‘This Is Us’ Creator Dan Fogelman On Series Finale’s Last Lines & Frame, MIA Eulogies & Audio, Randall’s Political Future, Possible Spinoffs & More

This is it for This Is Us. In conjunction with tonight’s emotional series finale of the NBC family drama (You can read our recap with additional details here), creator/executive producer Dan Fogelman breaks down the episode, answering questions about key moments and scenes, including his choice of final lines of dialogue and shot and the decision not to show Big Three’s eulogies of their mom. He also speaks about filmed but unused footage, Randall’s political future, potential spinoffs and addresses dog Audio’s fate.

As Fogelman has previously revealed, about two-thirds of the finale had been written by him and shot about four years ago and the other third he had loosely mapped out in his mind for a long time. That included the scenes of Jack, Rebecca and young Big Three spending Saturday together in the old house as well as Randall and William discussing mortality and the joys of being a grandparent.

The choices of This Is Us‘ final lines and shot:

As imaginary Jack and Rebecca in the caboose tell each other “I love you,” the finale ends with a montage to a sweeping score previously used in the Season 1 episode when Kevin showed his painting to his nieces. The camera takes turns on each of the Big Three, with Randall looking at Deja who has her hand on her belly. The finale’s last shot is Randall as a child and Jack from the Saturday scene with the camera focusing on Jack as he looks on his family.

Fogelman: “In the back of my mind, I always thought that the final actual scripted spoken dialogue in the episode would be Jack and Rebecca just simply saying ‘I love you’ to one another… And I thought this original love story, sentiment-wise was the right language to end on.”

Jack and Rebecca’s final train scene dialogue was one of the hardest scenes to write in the finale, Fogelman said.

“That started really getting me, I think it was the moment when he says ‘We did good You did so good.’ For me, as a new parent and having had parents, the idea that moves me, at the end of the day you get to sit down potentially and be told a job well done by somebody because it’s so hard, and it just got me in between the stuff that I already had a visual of.”

This is how Fogelman described the final shot in his script: “Interior Living Room. Jack is sitting down on the couch, his family is laughing and wrestling and playing Pin the Tail On the Donkey. He’s taking them in.”

As to why he chose to end with the shot of young Randall and Jack:

“In that shot, older Randal is indicative of the grown children or a child when it’s fully grown. And [Jack] in that moment is representative of a parent who’s taking in his entire family, and I just wanted the simplicity of the shot of the child taking in the parent at a moment when the parent is taking in something bigger, and knowing that that child will carry it forward in their own lives. It was less about these two men, who have been cornerstones of our show, obviously, but it was less about Randall  and Jack and it was more about a child and parent in that moment.”

Why the Big Three were seen but not heard eulogizing Rebecca at the memorial service:

While we saw Randall struggling with writing his eulogy of Rebecca (“Mom was magic” was all he could muster on a cue card), the show opted for a music montage of the memorial service, including the Big Three’s speeches.

Fogelman: “It was scripted that way, there were a couple of reasons for it. Number one, so much of the previous episode was about people emoting, people saying this stuff to Rebecca and Lord knows Randall could give the world’s perfect eulogy, but what else is he going to say about his mother at this point that he hasn’t already said on the show. So on a logistical level, that was partially it.

But for me, more importantly, I lost my mom, and very similarly, sat up all night the night before, deciding that people were waiting for the perfect eulogy for me and it had to be the right levels of touching and funny, and it had to be well written and I had to deliver it well. And I stayed up all night, like a lunatic and frankly, like a martyr, trying to write my mother who I adored the perfect eulogy. And my experience of the day and frankly, the week or two after was that, as I described in the script. I just kind of floated through space and time and didn’t hear anything. And I worked so hard on that eulogy. And I don’t remember a single word I said it I didn’t remember saying it. I remember locking eyes with my best friend who was sitting in the audience and crying, but I don’t remember anything. And I wanted to visually capture that.

So on the day when we shot those eulogies, there had been nothing scripted that the guys didn’t even know they were going to be doing that. And Sterling and Justin and Chrissy came up with, along with me that we came up with ideas of what they might talk about, and then they kind of just improvised stuff, because I wanted it to feel like a funeral and I wanted the people listening to be listening to something but at the end of the day, the eulogies were never scripted, it was always about a son floating through a funeral of his mother as if it’s almost in slow motion.”

Randall’s political future And This is Us’ Sopranos Moment:

In the finale, The Big Three shared their plans for the future are. Kate will be working on opening more music schools for the visually impaired. Kevin is focusing on his nonprofit. And Randall, whose rising political career had been hinted for a couple of seasons, will be exploring a run for President with a trip to Iowa. Will Randall become President?

Fogelman: “I think Randall’s political journey ahead of him is probably the closest we come on the show to kind of our Sopranos going to black at the end of the episode, and you’re left to choose your own adventure as to what you think happens with him. Does he even decide to run at the end, do him and Beth decide they’d rather settle at home? If he runs, how much trashing does he get? Does he win?

In my mind, I know what happens to Randal and his family but it’s meant to not be answered and to just leave a hint of promise and then I think it’s up to the audience to decide what they think happens next with Randall. Did we watch an origin story without realizing we were watching one of the future leader of the free world? Or is the completion of Randall’s arc is to not push further in his career and settle into a role where he’s comfortable. I think it was always more about Randall choosing to move forward, because his mother has now freed him to do what he wants and to go for the big choices if it’s something he wants to do.

But we were never tempted to flash forward. There were definitely a lot of conversations about how we were showing the end of Randall’s political journey. We all felt that if we had hypothetically flash forward to Rambo sitting in the White House, that wasn’t what the show is, it would have broken a little a little bit. So we loved ending it on the hint of promise of further and further stardom to this exceptional, extraordinary character without going all the way there.”

Unused Footage, which may see the light of day 

Almost all material filmed four years ago for the finale found its way into the episode. Almost.

Fogelman: “In the opening of the finale, or towards the opening of the finale, you see the three little kids waking up, intercut with the three adult kids waking up on the morning of their mother’s funeral. And then Jack’s voice calls them downstairs for breakfast. I recorded stuff that was barely scripted, Jack’s flipping pancakes and making pancakes and then intercut with Randall, his much younger family in the old house flipping pancakes and making pancakes. It was so charming and it was speaking to the theme at the end of the episode, which is what the entire series has been about that you kind of carry this stuff forward with you without even thinking about it.

But it was a little bit abstract. The kids were younger, you were in a different timeline with Randall and as cute as it was, I thought we spoke to it better at the end of the episode, and so I didn’t keep it but I was so charming and the kids are so young and I think I’m going to put it online at some point.”

The Inevitable This Is Us spinoffs question:

Fogelman: “I think I’m pretty set on this being it. I feel outside of some understandable questions about Audio the dog, for the most part, we really answered the questions of the show.

I think that this show was always about this generation of the family and the sprawl of their family within those times. Obviously there’s more stories to potentially be told in the adult lives of their children and grandchildren. But that was never the intent of the series.Every book has to end every generational family novel can go back further and go forward further if you so choose. We had the beginning, middle and end points of where our timelines would start center and and that was This was always the plan.”

Audio’s Happy Tails

There had been a lot of fan concern online about the fate of Kate and Toby’s furchild, which has not been seen on the show for a long time.

Fogelman: “The dog is there. Nothing’s happened to him. We just we were dealing with 15,000 Sscreaming babies in the final season and Audio is resting comfortably. I believe Kate and Toby post-divorce, shared custody, and he lived happily ever after a very long happy life.”