One of the last mysteries we've all been waiting for is finally answered in Tuesday's episode.
Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you have not watched Tuesday's episode of This Is Us.
Kevin Pearson finally figured it out.
On Tuesday's episode of This Is Us, titled "The Night Before the Wedding," the Man-ny star got his love life in order after years and years of stumbling in and out of relationships, one-night stands and failed dates. The clock turned back to the evening before Kate and Phillip's "I do's," presenting three potential women in Kevin's orbit. Did he get his act together and rekindle a decades-long romance with his first love, Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge)? Or, did he and Cassidy (Jennifer Morrison) realize there was more between them than friendship? Or, was the wedding singer/Phillip's friend, Arielle (guest star Katie Lowes), the lucky lady who caught his eye?
The answer, it turns out, was always there from the very beginning. It just took Kevin much of his life to reach a point where he could see it with clear eyes and a clear heart. So, which of the three women did Kevin go all in with in the end? Here's how it all went down, and all the little bombshells that went along with it.
SOPHIE
The majority of the episode focused on Kevin's reunion with Sophie, who ends up losing her luggage (and hence, dress for the wedding) and reveals that her husband, Grant, is stuck in New York. So begins their spontaneous adventure as they go to a local laundromat to find a dress to wear to the wedding, a trick she learned from her late mother, and finds a beautiful green dress -- the same one she ends up wearing. A lot has changed for Sophie since the handful of times they've encountered each other over the years, the biggest change being that she's embraced a bit of a nomadic life and is currently working as a traveling nurse near Berlin.
The former couple stops by the vineyard for an afternoon sunset stroll and Kevin acknowledges that Sophie seems to be on a good path in her life. "You seem really happy, Sophie. I'm glad you found someone," he tells her. She graciously takes his compliment, but then drops an unexpected bombshell: "I am really happy, Kevin... I'm also divorced." The revelation stuns Kevin, who flashes back to Kate's engagement party when he first met her now ex-husband, Grant. Sophie admits that the whole situation with her ex forced her to "grow up" fast. They even touch on Rebecca's disintegrating mental state, silently accepting that she's headed toward the end.
At an intimate family bonfire that night, the pair can't help but steal longing glances at each other. They make it to Kevin's hotel room later, where they pick up right where they left off, and where she leaves her pink bra (one of the "clues" Beth and Madison eyed in Kevin's room). But things get a little hairy when Kevin remarks that her shampoo still "smells the same," prompting her to assure him that it's not. That comment causes Sophie's guard to go up and their promising night together cools off when she stops it from going any further, as she explains that she's bothered by the fact that Kevin seems to like how she was in the past and not how she is now.
Sophie tells Kevin a story of something her ex-husband would do when they'd see him on TV. She tells Kevin he'd pretend to fast-forward through Kevin's scenes, but she reached her boiling point when she couldn't sit by as he did the same "fast-forwarding" joke: "I realized I'm never going to be able to fast-forward through you. That's the kind of hold you've had over me, Kevin. That's how much I have carried you with me." Kevin returns the confession: "And I've carried you with me, Soph."
Still, it's all too much for Sophie because they literally have "decades of history between us" and she "can't go backwards." And Sophie leaves Kevin alone in his hotel room, which leads us to him at the bar where he spots...
ARIELLE
Kevin takes the empty seat next to her and she orders his nonalcoholic drink for him: ginger ale, light ice. Surprised she knows what he drinks, Arielle explains that she likes to people-watch and write down lyrics and poetry on napkins. She reads the poem she scrawled about him on a napkin -- the same napkin with girly handwriting Beth and Madison saw in the hotel room (the second "clue") -- when he first walked into the dimly lit bar.
A lot of flirting goes on between the two, but Kevin decides to call it a night and leaves the bar. But not before Arielle gifts him the napkin poem she wrote for him.
CASSIDY
After a brief (and slightly awkward) conversation with Uncle Nicky, Cassidy bumps into Kevin in the hotel hallway and asks Kevin for a favor and they enter his room. Apparently, the zipper on her dress has been stuck on the fabric and he needs his help to unzip the dress. She leaves her floral scarf on the chair ("clue" No. 3) and Kevin successfully helps her unzip the dress. Unable to bear one more second in the fitted dress, she hops into the bathroom to change into more comfortable pajamas for the evening.
Kevin and Cassidy, who slept together once in the past (when she was not in a great place in her life), download their complicated history. But Cassidy laughs off the idea of rekindling any romance with Kevin: "You're not my person and I'm not yours, and you know that." Instead, they promise each other they're best friends.
That's when we're brought back to the closing moment from last week's episode when Randall asks Kevin what happened the night before the wedding, and Kevin's truthful answer to whether it's "a good story" is that it's still to be determined.
Around that time, Rebecca sees a downcast Sophie, who's still digesting everything that happened the night before, and sits down with her, knowing full well that it's Kevin who's made her former daughter-in-law feel this way. At the start of their conversation, it appears Rebecca -- whose memory and mental state have been deteriorating quickly -- sees Sophie as the adult she is, but when she mentions Kevin being in his early 20s, the sad truth hits Sophie like a ton of bricks.
"The timing is just off right now. He isn't ready for you. He will be, but it's going to take a while and I don't know if you can wait around for that...," Rebecca tells Sophie, assuring her that he'll eventually reach a place where he can make a decision about his love life he won't screw up. "But when the timing is right, he's going to be so great."
Meanwhile, Randall tries to offer advice to Kevin about what to do about the whole Sophie situation after he learns about all that went down between the exes just hours earlier.
"The world is freaking insane. It makes no sense. But you and Sophie together, it makes more sense than most things," Randall tells his brother. "You're not going to screw it up this time. I know it." And this time, we believe it.
It all culminates in a moment that's -- quite literally -- been building up for decades between Kevin and Sophie, and this time, it's Sophie that gives the grand speech. She acknowledges their rocky history, telling Kevin she's been "praying [for years] that [he]'d grow up." And when he did, she confesses she "freaked out."
"I don't want us to fall back into the old versions of ourselves. I need you to love me for the woman I am now, not the woman that I was because you're not the man that you were," a teary Sophie asks Kevin. "I want to fall in love with the man that you've become."
Of course, Kevin had one last surprise for his first, and now that we've finished this romance journey along with him, only true love. He takes out a very wrinkled Valentine's Day card he wrote when he was just a young boy the day Sophie was introduced as a new student in his elementary school class (i.e. the brief, but adorable flashbacks to a very, very young Kevin and Sophie). "I've always carried you with me, Sophie," Kevin sweetly reveals, a throwback to the same promise he told her before things went sideways the night before.
That gesture solidifies it for Sophie, who kisses Kevin -- for real this time -- as the stars finally aligned for the new (old) couple to make it this time.
This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
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