No stranger to jumping around timelines, “This Is Us” leaped into the future at the end of Tuesday’s episode, giving viewers a glimpse of a middle-aged Kevin.
As the episode drew to a close, Kevin (played by Justin Hartley), sporting a salt-and-pepper beard and hair, pulled up to a house in a fancy sports car where he was greeted by Beth, who informed him everyone was with Rebecca.
“There was a lot of Google-imaging of (George) Clooney, Pierce Brosnan and the men who have aged fantastically,” “This Is Us” executive producer Isaac Aptaker told Entertainment Weekly about the older Kevin.
“Our brilliant makeup people and hair people did a lot of tests and we all collectively felt that Kevin Pearson would age very well,” executive producer Elizabeth Berger told the magazine.
It wasn’t just any house that Kevin pulled up to, either. It was the home on top of a hill overlooking the family’s cabin that Jack sketched back in 1993 while they were at their cabin. As he told Rebecca in the episode, he hoped to one day build it.
He threw out the sketch, however, but Rebecca saved it and placed it in the time capsule that the family buried at the cabin. The house may also look familiar to fans of the show, since it was the home where the family gathered during last season’s finale while Rebecca is presumably on her death bed.
The end of Tuesday's episode seemed to indicate the flash-forward is taking place at that time.
As Kevin walked in, Jack's sketch hung in a frame in the foyer.
The episode shed some light on how the house came to be. In the present, Kevin took the sketch after he, Randall and Kate dug up the time capsule while they retreated to the cabin, letting viewers in on the fact that Kevin may have built the home, completing the vision their father had.
