‘This Is Us’ creator, Mandy Moore on Rebecca’s death

(brake alert: Don’t read if you haven’t watched “The Train,” the May 17 episode of “This Is Us.”)

The end is very near. During Tuesday’s penultimate episode of NBC’s “This Is Us,” the Pearson family gathers to see Rebecca (Mandy Moore) one last time on her deathbed. During this hour, as the family said their goodbyes, Rebecca saw, in her dreams, Randall’s biological father, William (Ron Cephas Jones). He walked her across the train – hence the episode title – which included the ones she loved the most in her life as she heard their farewell messages. Even Dr. K (Gerald McCraney) was on board, making it a vesper martini. William led her to the train compartment, which marked the end of her life, where she met Jack (Mello Ventimiglia) in the afterlife.

While many viewers were surprised to see Rebecca die in the penultimate stage rather than the end, author Dan Fogelman says that will be understood once you watch the final episode.

“For me, the show was about a lot of things and a lot of people could focus on different elements of the show. They have favorite characters and they have favorite issues that we explore and the dynamics that we explore” diverse. “When I’m miniaturizing, I always thought the show was a lot about losing a parent and eventually losing parents. And so it’s not just about the moment of loss, it’s about the moment that comes after that.”

For Fogelman, he felt it was important that next week’s final episode of the series be more than a loss.

So much attention has been put on ‘How does Jack die?’ “Early on. How Jack dies and the big episode is where, in fact, he dies. But a lot of our series is about what happens next. I’ve always wanted and always planned for the series’ finale to revolve around the conclusion of the family’s ongoing story rather than the moment,” he says. Presenter. “I felt it was important for me to come out and give a show about how the human condition and the human spirit can kind of take on and move forward, rather than just a moment that would make everyone cry hysterically because someone eventually passes.”

The penultimate episode also featured a completely separate storyline, showing a family having a car accident that left the youngest child, Marcus, with a permanent leg injury. Moments before the episode ended, it was revealed how the family connected to the Pearsons: the accident occurred on the same night that Jack died. When Jack was having coffee in the hospital – when everyone thought he would be fine – he met the father who was driving, who at the time wasn’t sure if his son would make it.

Jack told the man something he had learned – and the audience learned in the pilot episode of “This Is Us” – from Dr. K: how to take “the limes that life offers and turn them into something like lemonade.”

It was a message the man shared with his family, because in a moment forward, Marcus and his brother and sister laughed at it. As it happened, the doctor who was looking after Jack thought he was fine and went upstairs to help young Marcus, who needed saving. While he was gone, Jack died and Marcus survived. In the future, Marcus becomes Dr. Marcus Brooks, who developed drugs that target Alzheimer’s disease – the disease that killed Rebecca.

Moore, for her part, says diverse I “felt a tremendous amount of responsibility” about telling the story of someone battling a disease that affects so many.

“This poor woman who has lost her child, lost her husband, finds herself at this juncture in her life in cognitive decline, with a degenerative disease of the brain. It is very sad. But I also feel relieved by the fact that we are able to represent this situation in which millions of people find themselves and their families in it and for people to feel a sense of community and not feel like an anomaly and hopefully they can feel a little lonely,” she says. “The way we’ve been able to design this family caregiving situation, it’s an important conversation and I don’t think it’s enough conversation. In that sense, I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s another legacy that I hope our show will be remembered for.'”

Moore also found the importance of talking about aging and death, knowing that it was coming no matter how hard the thought.

“It happens to all of us all of the time. I know it’s a scary concept and I know we celebrate youth in our culture, but it’s important to have a good conversation with our show. You can see that this isn’t just an 80-year-old who finds herself on the decline with Alzheimer’s disease. This is a woman who was a mother – a young mother, a young wife, a teenage mother, an adult mother. We’ve seen a lot of different iterations and seasons. So I think he continued to humanize people at a point where it’s hard to do that.” diverse. “You see with Kevin and Randall in the beginning, it’s really hard for them to look at their mother, touch their mother anymore because they don’t recognize her. It’s a really uncomfortable situation to be in. I love that our show continues to humanize and show that this woman is still She is the same and deserves to be celebrated and loved in the same way, even if she is apparently not the same mother you have known your whole life.”