One of NBC’s most heartbreaking and gripping dramas, This Is Us, is back with its fourth season. Off the bat, the audience is introduced to plenty of new faces that will, presumably, weave their way into the audience’s hearts.
At first the new faces of the story seemed to be unwanted, especially with the notable absence of season regulars like Kate (Chrissy Metz), Toby (Chris Sullivan), Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and Kevin (Justin Hartley), but the writers of This Is Us proved once again, they expertly know what they’re doing.
The first episode of the season opens with Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) returning from their season three road trip to Los Angeles. It’s still in the early stages of their relationship, so the two are trying to play it cool, but they ultimately fail when Rebecca invites him to dinner with her parents and their friends at her parents’ country club.
Jack doesn’t have a sport coat to wear to the country club, so he goes to buy one and the audience gets to see his first time meeting Miguel (Jon Huertas). Miguel lets Jack borrow the sport coat for one night since he can’t afford to purchase it.
Ultimately the dinner is awkward, with Rebecca’s parents bringing up the war and Jack’s horrible family life, but Jack seems to win them over until Rebecca’s father tells him he wants more for her than the life Jack can give.
“I know a stranger taking your daughter across the country wasn’t your favorite thing, and I’m sorry that was your first impression of me,” Jack said. “But don’t worry, you’ll get to know me. I’m not going anywhere.”
The cute Jack and Rebecca moments are always an audience favorite, and it’ll be exciting to see more of the early stages of their relationship.
Meanwhile, the audience is introduced to three new characters: Cassie (Jennifer Morrison), Malik (Asante Blackk) and Jack (Blake Stadnik).
Cassie has just returned home from a traumatic time in the U.S. Army serving in the Middle East, and she quickly begins drinking again. After somewhat-accidentally hitting her son, she and her husband separated and she joins a veterans support group. It’s there where she is almost hit in the head by a chair thrown through the window by Uncle Nicky (Griffin Dunne).
Morrison is a great addition to the cast and her character seems to have the least of its purpose revealed in the first episode, so it’ll be interesting to see where the writers go with her. Maybe a possible love interest for Kevin? Who knows? What we do know is, she’s in the present-day timeline, which will be interesting to see play out.
Malik is a teen dad struggling to make ends meet. He works with his father at an auto shop and helps take on a lot of responsibility and support his family. He fixes up a car with a Randall’s “Pearson” sticker on it, so we can tell he’s somewhat in the present-day timeline as well. However, at the end of the episode when he goes to the barbecue with his friends, he meets Deja (Lyric Ross) and clearly is interested in her.
It’s clear Malik is going to have a connection with Deja and Randall’s family, but what is also revealed is that Randall and his family have moved to a new area. After Randall and Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) patched things up at the end of the third season, it’s nice to see everything is still going well.
The last reveal might be the most exciting because it’s a direct connection to the Pearson family. We are introduced to a man who is blind and quickly go through his story. The audience watches him fall in love with a girl named Lucy (Auden Thorton), propose to her, find out she’s pregnant and watch him become a possible music sensation — or at least a musician with a lot of fans.
In the last few minutes of the episode, the adult Pearson children finally make an appearance, opening — in true This Is Us fashion — with the triplets’ 39th birthdays. Before Kate and Toby get to the celebration, they see the doctor for their son Jack’s eyesight problem, which they find out isn’t fixable.
It is then revealed that the third new face introduced in this episode is Kate and Toby’s son — Jack Damon.
The jump to the future timeline is also an interesting choice. It’s one we’ve seen before, but bringing in their adult son is exciting for audience members who watched his birth, and the contemplation of whether or not he’d be able to be conceived in the first place.
The fourth season is clearly setting up to hold a lot of excitement, and we’re only on episode one.
This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.
