Fourth Season of 'This Is Us' Ends with Brotherly Rift, Unsurprising Reveals

by Julian Spivey
The season four finale of NBC’s “This Is Us” titled “Strangers (Part 2)” featured a few of the show’s typical surprises, but its main focus was on a major estrangement within “The Big Three” that we’ve been expecting since a flash-forward at midseason.
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The Pearson siblings have mostly been a tight bunch throughout the show’s four season run with a few minor tiffs, mostly between Randall and Kevin popping up here and there, but season four culminates with a major rift between the two over the health of their mother Rebecca, who’s recently been battling an onset of dementia.

In the penultimate episode of the season Rebecca, played by the excellent Mandy Moore, has decided upon not undergoing experimental treatment, much to the chagrin of Randall (Emmy-winner Sterling K. Brown), who believes he’s the only member of the family who can properly care for his mother, which is the focus of the rift between him and Kevin, played by Justin Hartley who seemingly gets better with each season. At the very end of the previous episode Randall makes a cross-country phone call to Rebecca and essentially guilts her into the special treatment against her wishes.

Via the promos for the finale we expect a major bruhaha featuring the Pearson brothers, but it doesn’t quite lead to the fisticuffs we expect, but the most brutal battle of insults that ultimately hurts much worse than a black eye or two. As the season comes to an end in the present timeline Randall tells Kevin that their father Jack, played by Milo Ventimiglia, died ashamed of him. Kevin as a comeback tells Randall that he always considered Jack’s death the worst day of his life, but it turns out the day his parents brought the adopted Randall home actually was the worst. It’s a battle of words that certainly is going to have the relationship of the two brothers strained for some time – and really makes the idea of the storyline between the two in next fall’s fifth season stressful to even think about. The often seen flash-forward to Rebecca’s deathbed at the episode’s end shows that the two eventually makeup – though it’s quite possible it’s taken until that exact moment to do so.

“This Is Us” has always done flashbacks and flash-forwards as well as any show in television history, as well as working secrets and reveals into the plot. For the first time in the show’s running the reveals and secrets of the fourth season finale were only mildly interesting, if not complete letdowns. The episode begins with the introduction of two new characters – one a man likely in his 40s who’s working with a stubborn new horse trying to break it and a woman, likely in her late 20s, working at an art gallery. By the end of the episode we realize the woman is in the future timeline of the Pearson family and is the adult adopted sister of baby Jack with Kate (Chrissie Metz) and Toby (Chris Sullivan) carrying on the Pearson tradition of adoption. The man seems to potentially be a MacGuffin as he turns out to be an obstetrician telling Madison, Kate’s best friend whom Kevin hooked up with episodes back, that she’s pregnant. Unsurprisingly it’s Kevin’s baby. This isn’t really much of a surprise and now Kevin has three potential women in his future – Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge), Cassidy (Jennifer Morrison) and Madison (Caitlin Thompson).      

The most interesting aspect of the second half of the “This Is Us” season is how the writers kind of make Randall, who’d spent much of the series run as one of the most lovable characters on television, as somewhat of a villain, or at least a dick at times when it comes to his belief that he’s the only one who knows what’s best for his family. It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out in the future.

The fourth season finale of “This Is Us” was likely the weakest one thus far, but there’s little doubt in my mind that this is still the best written and best acted drama on network television. 

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