Warning! The following contains spoilers regarding the latest episode of This Is Us. Read at your own risk!
Just when it seemed like the puzzle of Jack Pearson's past was coming together, This Is Us dropped another huge secret regarding The Big Three's dad. In the episode's final moments, we saw a young Jack watch his father drink in a bar as he sat in the passenger seat of their car waiting to go on a fishing trip. All the sudden, another head pops up from the back seat and a child asks young Jack what's going on. Jack Pearson has a brother we've never heard of before, and that really has us questioning everything.
Jack's brother, who he calls "Nicky", has never before been mentioned by This Is Us, which is weird considering he would be The Big Three's uncle as well as Rebecca's brother-in-law. As of now, the only thing we really know about Nicky comes from Jack looking at a picture of the two with an army unit in a location that seems to be Vietnam. While this reveal may be too fresh to speculate on, one has to wonder if the reason no one has ever mentioned Jack's brother is because he died before they met him.
If Nicky died in the war, that would explain why none of the children, nor Rebecca, have mentioned the Pearson brother so far in This Is Us. It may also explain Jack's problem with alcoholism, which might have begun as his response to coping with his brother's death. That's all assuming Nicky died in the war, however, and while it appears all roads are leading that way, Nicky might be out of the picture for a completely different reason.
It seems weird that Nicky's reveal was tied to a flashback of Jack and his father. It's no secret Jack and his father never really got along, and perhaps whatever happened to Nicky could be the cause of all that tension. If that's the case, fans of This Is Us may be seeing a lot more of Nicky and Jack's father in upcoming episodes. There's also a pretty good chance we'll be learning more about Jack's past in Vietnam, which is something Milo Ventimiglia has been open about wanting to pursue in his character's backstory.
Hopefully more answers come to light as This Is Us is all new Halloween night at 9 p.m. ET on NBC. For more on the show, check out who Mandy Moore thinks is the best at crying on the series, or how the show hilariously predicted the Kardashian pregnancies. For a look at some other fall programming worth checking out, be sure to bookmark our fall premiere guide and keep up with the latest and greatest premieres over the next couple of months.
