The creator of This Is Us has made it clear that it was important to end the series on its own terms. The train proves what a wise decision it was. The last hour of the show is the kind of gorgeously abstract yet beautifully simple episode that only This Is Us could deliver. The final hours of Rebecca Pearson's life are depicted in the This Is Us tool kit. He starts to prepare viewers for the final goodbye that is still to come next week. If something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been great. It would make for a pretty satisfying series finale if the show didn't come back next week. It honors the show's past, answers a few questions about its characters, and ends with a heavenly Jack/Rebecca reunion. The finale of The Train would carry a different kind of weight than the one left. Rebecca is trying to hold on long enough for Kate to make it to her side. There is something unhurried and reflective about the final hours of Rebecca's life, as her family lovingly recount their favorite stories while she takes a journey through her own past.
Kevin's Jackson Pollock-style painting represents the complex, interwoven tapestry of human life, and This Is Us loves to revisit his first season monologue. The opening sequence with a surprise guest star is one of three distinct This Is Us stories. The Pearson family compound stuff allows the show to be a low-key family dramedy. Rebecca's mental train trip leans into the series in a more visually poetic way than before.
This Is Us can do a lot on a story level. Rebecca's train journey was a profoundly moving metaphor for the experience of dying. The train is a place of both comfort and slight disorientation as William guides Rebecca through a sort of living museum of her own life. She operates from a place of youthful naveness and apprehension, and it's all thanks to a farewell speech from the real world.
It is a depiction of death that feels comforting without being saccharine or simplistic, and full of faith but not tied to any particular religion. Rebecca can see her children and their partners at every stage of their lives from the vantage point of her train. There is a sense that things must keep moving, that there is never as much time to linger as she might want there to be.
That is what her loved ones are experiencing as they gather at the Pearson family compound during that flash forward sequence. It's fun to watch them reminisce about the old family stories we've seen over the years, from Jack and Rebecca's L.A. road trip to young Kate. Kevin and Randall don't remember the exact origins of Pilgrim Rick, which was depicted in the show's first-ever Thanksgiving episode. Randall wonders if this cheerful environment is the right way to mourn his mom, but as Deja reminds him, there are no rules for this kind of thing.
If there is an extraneous element to this episode, it is the Hill subplot, which is initially teased as being connected to Deja's pregnancy but which ultimately turns out to be just another thread. Jack was told by Dr. K that one day he would be an old man talking to a younger man about how he took the sourest lemon that life has to offer.
The plot of this episode is about the dichotomy of life, that for every moment of sadness, there is a moment of happiness to balance it out. Jack's death happened at the same time that his doctor saved a child from a car crash. Randall is going to be a grandfather the night before he has to say goodbye to his mother. After one last hand squeeze for Randall, Rebecca peacefully slips away as her children play a game of four square.
The Train is at its most simple and moving in those final moments. A woman who held her family together for so many years, a survivor who raised three children and outlived two husbands, and a grandmother who died many times over, are just some of the people The Train finds poetic. Dr. K told her that Rebecca had more than earned her rest. She gets to say hello to Jack again in a big cozy bed where she finds it.
William reassured Rebecca that the end is not sad.
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