With just two episodes so far this season, This Is Us already has fans speculating, especially when it comes to Kate’s (Chrissy Metz) fate. Thanks to the fact that she’s missing in many of the show’s flash forwards, some fans are concerned about where she might be — and many are worried that her absence means she’s dead. Will Kate actually die on This Is Us, or is this just a false alarm?
I hate to break it to you, but at this point, it could go either way. After all, it seems like the show thrives on misleading fans, like they did by suggesting that Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) died in a fire, only to have him pass away at the hospital minutes later in the big Super Bowl crockpot episode. Kate not being in the scenes from the future definitely means something, but it might not necessarily mean that she’s dead, leaving Toby (Chris Sullivan) and Jack Jr. (Blake Stadnik) without her forever. Then again, this is This Is Us we’re talking about — it’s not like this show is above ripping viewers to shreds emotionally.
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There are a lot of signs pointing to Kate being gone by the time we see the Pearsons in the future, and theories are everywhere. It makes sense; not only is she not in the flash forwards, but it seems like Toby is no longer wearing his wedding ring and he and their son are going to see Rebecca (Mandy Moore) before she dies without Kate, which makes zero sense. Why would Kate miss that moment, regardless of what else is happening?
Fans on reddit have their own theories, as well. Some are convinced that because no one mentions her in the flash forwards, Kate must be dead, and others have suggested that Toby went to say goodbye to Rebecca because he knew that Kate would want him to in her stead.
But when it comes to the way the actors who play Toby and Kate on the show feel, it gets a little more confusing. Obviously, if they do know it how it all ends, they can’t exactly give the ending away, but it doesn’t sound like it’s a foregone conclusion that Kate is no longer with us.
Sullivan told Entertainment Weekly that the ending of This Is Us will be an emotional one, which certainly makes it seem like another huge death could be in the show’s future.
“I’ve learned a lot of emotional lessons from [creator] Dan Fogelman’s writing staff about how to handle certain things so even through whatever they go through, we’ll learn something. I mean, it’s not going to be easy…. I know that the writers — more than any show I’ve heard of — they’ve had the end game of this show in mind for years, and have plotted out the next three seasons in great detail,” he said. “But they haven’t shared [everything] with us because stuff will change and stuff will shift — and we all have big mouths on red carpets.”
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Meanwhile, Metz said in her own interview with EW that she’s not convinced Kate is dead.
“I just keep saying, ‘She’s probably at the dry cleaners. It’s fine! Not to fret,’” Metz said.
Fans won’t know for sure what Kate’s fate is until the writers decide to reveal it, but until that happens, don't mind us while these Kate-less scenes cause us to tear our hair out.