Sterling K Brown's Randall might discover the true story behind his birth mother this season. (Photo: NBC)This is Us does not fail to take its viewers on an emotional roller coaster ride with every new episode, and the same happened this week as well. Previously, during the two-hour premiere episode of Season 5, we learnt that Randall’s (Sterling K Brown) birth mother Laurel, who was earlier presumed dead, actually did not die during childbirth. And this week, we got new information on the same front.
In the earlier seasons, it was presumed that Randall’s birth mother Laurel was dead. We learnt during the first two seasons that Randall’s biological father William, and Laurel were both battling drug addiction and the latter died during childbirth. William decided to give up his son so he could have a better life. In Season 5 premiere, we saw that Laurel actually gasped for breath after the paramedics arrived at the scene after the childbirth, but it is yet to be known if she is still alive in the present timeline. It will be crucial to the storyline since Randall’s relationship with Rebecca is already quite rocky.
In this week’s episode, we saw a storyline which looked like present-day, with an old man and his granddaughter. Here, the grandfather and granddaughter are seen fishing and cooking. He narrates a story saying that he learnt to cook for a woman and the granddaughter guesses that it must be the woman from all the photos. The woman in the photos is revealed to be Laurel.
In an earlier interview with Deadline, creator Dan Fogelman had revealed that all the questions regarding Kevin’s birth mother will be answered in the first half of the season, so it looks like we will soon know what happened. “Answers will be gotten pretty quickly. Without spoiling too much, I think well within the first half of our season. And certainly, we’re not going to drag out a mystery like that one over multiple seasons or anything. So there’s a pretty quick answer, and I think it will be found to be elegantly done,” he had shared.