'This Is Us': Milo Ventimiglia on Jack's Death and Future

The burden of showing how Jack Pearson died has finally been lifted from This Is Us' shoulders, [...]

By Daniel S. Levine

The burden of showing how Jack Pearson died has finally been lifted from This Is Us' shoulders, but that does not mean we have seen the last of Milo Ventimiglia. There are still questions about Jack's past left to answer.

Although the series has hinted at Jack's family life, his troubled relationship with his alcoholic father and his service in Vietnam, creator Dan Fogelman has not explored much of Jack's pre-Rebecca (Mandy Moore) life.

"There are so many questions with Jack," Ventimiglia told Esquire after the Super Bowl episode aired. "His upbringing, what happened to him in Vietnam, what happened to him after Vietnam before he met Rebecca? And those early days of Jack and Rebecca, I know is an era that Dan is excited to explore."

Fogelman could also delve into Jack's relationship with his brother, who died while serving in the Vietnam War. In "Number Three," we saw Jack take Randall to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. to show him his brother's name on the wall.

"His brother, I think is something that's going to come up relatively quickly, and play out over the next season or so," Ventimiglia told Esquire. "There's still so much to know about this man, from all the eras, so I'm excited to focus on how Jack lived as opposed to worrying about how he died."

Ventimiglia also took to Twitter to help fans calm down after "Super Bowl Sunday" aired.

"Just so everyone knows it....#JackPearson lives in all of our hearts. He's you. He's me. He's Us. Thank you all for supporting our show. We love you all :) And this isn't the end of Jack. Stay tuned," the actor wrote.

Ventimiglia also told Entertainment Weekly there is a lot more to learn about Jack's life.

"This is episode 14, so that's only the 32nd hour we've ever known this family," he told EW. "So now, if Jack died in 1998, when the kids are 17, there's still a lot to know — different sides of him, what made him, what shaped him, what inspired his romance with his wife, what happened with he and his brother in war…. That we've invested as much as we have as an audience in 32 hours is pretty remarkable. There's a lot of life left in him — even in death, there's a lot of life left in Jack."

Ventimiglia earned an Emmy nomination for This Is Us, but he lost to co-star Sterling K. Brown.

The next episode of This Is Us airs on Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT on NBC.

Photo credit: NBC

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