‘This Is Us’ Spoilers: ‘Clooney’ Episode Dives Deeper Into Kevin’s Broken Relationships—Will Sophie Return?

Spoiler alert: This article contains mild spoilers from This Is Us Episode 11, “The Fifth Wheel,” and the upcoming Episode 12, “Clooney.”

This Is Us returned with a bang. After a six-week holiday hiatus, the NBC drama delivered a midseason premiere filled with drama, nostalgia, and a 12-minute therapy session scene that dared to go into the Pearson family no-fly zone.

Now that Kevin, Kate, Randall and their mom, Rebecca (played by Justin Hartley, Chrissy Metz, Sterling K, Brown and Mandy Moore, respectively) got all of that off their chests, it’s time for the Number One Pearson son to fix the damage that his drunken tirade caused.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, This Is Us executive producer Elizabeth Berger revealed that the next few episodes of the show will focus on Kevin Pearson as he attempts to repair all of the relationships that he has screwed up in his life. Indeed, in the therapy session gone awry, Kevin told his family, “I ruined things with Sophie and ruined things with all of you.”

And while that makes it sounds as though Kevin will hunt down his childhood sweetheart-turned ex-wife Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge) while he’s still rehabbing on the East Coast, it sounds like his first order of business will be closer to home in the next This Is Us episode, which is titled “Clooney.”

“What’s fun about where Kevin is now is he’s still on the East Coast, and so are Rebecca and Randall,” Berger told THR.

“I think it’s going to be a continuing journey of repair over the next few episodes, especially with Rebecca, Miguel, and Kevin, we have some fun stuff of them continuing to bond and get closer.”

This Is Us executive producer Issac Aptaker also talked about where This Is Us goes from here. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Aptaker said Kevin has a lot of work to do before he makes amends with Sophie.

“We’re trying to be very realistic here in our portrayal of addiction and recovery,” the This Is Us producer told EW.

“As everybody knows, it’s a long and unpredictable process. The rehab chapter is wrapping up after this week, but there’s a lot of work to be done… [Kevin] has a lot of work to do based on what happened in that therapy session. Episode 12 picks up right where we left off; he dives headfirst into repair.”

When the This Is Us producer said he didn’t want to give too much about the storyline away, he added, “It’s one of my favorite Kevin stories we have coming up — the people he chooses to try to fix his relationship with first.”

Based on the promo for the “Clooney” episode, which you can see below, Kevin appears to first address the tension he has with his late father’s best friend Miguel (Jon Huertas), who is now his stepfather. In the teaser clip, Kevin even asks Miguel if he was in love with Rebecca when she was still married to his dad.

As for Sophie, the character hasn’t been seen since she slammed the door in Kevin’s face back in November in the episode “The Most Disappointed Man.” Breckenridge’s IMDB page lists her in the “Clooney” episode as well as the following three This Is Us episodes, but it is unclear if the actress is only listed in the show’s credits or if she will actually appear in all of the episodes.

This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.