'This Is Us' Midseason Trailer Teases Breakup, Major Health Issues for the Pearsons

This Is Us returns this coming Tuesday, and the next round of episodes might be a game-changer. [...]

By Christian Long

This Is Us returns this coming Tuesday, and the next round of episodes might be a game-changer. The acclaimed NBC drama's fourth season premiered this past fall, but took a winter break back in November. In anticipation of its return, star Mandy Moore, who plays Rebecca Pearson, tweeted out a teaser for this season's back-half and promised viewers "BIG surprises in store."

While the 30-second video doesn't reveal any specifics, it hints very strongly that major life changes are in store for its core characters. First, Rebecca's love life seems to be at odds with her family's expectations, Randall Pearson (Sterling K. Brown) has a potential health crisis and possibly the most devastating, some romantic trouble for Kate and Kevin Pearson, (Chrissy Metz and Justin Hartley, respectively).

Back in September, the season four premiere introduced a whole host of new characters. However, when the show appeared to have faltered a bit when explaining how their lives are connected, to the point it was hard for some fans to keep track of them all.

Before it aired, series creator Dan Fogelman told TV Line that the season opener was "ambitious and unusual," and was designed to subvert fan expectations.

"I'm quite proud of our team for what they've pulled off, but also curious to see the response and reaction from our audience," Fogelman said. "I trust our fans to trust us, and to enjoy the challenge of a very ambitious and unusual first episode back."

Fogelman has been teasing viewers with a disruptive season four for some time. In May of last year, he told Entertainment Weekly that he saw it as a chance to "restart" the show, and was already promising big changes for its characters.

"Restarts for everybody. And midpoints. I think it's going to be very ambitious and sprawling in terms of how it plays with time. Many of our characters are in the middle of their stories, and that's a point where characters are opening up to new things and new things are starting. That becomes a very exciting period for almost all of the characters, and for some of them, maybe a very scary period in terms of how fraught their storylines are."

More of these big changes will come to light when This Is Us returns Tuesday, Jan. 14 on NBC.

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