(Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Feb. 19 episode of “This Is Us,” titled, “Our Little Island Girl.”)
We have some good news and bad news for all you Randall Pearson (Sterling K. Brown) lovers out there hoping to finally see the moment he met his wife on the upcoming “This Is Us” episode that dives into Beth’s (Susan Kelechi Watson) backstory. The good: You’ll see Randall meet Beth. The bad: You won’t see Beth meet Randall.
Yes, we’re sorry to say it, but it isn’t until the closing moments of the Beth-centric tale, titled “Our Little Island Girl,” that you see the teen-version of Randall’s wife (played by Rachel Naomi Hilson) kinda bump into a young Randall (Niles Fitch) while checking in for a college freshmen mixer.
Beth, distraught after giving up on her long-held dreams of being a ballerina (don’t worry, you’ll find out all about that in a couple weeks when the episode airs) doesn’t even notice him, but Randall is clearly already smitten.
“This Is Us” co-showrunner Elizabeth Berger explained why they decided to go that route, following a special advanced screening of the Dan Folgeman-created NBC drama’s Feb. 19 episode during the Television Critics Association press tour Thursday.
“A lot goes into that, because once we’ve done it, then [in] a few episodes we’ll all be talking and we’ll be like, ‘Hey, what if we did this thing?’ And then someone in the writers’ room will be like, ‘No because we said this,’” Berger told reporters. “And then we’ll all feel bad and be like, ‘Ah, why did we commit to that.’ So whenever there’s something big like that, we give it a lot of discussion and we’re going to be, you know, revisiting that moment and we’re going to be revisiting other moments of their college experience coming up really soon in an episode Kay [Oyegun] just wrote and we’re really excited about. But yeah those are huge discussions because once it’s on screen, we’re really locked into it and we try to be really truthful to our mythology.”
Fair enough, but if this isn’t Beth and Randall’s official meet-cute, then what do we call it? Because it definitely is still an important moment — even if Beth doesn’t realize it.
“Uh, good point, true,” Berger told TheWrap after the Q&A session. “I guess I would call that really him getting struck by Cupid’s arrow in this, you know? I think it’s one of those moments where you see a beautiful girl and she locks into your mind. And we are going to see coming up that that is exactly what happened with Randall, that he is very aware of Beth’s presence on campus and she is aware of his presence as well — although maybe not as smitten as quickly, so there’s going to be a road to travel there.”
We could tell you more about the episode, as we were not sworn to secrecy regarding its contents, but we’d rather let you wait and see it for yourself. So check back with TheWrap on Feb. 19 after it airs for additional backstory about Beth’s backstory.
“This Is Us” returns next Tuesday at 9/8c on NBC with a new episode — the second half of two-parter “Songbird Road.” Beth’s backstory episode, “Our Little Island Girl,” airs Feb. 19.