'This Is Us' Fan Theory Predicts Kevin's Emotional Arrest Will Reveal How Jack Died

This Is Us fans are not getting a great start to 2018. The family drama was originally slated to return from its winter break in the first week of the new year, but NBC decided to push the midseason premiere back to next week. So now that we have to wait a little longer to get back into the Pearson family action, what better time is there than now to rewatch past episodes and come up with new fan theories? That's what led to one convincing This Is Us theory about how Kevin's arrest and Jack's death may turn out to be related.

Of course, the question that has plagued every This Is Us viewer since the very first episode of the series is how did Jack Pearson die, but now fans think the big reveal that has been over a year in the making is finally going to happen when the show returns to finish out its second season. The current season has been dropping a ton of hints about the major death, including flashbacks to a house fire and the reveal of Jack's alcoholism, and a new fan theory suggests that the increased focus on Kevin's struggle with addiction may be the thing that finally shows us how Jack died. A new theory on Reddit is predicting that Kevin will be forced to attend court-ordered Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and through that process we will finally learn the truth about Jack's death.

The theory does seem to add up. We know that Kevin is going to finally have to deal with his addiction issues in a very real way now that he has been caught drunk driving with his niece (Randall's daughter Tess) in the back seat of his car, and joining AA seems like a fitting way for him to do that. This theory also brings up young Kevin's surly attitude towards his father that we have seen in the flashback scenes, most notably after Jack tells his family that he has been going to AA to try to handle his alcoholism. Because of how he treated his father, Kevin may have felt a tremendous amount of guilt over Jack's death, and the way he numbed himself to it was through pills and liquor.

If Kevin does start going to AA meetings when the show returns, then its totally possible that he could realize that his mishandling of his father's death has been the underlying cause of his addiction issues all along. And that realization could finally lead to all of us viewers learning how Jack really died.

All of this stuff probably won't be happening in the midseason premiere episode, but it could totally comprise the rest of Kevin's storyline for this season of This Is Us. And if this really is what is going to happen, then fans won't be waiting all too long for the big Jack's death reveal, since there are only eight episodes left before Season 2 ends. The Season 2 finale will likely air in mid-March, so if the show is going to drop the Jack bombshell on us this season, then it is going to do it very soon.

As for what to expect from the midseason premiere that will air next Tuesday night, Jan. 9, Sterling K. Brown teased to Entertainment Weekly that it will include a major Pearson family scene that is one of his favorite scenes from either season of the show:

There is a family scene that includes Kevin, Randall, Kate, and Rebecca that is about 11 pages long that is absolute TNT. It is one of my favorite scenes that we’ve done in the course of the two seasons of the show and I think people are going to leave it saying, ‘Damn!’ We come back shooting hot, hot fire. People are going to be happy with what they see.

This Is Us Season 2 returns on Tuesday, Jan. 9 with its eleventh episode "The Fifth Wheel."