Season six of the critically acclaimed NBC family drama This Is Us will allegedly serve as its final season of all, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The final installment in the show’s abbreviated fifth season is scheduled to air on Tuesday, May 25. The season five finale brings the program’s total number of episodes to 88, meaning season six must either match or exceed quantity of twelve episodes in order for This Is Us to acquire multi-channel syndication privileges, via The Hollywood Reporter.
Rumblings of creator Dan Fogelman‘s (The Neighbors, Galavant) plans to close the book on his broadcast ratings giant were in the air from as early as 2019, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Not long after the season three finale aired in April of that year, This Is Us was picked up for an additional three seasons, via The Hollywood Reporter. Reacting to the news, Fogelman spoke about how he has long possessed foreknowledge regarding the details of the show’s final moments. “We never set out to make television series that was going to last eighteen seasons, so we have a very direct plan. I have script pages I have written… that really are deep, deep, deep into the future… I know what the plan is,” he stated, via The Hollywood Reporter.
In advance of the premiere of the season five finale’s momentous wedding sequence, This Is Us co-executive producer Kevin Falls (Sports Night, The West Wing) took the time to explain how the show’s predetermined endpoint encourages the writers to sharpen their sense of editorial judgment: “Anything can happen. There’s lot we’re starting to get to the end of… You only have so much real estate to tell your story and… have to choose your stories wisely. It’s the time where we have to service a lot of things. Some we will, and some we won’t,” via Entertainment Weekly.
While much of the narrative content of season six remains under wraps, fans of the series received some information about one storyline they can expect to see developed, courtesy of actor Jon Huertas (Castle, Elementary). In February 2021 interview, Fogelman talked up the way in which season six gave him the opportunity to explore the early days of Miguel Rivas (Huertas) and Rebecca Pearson’s (Mandy Moore, Tangled) relationship: “We’ve really been looking forward to telling this story,” via Glamour. When Huertas was pressed to reveal what he knew about season six on NBC San Diego’s California Live, he confirmed that viewers can look forward to learning the truth about how Miguel and Rebecca started seeing one another after her husband’s death. “We’re going to see how they got together,” Huertas teased, via NBC San Diego. Check out Huertas’s complete California Live interview below:
The penultimate episode of This Is Us season five, “Jerry 2.0,” airs on NBC on May 18 at 9 P.M. Eastern, as reported by TV Guide.