Warning: This story contains plot details from Tuesdays fall finale ofThis Is Us.
Scratch the may not part.
Roll credits and tons of questions.
Ron Batzdorff/NBC
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What the holy bleep?!
will be the reaction of most fans.
What was yours when you found out?MICHAEL ANGARANO:I had a hard time comprehending it.
And I dont think anybody could have even guessed it.
How hard was it to keep the secret?
So Im personally very excited for this storyline to blossom.
How much does Jack know?
What Jack does know is that he was too late.
And that where Nicky was when Jack found him was in a really dismal state.
I think the hopelessness Jack talks about is his own inability to help his younger brother.
Jack is somebody who we know is able to help people.
So that inability to save or help his brother is the tragedy of it all.
Nicky tells Jack ominously, Im not going to complete the mission.
Did he come up with a plan to fake his death on the fly?
Was he hoping to die in that boat explosion but somehow survived?
So I think in a lot of ways, he meant exactly what he said.
I dont think there was any misdirection or misleading on Nickys part.
I think at the moment he would rather have died than survived.
Living was hell for him.Mmm-hmmm.
Nicky is living under his real name, and in Pennsylvania, just a few hours from Pittsburgh.
That suggests that hes not trying to live in total secret.
What can you say about his reasons for living not that far away?
What does he know about the current-day Pearsons?
Is he keeping tabs on them?Those are things that will become clearer.
And that is both goodandbad.
We see Nickys gentle soul and the bond they share as brothers.
Theyre still the same guys they once were, but at the same time theyre completely unrecognizable.
We the audience know how damaged Nicky was.
So you could only imagine Nicky trying to live his life in reaction to this experience.
It could be a number of different ways, a number of different realities.
The other Pearsons would have severely conflicted feelings about him.
What can you hint about a potential family reunion?
Intense was the word thatDan [Fogelman, the shows creator] used.Complex.
On par withThis Is Us.
And in a way, it makes a lot of sense.
Because we do know that theres a darkness that Jack has harbored for most of his life.
And we now know that has come from this experience with his brother.
In a lot of ways, this is part of why Jack is the way that he is.
We knew from the start that both these brothers reacted very differently to the war.
With a lot of different possibilities.
