The outgoing family drama celebrated a milestone with a big episode Tuesday.
Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you have no watched Tuesday's 100th episode of This Is Us.
This Is Us celebrated a milestone -- reaching the 100-episode pinnacle -- by marking the official end of Kate and Toby, the beginning of Kate and Phillip (and also answering the mini mystery of where Kate is in the far-off future).
While it hasn't been a secret that Kate and Toby's marriage was going to end in divorce, Tuesday's timeline-jumping episode -- simply titled "Katoby" -- was still a heartbreaking reminder about how painful, awkward and devastating any uncoupling is. After Toby decided to try and make things work with Kate, giving up the high-paying job in San Francisco, it became increasingly clear that their efforts were not bearing any fruit -- marriage counseling included. ("I am really so tired of this. Every day, it's like a different version of same fight," Kate lamented during one of their therapy sessions.)
It all came to a head over a tense marriage-ending fight at dinner when they didn't see eye to eye on how to put their daughter, Hailey, down at bedtime. What began as an argument about the best way to make sure their young daughter could go to bed without crying soon morphed into a blow-out fight about their vastly different viewpoints on parenting, marriage and, well, life. "I look miserable because you are in the room," Toby yelled, quieting the room. "All this time... trying to figure out how we ended up where we are now, it's not because I lost a bunch of weight, it's not because it took me too long to bond with Jack or I move to San Francisco or any of the other B.S. we talk about in there. Turns out, the only crime I can consistently find myself guilty of is not being Jack Pearson!"
After they both had a moment to calm down, Kate made the decision that changed the direction of both their lives forever. "It's over," she stated very clearly, even as Toby made an attempt to rectify the situation. "Toby, it's time." As they went through divorce proceedings, signing a mountain of papers to separate their lives forever, Kate stopped Toby and assured him that he'd understand one day. "This is not how our story ends. Just because our marriage is story is over doesn't mean our story is over. We were meant to find each other in that weight-loss group. We were meant to be together and now, we're meant to be apart. And I know that one day, you will see it," she promised. At the time that she said it, Toby didn't. "I promise you, I will never see it."
But, as the years passed and Toby remarried (to a lovely woman he bumped into at a coffeeshop!), Toby finally saw it. "Do you remember what you said to me the day we signed our divorce papers?" Toby said just as Kate was getting ready to walk down the aisle to marry Phillip (Chris Geere). "I want you to know that I see it now."
In a sly reveal, This Is Us also fast-forwarded to the future future, during a key scene with grown-up Jack (guest star Blake Stadnik) at a bar as he got ready to take the stage to perform. Up until this point, the series hadn't addressed the whereabouts of Kate in the decades that followed -- her absence on Rebecca's final day becoming one of the biggest mysteries -- but Tuesday's episode seemingly answered it.
In a touching scene, older Kate and older Toby -- with their respective significant others -- reunited at the bar to proudly watch their son sing. "You're both here," Jack happily exclaimed before he took the stage. Another mystery solved!
In non-Kate and Toby developments, the episode also brought back Kevin's first love, Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge), who was a guest at Kate and Phillip's engagement party. Though Kevin was back to plus-ones without names (see: "the iPhone girl," "the State Farm girl," "the condom girl"), his longing look as Sophie chatted with her husband brought an ounce of regret to the former Man-ny star.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay. It's fine," Kevin said when Kate asked him if he was okay with her presence. "I'm glad you two are good friends again anyway. I'm going to go say hi." It's unclear what Kevin's romantic conclusion will be. Is Sophie still in the picture?
And Randall (Sterling K. Brown) may be making real strides in the political sphere. He was revealed to be a strong frontrunner for the state senator seat. Could that be where he's headed in the near future?
Ahead of the 100th episode, Metz spoke to ET's Denny Directo at This Is Us' farewell panel at PaleyFest on April 2 about the biggest question she's excited for viewers to get the answers to.
"Where is Kate? Where is she? I think we'll get an answer... She's somewhere," the actress teased.
With the series just weeks away from ending for good, Metz reflected on what that last day will be like on set.
"I don’t think we have cry days but I definitely have felt it through the character and through the scenes," she told ET's Nischelle Turner when she and Sullivan stopped by the stage. "I'm like, 'OK, OK.' I don’t think it will be until hiatus is over and then we won't come back. I think that's when I'll be like, 'Oh, this is -- let me call my therapist right now.'"
"I think that we're all gonna be emotional don’t you think," an emotional Metz said, to which Sullivan agreed: "Yeah, oh yeah, it's gonna be a big day."
This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
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