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‘This Is Us’ Premiere: Milo Ventimiglia And Cast React To Shocking Plot Twist [Spoilers]

By Lindsay McCane
Published on: 10:33 PST, Sep 21, 2016

Warning: this article contains spoilers from the This Is Us premiere episode.

This Is Us, one of fall’s most anticipated television series, premiered last night (Sep. 20) and left viewers speechless with a shocking plot twist.

The show follows Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore), a couple preparing to welcome triplets; Kate (Chrissy Metz), a woman trying to lose weight while starting up a new relationship with a man she met at a support group; Kevin (Justin Hartley), an actor who melted down and quit his job on camera; and Randall (Sterling K. Brown), a wealthy business man who tracked down his biological father who left him at a fire station when he was born.

Aside from them all sharing the same birthday, it wasn’t immediately clear how each of the characters were connected to each other — that is until the shocking ending; Jack and Rebecca are the parents of Kate, Kevin, and Randall.

So, when was it that you realized there was a major time difference between Jack and Rebecca’s story and the rest of the characters? Was it when the firefighter offered Jack a cigarette while standing in the hospital? Was it when the camera panned back and you saw how the other characters were dressed and what was playing on the television? Or, was it when Kate recites the saying her father told her to Kevin, “There’s no lemon so sour that you can’t make something resembling lemonade?”

While looking back it seems obvious, most viewers, and even the stars of the show, admit they didn’t see the plot twist coming. Check out the actors’ reactions below.

Milo Ventimiglia

“People shouldn’t feel bad for not catching it. I certainly missed it,” Milo Ventimiglia told Yahoo TV. “They did a very good job of cloaking the connection between these characters and the time change — and hopefully people missed the details because they were so caught up in the storylines and the relationships we were presenting.”

“A, it was clever. B, it was something that was truly unexpected,” Ventimiglia added to Entertainment Weekly. “I did not see that coming… When grown-up Kate says, ‘What was it that dad said about the lemons?’ and then it cuts right back to Jack standing at the nursery window looking at the babies, you go, ‘Oh, wow. It’s a family. They’re all connected. This is how the show is going to work.'”

Justin Harley

“I’m not going to lie to you, it wasn’t washing over me at all, until… the end, when he offered him a cigarette. I mean, I’m not going to be one of those guys who’s like, ‘I have a sixth sense! I knew!’… I was like, ‘Oh, damn!’ Now I want to know the whole story, not only going forward, but I want to know the story going back the other way as well.”

Sterling K. Brown

“Reading [the script], it started to slowly dawn on me. I remember specifically reading the camera pulling back and seeing everybody was wearing ’70s-style clothes and lapels. And then Kate says, ‘What’s that thing that Dad used to say to us… about lemons and lemonade?’ I think right around there was when I was like, “Oh my god… I’m the third kid?” My jaw was on the ground.”

Mandy Moore

“I think most people aren’t clicking until he offers the cigarette to [Jack]. That’s the moment where you’re like, ‘Wait….’ Even when I was reading it for the first time, I was like, ‘You can’t smoke in…a hospital!’ That’s when I was like, ‘Oh, whoa!’ Then they pull back, and you really see the television and what’s on the news…. I didn’t see it coming at all.”

Chrissy Metz

“It was when the paramedic came up to Jack at the window and he said, ‘Oh, we have a baby that was left at the fire station.’ And I was like, ‘Wait, wait. What are they going to do with the baby?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I got it!'”

What did you think about the This Is Us premiere and plot twist? Were you shocked when you found out they were all related? Leave your comments below.

[Featured Image by Mark Davis/Getty Images]

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