‘This Is Us’ to End After Season 6

It’s the end of an era for the Pearson family. On Wednesday, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Lesley Goldberg reported that This Is Us will end with Season 6. The journalist noted that NBC is expected to make the official announcement about the future of the series on Friday when they release details about the 2021-2022 television schedule.

THR reached out to representatives for both NBC and studio 20th Television, but they declined to comment on this news. For many fans, the news that This Is Us will reportedly end with Season 6 likely won’t come as a surprise. It has long been the plan for the show to end with Season 6, as creator Dan Fogelman has been vocal about having a set future in place for the series. In May 2019, NBC renewed This Is Us for an additional three seasons, which then brought the show’s total to six seasons. While higher-ups at NBC were reportedly hopeful that the show would continue on past that point, it was always the show’s intention to end with Season 6.

Around the time that the show was renewed for three additional seasons, Fogelman said that the series was at its “midpoint.” Additionally, a month before the news was announced, the showrunner explained to THR that there were never any intentions for the show to go beyond its set plan. He told the outlet, “We never set out to make a television series that was going to last 18 seasons, so we have a very direct plan. I have script pages I have written and I’m writing that really are deep, deep, deep into the future. We have a plan for what we’re going to do, and I know what the plan is.”

At the moment, it’s unclear how many episodes are expected to be included in This Is Us‘ presumptive final season. Although, THR noted that there’s a good chance that Season 6 will consist of 18 episodes, which will push the series’ final episode count over 100 episodes. While THR did break the news about the future of This Is Us‘ future, it should be noted that this does not serve as an official announcement about the end of the series. As previously mentioned, that announcement is expected to be made directly by NBC on Friday.