that Kate blames herself for her father’s death, so did she play a role in causing the fire?
Last season Kate said “it” was her fault (I can’t even say/type the words)
Did she start the fire??
#StillNotBreathing #ThisIsUs
One id the most important parts of the episode wasn’t the trivial information about the year. It was Jack admitting to Rebecca that he is an alcoholic and was embarrassed. “I need to fix this on my own,” he told Rebecca at the end of the episode. But Rebecca insisted that she help. “We will fix it together,” she told him.
Fun fact: The ending of the season premiere was shot A WEEK AND A HALF AGO. Now, that’s a secret well kept. #ThisIsUs
Later, we saw Kate and Randall in tears at Miguel’s home, as Rebecca drove home with Jack’s belongings in the passenger seat. Next, we saw Kevin kissing Sophie and he had a broken leg. As Rebecca drove up to the Pearson house, the camera pulled back to reveal that the house was burned. Rebecca cries as the episode ended.
In the present, the Big Three were tested. Kate auditioned to become a singer in a wedding band, but she didn’t get the job. However, she was pleased to learn that the reason was because of her talent, not because of her weight. Randall tried to convince Beth to adopt a baby, but realized that it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, Beth suggested they adopt an older child who needs a good home.
Many of us expected to see how Jack died in the season one finale, “Moonshadow,” which was filled with hints of Jack dying in a car crash after he got drunk. However, this was not to be and creator Dan Fogelman left us hanging for a whole summer, trying to figure out how he died. There were some wild theories, but they turned out to be all wrong.
During the summer, Fogelman assured fans that there would be a major piece of the puzzle revealed in the season two premiere.
“The first episode of the season holds not all the answers but a huge piece of the puzzle,” Fogelman told Entertainment Weekly in June. He said that more answers about Jack’s death will be sprinkled throughout the season, but “that’s not to say new questions won’t start being asked.”
While the story in the present jumped ahead a few months, the story in the past picks up right where “Moonshadow” left off. The episode ended with Jack and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) fighting and leaving their marriage in ruins.
“I always talk about Jack’s death as this hinge upon which the family swings, and there’s a kind of before that and the after [of] that,” Fogelman told Variety in August. “And that’s very much what this season is about. It’s about that hinge, and that’s what we’re watching. There’s a lot of healing to be done. There’s a lot we’re going to do with Jack this season. We’ve painted the picture of the world’s perfect dad, man, husband, everything. And now we’re going to show not the dark side of that, but what the struggle is of being that guy too and ultimately, I think, bring him to a kind of fully realized place.”