‘This Is Us’ Star Susan Kelechi Watson Assures Fans, Mom That Beth Won’t Be Killed Off
A lot of people who love Randall’s wife Beth were nervous after watching the Season 2 finale of NBC’s breakout hit, This Is Us, but the actress herself, Susan Kelechi Watson, wasn’t one of them, according to Entertainment Weekly. A mysterious flash-forward showed Randall (Sterling K. Brown) with Tess (Iantha Richardson), now an adult, but no sign of Beth. This is what spawned the fear as fans speculated why Randall told her, “It’s time to go see her,” prompting Tess to reply, “I’m not ready.” Randall agreed, saying “I’m not either.”
That, of course, sent fans into a tizzy, speculating who this “her” might be and why neither is ready to see her. One upsetting theory predicted it was a graveyard visit to see their wife and mother Beth. “I didn’t know that I was going to die,” she deadpanned to EW. “It didn’t even cross my mind, so when I saw people tweeting about it, writing articles about it, I was like, ‘Oh, they’re kidding!’ My first thought was, ‘Oh, this is hilarious.” And then people really took it seriously.” One person was the actress’s own mother, who threatened to boycott the hit show if they were going to kill off her daughter.
“I was like, ‘Mom, they’re not going to kill me!’ Dan [Fogelman, the show’s creator] and I spoke about it — they’re not going to kill Beth. She’s going to survive. It feels good to know. I still think there’s mystery there, and I understand why,” says Watson. “Dan would like us to keep it there, so I’m going to stay away from it! That’s as much as I can say.”
She’s certainly right that This Is Us loves to throw those twists in there, something that was established as early as the pilot episode. The show had originally been billed as a show about people who share the same birthday, but by the end of the episode, it was revealed that the stories were taking place in different time periods and it was all about one family. Since then, the twists have kept on coming, with the show waiting two years to reveal how Jack, the triplets’ father, played by Milo Ventimiglia, died when they were teenagers.
EW promises there will be plenty of Beth-based action in Season 3. This makes sense since her cousin, Zoe (Melanie Liburd), was introduced in the Season 2 finale and was seen in a flash-forward jetting off to Vietnam with her new boyfriend who just happens to be Beth’s brother-in-law, Kevin (Justin Hartley). Considering Beth has issues with Kevin, especially when he drove drunk with her daughter in the car, it’s sure to get messy, just the way fans like it.