‘This Is Us’: Milo Ventimiglia Says Season 3 Will Show Jack in Vietnam

In the weeks leading up to the season two finale, This Is Us teased scenes with Jack Pearson in Vietnam, but we did not end up seeing them. Actor Milo Ventimiglia promised in a new interview that there will definitely be a bigger exploration of Jack’s Vietnam War service in season three.

“We’re definitely going to see Jack in the Vietnam era,” the 40-year-old actor told PEOPLE. “At the end of the Super Bowl episode when people were ultimately confronted with how he passed away, there was a trailer to show Jack in a helicopter over Vietnam in uniform. We’re going to explore that side of Jack’s 20s and what brought him into the man that we all knew.”

As Ventimiglia said, after the famous Super Bowl episode that revealed Jack’s cause of death, there was a brief shot of Jack in Vietnam. Some thought we would see that scene in subsequent episodes, but it was not to be.

After spending a season and a half dancing around the issue, the Super Bowl episode finally showed us how Jack died. The Pearson family home became engulfed in flames, and Jack helped wife Rebecca (Mandy Moore), teen Randall (Niles Fitch) and teen Kate (Hannah Zeile) get out of the house safety. However, he went back in to rescue Kate’s dog, so he inhaled more smoke than the others.

Doctors thought Jack was going to be ok at first, but he later suffered a heart attack.

Even though we saw the funeral in the very next episode, Ventimiglia said people still ask him if his character is really dead.

“People still are saying to me, ‘You’re not really dead, are you?’” Ventimiglia told PEOPLE. “They’re still constant.”

They have good reason to think that, because Ventimiglia and Jack will still be a big part of the series moving forward. The show will still include plenty of flashbacks to the past.

“There are so many questions with Jack,” Ventimiglia told Esquire in February. “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.”

This Is Us goes back into production in July. In the meantime, Ventimiglia, who earned an Emmy nomination for playing Jack, will be making The Art of Racing in the Rain. The film is based on the novel by Garth Stein about a dog whose owner is a passionate race car driver. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film is being directed by Goodbye Christopher Robin‘s Simon Curtis.

The next season of This Is Us will air in the fall on NBC. Ventimiglia will also be seen in Second Act with Vanessa Hudgens in November.

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