Wednesday 18 May 2022 09:34 AM This Is Us viewers break down watching 'heartbreakingly beautiful' penultimate ... trends now

This Is Us viewers revealed they were left reaching for tissues during the penultimate episode of the hit NBC show which aired in the U.S. on Tuesday night.

Devastated fans revealed they 'cried so hard' and 'had to regain composure' while watching Rebecca Pearson's [Mandy Moore] final goodbye play out on screen. 

The sixth and final series of the series has followed Rebecca's Alzheimer's journey and showed the close-knit family come to terms with losing their matriarch.

During episode 17, the Pearsons are told that Rebecca will unlikely see the end of the night, as she reaches the end of her life following her diagnosis.

Her children and loved ones rally around her bedside and viewers see her daughter Kate desperately try to make the plane journey to say goodbye before it's too late.

Through tear-filled eyes, viewers watched as Rebecca clung on long enough through the night, to say goodbye to all three of her children, before drifting off where was was reunited with her husband Jack [Milo Ventimiglia].

During their final meeting, Randall asks his mother to 'say hey' to his father Jack when they meet in the afterlife.

The episode also saw the welcome return of beloved characters William [Ron Cephas Jones] and Dr. Nathan 'K' Katowsky [Gerald McRaney], as Rebecca passes from life to the next and is met by her old friends on a train journey.

During her meeting with her son Randall's biological father William, Rebecca asks him about the poem from which he got his son's name.

He urges her to follow him into the next cart where she greets her daughter in law, Beth, who recites real life Beth's goodbye.

Beth tells Rebecca that motherhood usually feels like pretending to have all the answers, and how often people 'imitate' others in order to do the best job.

She tells her: 'All these years, so many times when I was faking it, I was doing my best impression of you, Rebecca.' 

'I'll take him the rest of the way, Mama. Thank you for helping me with that, complicated, incredible, beautiful boy that you raised. But I got him now.'

She is then met by Dr.K, who is playing a bartender and praises Rebecca's parenting and shares his shock that she survived her childbirth and the loss of a baby and Jack.

As they reached the final cart, Rebecca says to William: 'This is quite sad, isn't it? The end.'

William poignantly tells her: 'The way I see it, if something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening,'  

'Truth be told, I've always thought it a bit lazy to think of the world as sad, because so much of it is. Everything ends. Everyone dies, but if you step back — if you step back and look at the whole picture, if you're brave enough to allow yourself the gift of a really wide perspective, if you do that, you'll see that the end is not sad, Rebecca.

'It's just the start of the next incredibly beautiful thing.'

After entering the final room - a caboose - where she chats with Kate, Kate lies down on a bed and looks to the side where she sees Jack, and whispers 'hey'.