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This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman talked to Entertainment Weekly about the long-awaited reveal — finally unveiled in the post-Super Bowl episode — that Pearson family patriarch Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) died of smoke inhalation after playing the hero following a devastating home fire caused by a rogue crock pot. The episode was watched by a huge audience and endlessly discussed, providing This Is Us with the most media attention it’s gotten in its relatively short lifespan (and it had already gotten a lot of media attention).
But in his discussion with EW, Fogelman expressed some regrets about the way that the whole How Did Jack Die? mystery-of-breadcrumbs storyline unfolded. Not about the method of Jack’s demise, exactly, but the expectations raised along the way. The big surprise that Jack was dead in the present-day timeline of the show was revealed as early as episode 5 in season 1, which kick-started the speculation train. But that speculation hit fever pitch in the penultimate episode of season 1, when the Kate character claims she’s the reason her father died, and then an associated cut to a flashback made it seem like Jack died in some kind of drunk-driving incident.
Fogelman says if he had to do it over again, he’d have handled those final season 1 episodes differently. He acknowledges that dropping that hint in the penultimate episode of season 1 raised expectations for the season finale, which then ended up frustrating audiences who expected the revelation of the cause of Jack’s death in that very season finale.
“That was a head fake on our part,” says Fogelman, who notes that he’d always been planning to resolve the mystery later in season 2. “While I thought it was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool, interesting timing,’ and people might think that’s coming, I didn’t realize the narrative around that moment would get so strong. If I could take back a moment, that’s the moment I’d take back, just to have slowed the spread of our story.”
Live and learn, TV creators. Hype up your series with loudly promised twists, endure fan (over-)reaction to your loudly promised twists.
