The twist in the season 1 finale of A Million Little Things explained everything about Jon’s (Ron Livingston) headspace before his death by suicide, the mystery of Barbara Morgan, and all the secrets Jon kept from his closest friends and family.
In the pilot episode of A Million Little Things, businessman, father, and friend group ringleader Jon shocks everyone by throwing himself off his office balcony. No one can explain why Jon would do such a thing: of all the friends in this tight-knit circle, he seemed the happiest and most successful. While Jon was definitely hiding things from his friends in present day — including the affair his wife, Delilah (Stéphanie Szostak), was having with his best friend, Eddie (David Giuntoli), — it was his guilt over a past incident that gnawed at him for years.
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In a videotape discovered by Delilah, Jon explained that years earlier, he and his Harvard roommate had tickets for a flight leaving from Boston’s Logan Airport...on September 11, 2001. Jon missed American Airlines Flight 11, but his friend was killed as the plane was used in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The survivor’s guilt nearly destroyed Jon, until he met Delilah the following year at the airport.
Barbara Morgan (Drea de Matteo) was Jon’s roommate’s girlfriend. She was pregnant with his son. When she meets up with Jon one year after September 11 in the airport, Jon is angry that she’s already in a relationship with a firefighter, who will raise the baby she was pregnant with when Dave died as his own. Jon’s guilt wasn’t just over the fact that he survived while Dave didn’t, but that he abandoned Barbara — and seemingly all his other friends, as no one in his life knows about Dave — because he couldn’t face his grief.
Dave’s son is revealed to be the teenage P.J. (Chandler Riggs), whom Jon’s friend Rome (Romany Malco) just so happens to meet in the hospital. Rome and P.J. strike up a friendship after P.J. reads the film script that Rome accidentally left in the waiting room. It’s hanging out with P.J. that partially inspires Rome to change his mind about having kids — even though his wife Regina (Christina Moses) is positive children aren’t in her future.
Though the finale closes Jon’s chapter, it also opens up a new can of worms: Delilah gives birth to her baby, which is not Jon’s as her kids believe, but Eddie’s. In the final moments of the finale, Eddie seemingly confesses as much to his wife Katharine (Grace Park), whom he reconciled with after nearly divorcing.
While the friends may move away from investigating Jon’s life, and death, in season 2, it’s clear there will be fallout from all the events of the show’s freshman season. Life is a million little things — and sometimes, a million major obstacles.
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