‘This Is Us’: Jack Pearson Returns As A Lonely And ‘Broken’ Man For Season 2

When This Is Us returns for its second season later this month, fans won’t see the Jack Pearson they’ve grown to know and love. Instead, Milo Ventimiglia’s happy Jack will be replaced by a more “broken” version of the character as the show addresses the aftermath of the Pearsons’ big fight. According to Entertainment Tonight, This Is Us will pick up the morning after Jack and Rebecca’s blowout which led to their decision to separate, and it will have a darker tone than the show’s freshman season.

The premiere episode, titled “A Father’s Advice,” will kick off a season that This Is Us composer Siddhartha Khosla says will have more “rawness” and “vulnerability.” Khosla told ET the dynamic between Jack and Rebecca Pearson (Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore) will feel “a little more broken, a little more heartbreaking.”

Khosla should know. He provides the soundtrack for This Is Us, and he says Jack Pearson’s demeanor will be so different this year that he’ll get a new guitar sound to punctuate his scenes. The This Is Us composer revealed that he bought a junk guitar for $25 after realizing he needed a new sound for Jack’s darker Season 2 scenes.

“I’m using a different guitar now. It’s my Jack guitar for this season, [and] it’s a different sound,” Khosla told ET.

“It’s a little broken, you know? It’s very broken-sounding and I’m using it a lot on season two. It’s mostly for [Jack].”

This Is Us fans already know that Jack will die at some point in Season 2. But before that dreaded scene takes place, viewers have to make sense of Jack and Rebecca’s separation and hope they reconcile before the Pearson patriarch’s untimely demise.

So far, the episodic photos for the This Is Us Season 2 premiere don’t look promising. Ventimiglia’s Jack is seen in several scenes looking very alone. Another photo shows Rebecca out at the movies with the teen Big Three, with no Jack in sight. The only one not laughing at the seemingly funny flick is Kate (Hannah Zeile), who, in present day scenes revealed that she blames herself for her father’s death.

But the most telling photo was posted on the This Is Us Instagram page, which shows a poorly typed poem that seems to be written by a regretful Jack. You may not want to read too much into the words because it seems like it’s written by a man who’s at the end of his rope.

Take a look at a trailer for This Is Us Season 2 below.

This Is Us Season 2 premieres Tuesday, Sept. 26 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.

[Featured Image by Ron Batzdorff/NBC]