This Is Us may be about a family that's fairly ordinary, but the stories the NBC hit tells about Kate, Kevin, Randall, and the rest of the Pearsons are anything but. With its frequent and emotional time jumps giving peeks into both the past and the future, it's pretty obvious why fans are so serious about their This Is Us theories. However, when I ask the actor who plays the college-aged Randall about how he thinks his character's story will end, he instead takes the comedic route. But while Niles Fitch's theory about Randall in This Is Us may be a joke, there could be some truth buried in his silly idea.
Fitch says he has a tendency to blab about This Is Us secrets to his friends, especially when he has a particularly juicy scene, but in our interview for Elite Daily, he shows he also knows how to play it cool. When asked about how he thinks the show will end, he's all smiles, but he keeps his lips more or less sealed. "I think probably aliens come," he says with a mischievous laugh. It's pretty obvious he's deflecting to avoid giving away any major plot points; however, the second part of his joke-theory actually holds water: "And Randall becomes the second Obama and rules over everybody."
Think about it: Randall is already working to prove his political prowess in Philadelphia, so what's to say he'll stop there? Maybe the rest of the series will include storylines of Randall's ascent to power on the local, state, and eventually even national level. By the time the show catches up to its flash-forward future, there could be a President Pearson presiding over the country. Let's just hope This Is Us doesn't go off the deep end and bring Fitch's aforementioned aliens into the mix.
What Fitch can divulge about This Is Us is that Season 4 will continue to focus on the origin story of Randall and Beth. "You get to see a lot more of how their relationship develops, and it becomes the Beth and Randall that we know when they’re adults," he says. "You know, he’s always going to be there for his family, so I think you’re going to see a lot more [of him] trying to find the happiness in their family dynamic, because I feel like a lot of [This Is] Us last season was us getting over and getting past Jack’s passing."
Though Fitch is excited to share the next chapter of Randall's young life with audiences, he looks back on his experiences filming the immediate aftermath of Jack's death as especially significant scenes.
"My father passed away when I was 12 years old," he explains. "In the show, the Pearsons have to deal with losing the head of their household at a young age, and that really resonated with me, especially during those scenes where it was kind of like therapy, because I feel like after going to grief counseling and all that, you really brush past it, but being in a situation where I have to re-address it, I feel like it did a lot for me and I hope it was therapeutic for the viewers."
Fans can also catch Fitch in another emotional role, starring alongside Uzo Aduba in the new movie Miss Virginia, which tells the real-life story about a single mom trying to fix a broken educational system for the less fortunate. He will also soon appear in Secret Society of Second Born Royals, an upcoming Disney+ fantasy film.
And don't forget, he's got jokes. Bringing things back to This Is Us, I mention to Fitch the fact that at least parts of the show's series finale has already been filmed and ask him if he's in any of those final scenes. His reply is coy: "What’s This Is Us?"
