Sob! This Is Us Stars Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia Sound Off on That Devastating Ending

We had a feeling this news was coming, but we were never going to be ready for it.

This Is Us just confirmed our worst fears by revealing that Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) is dead in present day. We don’t know when or how he died, but we do know he at least made it to 2006, when he and Kate (Chrissy Metz) watched a Steelers game together. We also know that it has to be long enough ago that Rebecca (Mandy Moore) felt comfortable getting remarried to Miguel (Jon Huertas), but other than that, we’re in the dark. The sad, sad dark. 

In a way, knowing that we’re now waiting for the moment of Jack’s death is even worse than if they had shown it without warning us ahead of time. Now, we’re going to have to be ready with the tissues any time the show visits the past 10 years.

Luckily, we won’t have to wait all that long. 

“Before the end of the season, we’ll have a greater idea of what happened,” Moore told us when E News’ Carissa Culiner visited the This Is Us set to sit down with the stars.

“That’s the nice thing about this show is I think what the writers and what [creator] Dan [Fogelman] are wanting to do is definitely explore that idea of a family and how big and wide that can get, and understanding that things do happen in life—death happens, birth happens, life comes, life goes,” Ventimiglia explains in the video above. “Even though someone is gone, it doesn’t mean they’re gone and not in your everyday life.”  

“They’re not out of the picture completely, which is I think what episode five really summed up so well,” Moore adds. “I think the episode is so all encompassing and really describes what the show is about and what life is about, and it’s so tangible.”

While Jack’s impending death (or the death that already happened, depending on the scene) is totally heartbreaking, the silver lining is that he’ll still have a major presence on This Is Us, and we will still get to look at Milo Ventimiglia’s face/facial hair on a weekly basis. 

So not only do we get to experience the drama and emotions that come with losing a beloved TV character, but we also don’t actually have to lose that character, which is really the best of both worlds. 

This Is Us airs at Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC. 

(E! and NBC are both part of the NBC Universal family.)