“The Guitar Man” will be directed by Jack Pearson himself, Milo Ventimiglia, and will also feature some more insight into Kevin‘s past, including a family trip to the pool as a child, and a heart-to-heart with his siblings as a young adult. Here’s everything we know about Episode 8 of the final season of This Is Us and what happens next.
Is there a This Is Us Season 6 episode 8 promo preview?
The promo for “The Guitar Man” opens with Jack and Rebecca taking the Big Three to the pool on the first day of summer, before reminding us of Rebecca’s instruction to her adult children not to be held back by her disease. We then are told that the next three episodes will be a “trilogy” each focused on one of the Big Three. At the pool, Jack pulls a submerged young Kevin out of the water, telling him he’s not ready for the deep end. Then it cuts to the Big Three, now teenagers, sitting in the empty deep end of the same pool following Thanksgiving dinner, with Kevin telling his siblings that he fears he’s not “solid,” saying, “I don’t have the right stuff underneath me.” We also get a quick glimpse of him holding a baby—likely one of his twins—and talking to an unidentified person (who appears to be an elderly man from the blurry image of the back of his head that we see, but it’s impossible to be sure) as Kevin sits on a bench in an unfamiliar beige room. Is he in a church? An Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? We can’t tell, but Kevin’s expression looks serious, so whatever this conversation is feels important.
Does Kevin marry Cassidy on This Is Us?
Another scene from the This Is Us Season 6 episode 8 promo shows an adult Kevin teaching an adolescent boy (possibly his son?) how to play guitar, as Edie (Vanessa Bell Calloway) and Cassidy (Jennifer Morrison) look on, confirming that Cassidy is still in Kevin’s life years into the future. As his wife? Maybe! “I want to be the kind of man that does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do,” Kevin says in a voiceover.
What happened on This Is Us Season 6 Episode 7?
Episode 7 of this is us, titled “Taboo“ focused mainly on Rebecca, taking us through three different family Thanksgivings. The first, taking place during her engagement to Jack, gave us more insight into her complicated relationship with her mother (Elizabeth Perkins), who made a habit of critiquing everything about Rebecca at every turn. Seeing Rebecca‘s mother encourage her toward disordered eating also peeled back a layer on Rebecca and Kate’s fraught relationship when Kate was a teenager and young adult, since we’ve previously seen Rebecca comment on Kate’s diet as well. In the second Thanksgiving, taking place a couple years after Jack died, Rebecca and Miguel (Jon Huertas) both invite dates to dinner, only to spend most of the holiday gravitating toward each other. The rest of the family can’t help but pick up on this, and Kevin (Logan Shroyer) – still smarting from his fresh split with his wife Sophie—tells Miguel harshly that Jack would hate to see his best friend romantically pursuing his wife. But it seems as though Miguel was already on the same page, because at the end of the night, after he and Rebecca come just shy of finally admitting their feelings for one another, he reveals to her that he’s taken a job in Houston and will be moving soon. That night, Rebecca cries herself to sleep, seeming much more heartbroken than someone who has merely learned a friend is moving. Perhaps in guilt over feeling that he caused his mother’s sadness, or simply because he is not good at dealing with big or serious emotions, Kevin takes off for the abandoned community pool where they once swam as kids. And in the third Thanksgiving, taking place in the present-day timeline, the Pearsons gather at their family cabin in Pennsylvania to celebrate, near the site of the house Kevin is building for Rebecca based off of Jack’s design. Throughout the day, things are tense between Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Toby (Chris Sullivan), as Toby feels that Kate is not being mindful enough of their son’s diet, while Kate is much more concerned with giving their son a healthy attitude toward food and his body, since she doesn’t want him to struggle with disordered eating like his parents. Their bickering can’t help but draw the attention of the rest of the family, and Kevin even goes so far as to revoke Toby’s right to wear the family’s cherished Pilgrim Rick hat. Of course, we know from prior flash-forwards that Kate and Toby are ultimately headed toward divorce, and this tense Thanksgiving makes it feel like time is quickly running out on their marriage. After dinner, Rebecca requests a meeting with just her three children and Miguel, at which she lays out her end-of-life plans. Although Rebecca is currently still in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, she knows that as her disease progresses, things are going to get much more difficult. She wants some important decisions made now, so that everyone has time to sit with them before her plans have to be put into action. The first thing she says is that Miguel will be the one to determine her care for the rest of her life, and that since she and Miguel have already talked through what Rebecca would want, her children are not to question his decisions. In the event that something happens to Miguel, Rebecca decides that Kate should be the one to make those decisions. She also requests that Kevin add a guest house to his building plans, since she and Miguel foresee Rebecca needing permanent professional care at some point down the road. Lastly, Rebecca tells her children that she does not want them to put their lives on hold because of her disease. She wants them to go and live their lives to the fullest, knowing that that’s the best way that they can honor their mother.
Are there any This Is Us Season 6 episode 8 spoilers?
While we don’t know much about what happens in “The Guitar Man," the title alone has us wondering how exactly how Kevin‘s horrible guitar playing, which has popped up several times over the last couple episodes, will factor into his future story. Creator Dan Fogelman explained in an interview with Deadline that Kevin‘s new affinity for the guitar is actually tied to his doubts about his skills as a parent. “I think Kevin’s guitar playing stems from him trying to keep his mind off of the fact that his life is not where he wants it to be right now,” Fogelman said. “He’s alone at Thanksgiving and Rebecca’s illness is weighing on him and he’s desperately trying to be good at something because he’s not sure if he’s failing at fatherhood or not.” Since we know “The Guitar Man” will feature a trip to the cabin with Kevin and his kids, we can only expect that this link between guitar and Kevin’s feelings about parenting will become much more explicit in the episode. Only 10 more episodes left before This Is Us says goodbye for good. Here are 50 of the best quotes from the series.
