‘This Is Us’ Star Exits Series After Season 3 Finale Shocker
Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from the This Is Us Season 3 finale episode “Her.”
Another one of Kevin Pearson’s girlfriends bites the dust. The This Is Us Season 3 finale left viewers with a lot of questions, but one thing seems painfully certain: Zevin is done.
In a surprising twist on the NBC drama just one week after Kevin Pearson (Justin Hartley) and his girlfriend Zoe (Melanie Liburd) agreed that they would stay together despite the fact that they aren’t on the same page when it comes to having kids, Zoe told her man she had to let him go. The couple’s split came after they spent the day with their nieces and Kevin realized he wanted kids someday and Zoe did not.
Now, with Zoe out of the picture, Melanie Liburd is out as a series regular on This Is Us, Deadline reports. Liburd was introduced as Beth Pearson’s (Susan Kelechi Watson) cousin in the Season 2 finale of This Is Us and was promoted to a series regular for Season 3, where she logged a lot of time in scenes set in Vietnam and at home with the Pearson family. But Liburd has been cut as a series regular for Season 4 of This Is Us as fans try to make sense of the storyline just one week after Kevin said she was worth giving up kids for.
This Is Us fans know the same thing happened to one of Kevin Pearson’s other loves, his high school sweetheart-turned-wife Sophie, played by Alexandra Breckenridge. Breckenridge started on This Is Us in a recurring role as Sophie in Season 1 and was promoted to series regular for Season 2. But after Kevin and Sophie broke up, Breckenridge was demoted from series regular status and only appeared on the show once in Season 3.
Melanie Liburd has not commented on her sudden reduced status on This Is Us, but she did respond to a fan with a heart emoji in a post about the Zevin breakup.
— Melanie Liburd (@melanieliburd) April 3, 2019
While Melanie Liburd will no longer be a regular on This Is Us, her character is expected to make guest appearances on the show in the future due to her relationship with Beth Pearson. Meanwhile, a flash-forward sequence in the Season 3 finale shows that Kevin Pearson will eventually have a son.
Last month, Melanie Liburd talked to People about Kevin and Zoe’s intense relationship.
“She’s moved her whole life for him and she knows it’s the right thing because she loves him,” the actress said.
Now that their complicated love story is seemingly over, it sounds like Justin Hartley’s Kevin Pearson will focus on becoming a father. The big question is, who is the mother of his future child?
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman noted that Kevin has always been “flawed” when it comes to his love life but has always been “on a collision course with becoming a father.”
“But that doesn’t happen overnight and I think we’re right in the middle, like we are with this entire series, of Kevin’s journey right now,” the This Is Us showrunner said. “Kevin’s in the middle right now, and we’ve seen a flash of where he’s heading but we don’t know everything yet.”
This Is Us returns to NBC this fall.
