‘This Is Us’ Season Finale Teases Future Death of Beth

During Tuesday night’s season 2 finale, This Is Us hinted at a grim future in store for Randall Pearson’s family. Specifically, the show hinted that Randall’s wife Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) will die some time before the show’s future timeline.

The show revisits the future time period that was previously teased earlier in season 2 with older versions of Randall and his daughter Tess. That reveal showed that Tess was a social worker and still regularly eat dinner with Randall.

However, the season finale glimpse is much less joyous than the first one.

The father and daughter are having a serious conversation about an unnamed woman.

“It’s time to go see her, Tess,” Randall said.

Tess replies, “I’m not ready.”

“Me neither,” Randall responds.

As the glimpses transition back into the present day, the next shots are of Beth.

The obvious conclusion to draw is that Beth has died or is dying at this moment in the timeline. Randall might want Tess to make peace with Beth’s passing/ill health.

This would also explain why Beth is not with Randall to meet Tess in the previous flash forward.

However, there are still some possible outs that spare Beth’s life.

Alternatively, maybe there is a rift between the core Pearson family and Tess is simply estranged from Beth.

Furthermore, the way that This Is Us‘ writers angled the dialogue, Beth could not even be the person the duo is talking about. It could be Tess’ grandmother Rebecca, her sister Annie, her adopted sister Déjà or any other female character from her family that has or has not already been shown.

However, the implication writers wanted fans to take away was the death of Beth, so maybe there is not a deeper twist ahead.

This Is Us is now off-season, but past episodes can be found on Hulu.

Photo Credit: NBC / Ron Batzdorff