LOS ANGELES — It's a couple of days into filming the final episode of "This Is Us" — the present-day scenes, anyway — and the show is at its home base on the Paramount Studios lot in Los Angeles. Just outside Stage 30, which houses the interior of the swanky home Kevin Pearson (Justin Hartley) built adjacent to the family cabin, the show's creator and emotional architect Dan Fogelman greets me with a bit of multilayered gallows humor: "Get ready to see everybody die!"
The passing of the show's beloved family matriarch, played by Mandy Moore, is still fresh. The day before, the cast and crew were still shooting parts of the tearful penultimate episode, partly set on a metaphorical train where a younger version of Rebecca Pearson reminisces about her life and her impact on her loved ones before taking her final breath.
But that's not how the story ends for "This Is Us."
