OK, This Is Us fans — you can stop buying tissues after Tuesday. The Season 2 finale of the non-stop tearjerker airs on Mar. 13, and then, there is no more This Is Us until Season 3 premieres. I predict fewer runny noses, watering eyes, and outright sobbing with This Is Us on hiatus, unless of course you choose to watch the Super Bowl episode over and over, all summer along. (Don't do that to yourself.) But, after we all get a nice break, when does This Is Us Season 3 return to NBC? It'll be back before you know it, and probably just as jam-packed as the last 18 episodes were.
UPDATE: Per Deadline, This Is Us will return on Sept. 25.
EARLIER: Season 2 of This Is Us covered a lot of ground — us fans learned how Jack died, why Kate blames herself for Jack's death, how Miguel and Rebecca got together, and where that dog came from. Oh, and Jack had a brother! That died! For every resolution comes three more questions, and that's what This Is Us Season 3 will explore. The show got an easy renewal from NBC for Seasons 2 and 3. We don't know exactly when This Is Us is coming back, but rest assured that it will be sometime in the autumn of 2018, as it premiered in its first two seasons in September. There's no mid-season nonsense with one of NBC's biggest shows. So even though we know that This Is Us is coming back for Season 3, we don't 100 percent know when. No big deal, really, since the show leaves plenty for its fans to talk about until its return.
One of the biggest storylines in Season 3, according to star Sterling K. Brown, is some tumultuous weather in Beth and Randall's marriage. "There will be a bit of an exploration of marriage with regards to Randall and Beth going through times that aren't all sunshine and rainbows," Brown told People magazine. "And that's not to say that they are in danger of parting ways, but marriage is real and takes work." This OTP couple could never break up (we would all die, no?), but it's nice to know that they're a real couple with real problems. Marriage isn't always easy!
Also coming in Season 3 of This Is Us is more about Jack, his life, and his past. This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman spoke to Entertainment Weekly about developing Jack well after his death:
"In many ways, Jack might be the character we still have the most to learn about, because he's kept so many secrets in this period before we've really known him. We're talking about the third season now, and I'm really excited about that, because we can do things with Jack and learn things about Jack that we really can't with a lot of our other characters. ... It's one of the things I'm most excited about — where we go next in learning stuff about Jack. Which is ironic because the character just died in the most public way on national television."
OK, so Randall? Check. Jack? Check. What about the others in the Big Three and company? Executive producer Isaac Aptaker told Glamour that what he's most excited about for in Season 3 is looking at what happened to Jack's kids in the year after he died. "[Jack's death] happened in February of their senior year of high school, which is a seminal time no matter what. They also had this tragedy occur, which affects the rest of their lives, so we're going to dive into that year where there're so many stories to tell about the decisions they make and the way they react to their father's death shaped the trajectory for the next 20 years of their lives," he said.
So far, it seems like on This Is Us, Season 1 was explaining the story, Season 2 was asking the questions, and Season 3 is giving some answers. But, This Is Us fans will likely have to wait until Fall 2018 to get them.
