(Spoiler alert: Please do not read on if you haven’t watched Tuesday’s episode of “This Is Us”)
Randall gets his name and his origin story, in the newest episode of NBC’s “This Is Us.”
After having been dubbed The Big Three, a.k.a. Kevin, Kate and Kyle by Jack (Milo Ventigmilia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore), the infants are home and the new parents are having a hard time of it.
In particular, Rebecca feels herself unable to bond with their adopted son, and decides to pay his biological father William (Jermel Nakia), who’s going by the name Shakespeare, a visit.
There, Shakespeare gives her some advice, despite her denying his request to check up on the baby from time to time: Give him his own name, instead of the one they had planned to give their third triplet, who died in childbirth. At this, she asks what the name of his favorite poet was, the one he used to read to baby Kyle’s mother. The poet: Dudley Randall.
Their emotional conversation mirrors the present day, where the adult Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and the ailing William (Ron Cephas Jones) find out the results of his cancer diagnosis.
It’s Stage 4, and it’s fatal, just as they feared, and Randall can’t exactly hide from Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) that he’s the one who will end up devastated, not their children.
In Los Angeles, Kate (Chrissy Metz) is preparing to uproot her life and follow Kevin (Justin Hartley) to New York, at his insistence, much to the frustration of Toby (Chris Sullivan).
While Kate avoids the spotlight and happily putters about acting as Kevin’s personal assistant, Toby sets her up with a singing gig, where she croons out a soulful rendition of Cyndi Lauper‘s “Time After Time” in front of half-conscious senior citizens at a retirement home.
When she tells Toby that he, just like everyone else, will have to always come second to her twin brother, Kevin has had enough and “fires” her. And just like that, the twins prepare to lead separate lives for the first time ever — Kevin on a spontaneous red-eye flight to New York, Kate finally off to have some sex with Toby.
Meanwhile, Randall gives up on keeping distance between himself and William, bracing for inevitable heartbreak by asking him all the questions he’s wanted to ask since he was young, starting with where he met his mom.
“This Is Us” airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.