‘This Is Us’ Fans React As Randall Gets Shocking News About His Mom In New Promo
This Is Us fans were stunned by a new promo that showed Randall (Sterling K. Brown) getting shocking news about his biological mother in the upcoming episode “The Long Road Home.”
In a new teaser for the winter premiere of the NBC drama series, the adopted Pearson son was stunned after he received a message from a man claiming to know his biological mother. Randall was shown holding a copy of an email with a printed pic of a woman alongside the mystery man (played by Vien Hong) that contacted him. But when his wife Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) asked if that was his birth mother in the photo, he admitted he had never seen the woman before.
“My father told me she died after I was born,” Randall said as footage of his bio dad William (Ron Cephas Jones) appeared onscreen. “But how could William lie to me, Beth?”
In the comments section, fans of the show reacted to the revelation and debated on how it will play out.
“So excited!” one viewer wrote. “I don’t think his dad even knew she didn’t die.”
“He didn’t,” another person noted. “But Randall is going to blame him and William can’t defend himself.”
Others added that they “can’t wait” for Randall to tie together the pieces from his past.
You can view the This Is Us promo below.
As for how the mysterious man, Hai, found Randall, it will be traced to the viral video that was featured in the last episode of the series, which aired in November. Fans may recall that after a livestream of his town hall meeting, the Philadelphia city councilman did not realize that he was still on camera, and he began to undress in his office. The video exploded online.
This Is Us executive producer Ken Olin told Deadline that Randall’s viral fame would ultimately connect him to information about his birth mom, Laurel (Jennifer Holmes).
“Just through this ridiculous video, this viral, silly video, there will be a way that he begins to connect to her history,” Olin revealed to the outlet. “That story and her story, and what all of that means will be played out very soon.”
In a separate interview, Olin dished to Entertainment Weekly that an upcoming “beautiful episode” will paint Laurel’s history. The EP confirmed that just as Randall did in the Season 1 episode “Memphis,” when he learned William’s backstory, he will travel to another city, and from there will put together the story that he never knew.
“He makes certain assumptions about William, about [Laurel], that he begins to discover that there are other truths that he didn’t know,” Olin teased, noting that as much as Randall is a Pearson, he’s also “an orphan” who is from a “very different” America than the parents who raised him.
This Is Us viewers have long presumed that Randall’s birth mom was dead, based on what William told him. But in the Season 5 premiere, it was revealed that Laurel didn’t actually die of a drug overdose after giving birth to her son in 1980.
