‘This Is Us’ Producer: Super Bowl Episode ‘Very Satisfying’ but ‘Not What People Expect’

The biggest This Is Us reveal yet is only days away, and one producer says viewers will be very satisfied.

The game-changing episode, set to air Feb. 4 after the Super Bowl, will finally show audiences the circumstances behind Jack Pearson’s (Milo Ventimiglia) heart-breaking death, a question that has lingered on the series since season one.

“Questions will be answered in a very satisfying way,” This Is Us executive producer Isaac Aptaker told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s not necessarily what people expect, but people will have a lot of the answers they’ve been hoping for.”

“It is a very, very exciting episode,” he continues about the upcoming hour, appropriately titled, “Super Bowl Sunday”. “We shot it early, so we had extra time to make sure everything was perfect in editing. It was one of my favorite episodes we’ve ever done, and I think it’s really going to blow people away.”

The Tuesday, Jan. 23 episode, “That’ll Be The Day,” revealed that the fire that eventually claims Jack’s life starts after a slow cooker — given to Pearson by friendly neighbor George when he and his wife are moving out of their house — shorts out and starts the house fire. The special post Super Bowl episode will kick off right where the last one left off.

The episode will not just wallow in the tragedy, however.

“It’s one of the most emotional episodes we’ve ever done, but there is a silver lining to it, and there’s an uplift to the episode,” Aptaker said. “While it’s incredibly intense in a lot of ways, there is beauty to it, and there is optimism to it. That’s so important to us — to always find the lighter side of things too.”

This Is Us star Mandy Moore recently described the episode as a “soul-crusher.”

“I don’t know if people are going to be ready for the next episode. I’m not. I haven’t seen it yet,” Moore said. “I mean, I filmed it and it was really hard on every level. I think it’s … I think it’s gonna be a good soul-crusher.”

“Everything will be answered. We’re leaving nothing on the table. Everyone will know everything,” she said. “I’m excited about that, because I feel like it’ll sort of relieve a little bit of pressure. People will know, and then we’ll be able to get back to telling the story of this family, and I think it’ll make things that much more bittersweet moving forward too.”

Co-star Sterling K. Brown described the pivotal hour as having been filmed superhero movie style.

“[Fogelman] may have written his best hour of television,” Brown, who portrays Randall, told Enterainment Weekly. “It is cinematic, it’s epic in scope. He is able to take the mundane and turn it into a superhero movie. Each one of us, once we read it we were like, ‘Did you read this yet? Yeah. It’s off the chain! We were giddy.

This Is Us will air Sunday, Feb. 4 after the Super Bowl. The series regularly airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.