‘This Is Us’ Finale: How Is an Old Jack Pearson at Kate’s Wedding?

this-is-us-old-jack
NBC/This Is Us
Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia) rocks some silver hair for the Season 2 finale of This Is Us.

The penultimate episode of This Is Us Season 2 was pretty much all about Déjà (Lyric Ross), but next Tuesday’s finale is a different story.

In the preview shown after the March 6 episode, fans were shocked to see an aged Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia) in attendance at Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Toby’s (Chris Sullivan) wedding.

Now, before anyone starts getting too ahead of themselves, we know for a fact that Jack is dead. He didn’t come back to life. What we can surmise from his appearance is that it is either: a dream sequence or a hallucination—a wishful look at what could have been.

In the promo, we first see a younger Jack and Kate talking. “The guy that gets to marry you, Katie girl, he is one lucky guy,” he says, as they play footage of grown-up Kate walking down the aisle, flanked by brothers Kevin (Justin Hartley) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown).

The teaser then scrawls the words “surprise guest” across the screen, and an old version of Jack appears. He reaches out to Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and asks, “Where’d the time go, Bec?”

We’ve seen Jack before in dream sequences and in Randall’s hallucination at the cabin, but no one has seen Jack older than when he died. It will be interesting to see how the writers handle this moving forward. After all, the team behind this show has cornered the market when it comes to clever reveals and shocking surprises.

This glimpse at a senior Jack has caused quite the stir, with many fans taking to social media to react. Find some of those wild and speculative reactions below.

This Is Us, Season 2 Finale, Tuesday, March 13, 9/8c, NBC