5 Powerful Takeaways from This Is Us’ Emotional Thanksgiving-Themed Fall Finale That Serves Up Heart, Healing, and Family Revelations kn01

Thanksgiving came early on “This Is Us” this week, as the hit NBC drama served up an hour that was basically Turkey Day in television form: overstuffed and filled with the occasional unnecessary drama but, in the end, very satisfying. All that was missing was the tryptophan nap afterwards!

But there’s no time for napping considering how much happened during  “So Long, Marianne” on Tuesday night. So let’s break down the five big takeaways from the last episode of “This Is Us” for a good while – well, after we watch “Police Academy 3.”

1. Welp, that was an eventful final five minutes

For most of Tuesday night’s episode, I thought “So Long, Marianne” was a mixed bag – some good, some bad, some Toby and Kate somehow still grumbling about mashed-up avocado. But then the show began to stick the landing on most of its subplots – and then the final five minutes happened, jumping nine months into the future (that’s right; ANOTHER timeline to keep track of) to the Big Three’s 40th birthday and dropping  several of the big twists and reveals that it’d been holding close to the vest over the course of this otherwise fairly low-key season.

For instance, we knew Kevin had a little boy in the future thanks to last season’s finale, but now we know he has a fiancée – and that she’s going to be a part of the story much sooner rather than later, as she’s apparently lying down offscreen at this 40th birthday party Pearson shindig just nine months after Thanksgiving, where Kevin decided that his next life goal would be to start a family. Kevin apparently moves fast! (Also: It’s definitely either Sophie or Cassidy, correct?)

But the most important twist involving Kevin in the near future: Apparently he and Randall aren’t talking? Rebecca asks where Randall is, and Kevin very curtly replies that they’re not talking to each other any more. So, uh, that sucks! I assume it has something to do with Randall withholding information about Rebecca’s deteriorating mental state, since Randall’s the only one who knows in the present, and that Kevin takes offense to keeping that a secret and not letting Kevin or Kate help or spend time with their mother while she’s still fully their mother. Thankfully, we can somewhat assume the two forgive and forget at some point since they’re both at the big far-off future gathering and seemingly pleasant about it – but that’s also seems like a few decades (and multiple shades of grey hair on Randall) away. So how long are these two going to be giving each other the silent treatment? It seems like this is going to be a bigger fight than that brief tiff they had at Kevin’s war movie premiere. (Not hard since that lasted about two minutes.)

Oh, and speaking of Rebecca, she’s the key to the big final reveal. For most of the episode, she’s meandering around the city, thinking she’s seeing William at a playground, forgetting which aisle she’s going to at the supermarket before forgetting her cell phone (again!) at the checkout, getting into a panic at a Chinese restaurant when she realizes she’s lost her phone and then requiring a police escort to drive her back home since she has no other way to contact Randall or the rest of the kids.

At first, it feels maybe a bit ridiculous that Rebecca’s mental state has regressed SO much in seemingly a single episode, going from mildly forgetful to almost entirely incapable of remembering things beyond 30 seconds … but then the episode reveals that she’s not ambling around on Thanksgiving in the present. Sure, she forgot what movie she was going to see midway through the “Cats” trailer (in fairness, I too suffer debilitating mental trauma and memory loss due to the “Cats” trailer) but she’s still Rebecca and still able to pretend all is normal, even if she finally admits to Randall, and herself, at the end of the episode that she’s not well.

Instead, all of her confused touring around the city was nine months in the future  preparing for the birthday party, where everyone knows she’s fighting Alzheimer’s and is getting used to Rebecca’s sad, difficult new reality. What a sneaky and crafty little twist – and all very well performed by Mandy Moore, who hits the confusion notes right but also, even more important and moving, the tenuous grasp on her character’s dignity, the denial behind the eyes and quiet humiliation that doesn’t want to accept (or maybe can’t even accept) that her mind is fading, stressfully gripping to whatever former normalcy she has remaining.