NBC’s hit family drama This Is Us returns this fall, but fans no longer have to wait until the previously announced November release date for the two-hour Season 5 premiere, according to Entertainment Weekly. The newly projected premiere date is October 27th, The Loop reports. Filming for the new season began September 22nd, via a Twitter post from creator Dan Fogelman (The Neighbors, Galavant).
This Is Us has built a reputation on its ultra-fast turnaround. The 2019 Thanksgiving episode “So Long, Marianne” made specific references to both the Cats trailer that had come out over the summer and the runtime of the Netflix crime film The Irishman. The latter fact had only been confirmed as early as late September, as reported by ScreenRant. According to 2017 Glamour interview with executive producer Isaac Aptaker (Grandfathered, Love, Victor), the final scene of the Season 2 premiere “A Father’s Advice” was filmed a mere week before the episode’s airdate.
In 2018, the monumental Season 2 episode “Super Bowl Sunday” aired immediately after NBC coverage of the championship football game that grants the episode its title. Eagle-eyed viewers observed that, in one of the show’s scenes set in the contemporary era, the in-world television actually showed clip from the Super Bowl game that had just aired, according to a recap by Good Housekeeping. Comcast reported that “Super Bowl Sunday” was the most widely viewed episode of a scripted program on NBC since the 2004 ER telecast that followed the Friends finale.
When Fogelman was interviewed by Entertainment Weekly back in August, he discussed how he and the writers felt obligated to comment on 2020’s hot-button issues within the world of the show: “We do feel uniquely suited in our show to kind of mark this moment. But it’s complicated territory… We’re hopeful we can get something right here.” Although Fogelman intends on keeping the show current and topical, he confirmed in the Entertainment Weekly interview that his route towards the series’ endgame has gone largely unchanged: “What’s happening in the world may shift the details of how things happen, but the big moves continue to happen and actually potentially heighten… the television show than maybe some of our initial plans.”
The first four seasons of This Is Us are available to stream on the NBC website via select television providers or on Hulu.