Mystery woman. This Is Us fans know Kevin Pearson (Justin Hartley) is married in the future, but there were multiple theories about who his wife could be.
Kevin has been spotted wearing a wedding ring in flash-forwards to 2032, but the identity of his wife was not revealed until an April 2022. Viewers suspected that one of his exes could be the lucky lady. Likely candidates included his ex-wife, Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge), ex-fiancée Madison (Caitlin Thompson) and his friend with occasional benefits, Cassidy (Jennifer Morrison).
As the sixth and final season of the NBC drama aired, Hartley speculated in March that the question of Kevin’s wife will be answered “a little bit before” the series finale, noting that the wait will be worth it.
“Don’t give up on anybody!” the actor told Variety. “I obviously can’t tell you what happens. And you don’t want to know, you want to watch. But what I will say is that we will have an answer for you. It will be answered, we won’t leave you hanging and it’s very satisfying. It might not be what you want — it might be what you want, it might not be what you want — but it will be satisfying, for sure.”
Hartley previously teased his character’s romantic journey in season 6 after he and Madison called off their wedding.
“When he finally wraps his brain around the fact that it’s actually OK to be alone, that opens him up to be available to other people, instead of the square peg, round hole thing that he constantly tries to do,” he told Entertainment Weekly in January. “He’s OK being alone. He’s not lonely; he’s alone. That’s totally different. And I think that opens him to love.”
Everyone knew Kevin wasn’t destined to be alone, though. In episode 14 of This Is Us season 6, it was finally revealed that Sophie was divorced. She and Kevin were single and happy in their lives — and they were both still in love with each other.
After questioning whether their relationship could really work, Sophie talked to Rebecca, whose Alzheimer’s was advancing. She spoke to Sophie as if she was still married to Kevin while in college and told the nurse that Kevin needed time to “catch up” to her. Sophie realized that Kevin truly had caught up to her.
“You’re finally the man that I always knew you possibly could be,” she said, noting that they were finally “in the right place at the right time.”
Sophie made it clear that she needed Kevin to “love me for the woman that I am now, not the woman that I was.” She added, “I want to fall in love with the man you’ve become.”
Breckenridge loved that the six-season story ended with Kevin and Sophie finally together. “Ultimately, even though the characters didn’t end up together sooner, what I like about it and I think is rather satisfying is that you’ve got two people that were able to develop as whole humans on their own,” she told Variety in April 2022. “It’s so much better when people can be fully formed when they enter back into a relationship, especially given their history, and given how many times Kevin has broken Sophie’s heart. He really needed that time to find himself.”
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Though they didn’t tie the knot on screen, writer Danielle Bauman assured viewers that — with only four episodes left of the series after the big reveal — Sophie and Kevin are endgame. “She’s now an integral part of the family,” Bauman told Entertainment Weekly in April 2022. “She’s in the family for good now. I think we can rest easy knowing that she’s not going anywhere — and that Kevin has finally grown up and is ready for her and she’s ready for him. So we’ll see them just enjoying each other.”
Scroll through the gallery below for a roundup of clues about Kevin’s wife that had fans spinning before Sophie was revealed as his true soulmate:
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