This Is Us director breaks down Rebecca's final ride — and those surprise reunions

Last stop: total devastation.

The penultimate episode of This Is Us showcased the time-warping family drama's ability to make you feel like — what's the right analogy? — you just got hit by a freight train. This one was actually a passenger train, though. Written by series creator Dan Fogelman, "The Train" chronicled the final hours for Rebecca (Mandy Moore) as the Pearsons said their teary, funny goodbyes and depicted her stately, ethereal journey into the great beyond. The woman whose sharp mind and joie de vivre were ravaged by Alzheimer's was able to commune with the essential memories and people from her life via this legacy-luxury locomotive, something she always dreamed of riding as a kid. Here, guided by conductor William (Ron Cephas Jones), Rebecca passed through each compartment with wide-eyed wonder, discovering familiar faces along the way, all while struggling with the feeling that she was "waiting for someone."

Across the nethersphere, back in the real world of the 2030s, the family had gathered to send off their mother, their grandmother, their mother-in-law, their role model, their friend. There was just one key person missing: daughter Kate (Chrissy Metz), who indeed finally surfaced in this time period that had been teased for years. And she was flying back from London as fast as physics allowed so she could reach Rebecca in the nick of time.

If the family was soon to be contracting, it would also grow. Déjà (Lyric Ross) informed her father, Randall (Sterling K. Brown), that she was pregnant. Additional good news on that front arrived via one more twist: When Déjà mentioned the father of the baby to Randall, the episode shifted its story to a research scientist named Marcus who'd been injured in a car accident years before. But it turned out that Marcus was not the father of Déjà's baby — it was impressive ex-boyfriend Malik (Asante Blackk). And get this: When Marcus was injured in a car crash as a boy on Super Bowl Sunday in 1998, he was rushed to the same hospital as Jack (Milo Ventimiglia). His father, Kenny (Dule Hill), even had a conversation in the lounge with the Pearson patriarch, who'd seemingly survived the fire intact but was actually just minutes away from a fatal heart attack. To calm the despondent father, Jack shared Dr. K's "something resembling lemonade" speech, and that speech would become lore in Kenny's family.

Whether it was luck or just the work of the train gods, Kate did make it to the family mecca juuust in time for her mother's final breaths — and for Rebecca to squeeze Randall's hand. With the Big Three by her side, Rebecca entered the caboose (a word that was just out of her reach in the season 6 premiere), where young Kate sat in a chair before vanishing. And as Rebecca lay down on the bed, she saw the person with whom she began her grand adventure: Jack. "Hey," she said. "Hey," he said. End of episode. Beginning of more tears.

How did Rebecca (and William, and Dr. K) end up on this train ride of a lifetime (or should we say afterlifetime)? What were the challenges in bringing this journey to life? What lies ahead in the final hour? Could there be a spin-off with that new family? Here to assist is the conductor of "The Train," This Is Us executive producer and frequent director Ken Olin, who helmed this standout episode as well as next week's finale.

Ron Batzdorff/NBC Mandy Moore on 'This Is Us'

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We know where this episode might rank for viewers, but in terms of all the episodes you've directed, did this have some of the most crying by cast and crew? Where did it rank on the weeper scale?

KEN OLIN: In terms of the experience of directing it, this was probably the most emotional for me. But I think most of the time it was because it was saying goodbye to people. It was more about what happened when we would say "cut" and it was time to say goodbye for good in terms of the character and the actor — hopefully I'll work with some of these again — and that surprised me. The episode itself, it was so challenging from a staging perspective and stylistically. This is six-plus years — at least that this has been in [Fogelman's] mind — and I think he had a lot more of it in his mind throughout than we knew. And the last two episodes are kind of a testament to that.

We started to say goodbye, and then one of the first really significant people we said goodbye to is Ron Cephas Jones. And I said, "Well, this one's going to be tough," and I started to cry. And maybe watching the episode the content will affect me, but I think it was the context more than anything that affected me during the making of this one.

Viewers saw Rebecca on a train in the season 6 premiere. But when Dan brought you the metaphor of the train as a way to depict Rebecca's crossing over into the afterlife, what were your thoughts on how to bring that to life?

It was a metaphor that was based on the experience of one of the writers [K.J. Steinberg] talking about [a family member] who suffered with dementia [and] kept imagining that she was on a train. And then Dan started talking about it as a metaphor for the end. I thought it was interesting. The challenge for us, we did it in the season 6 premiere, that's a different train, which is interesting how it evolved. It was so clear to Dan and myself, to Gary Frutkoff, the production designer, like, "This train when she's imagining in the end what her father brought up to her, is the epitome of elegance, and what other train is there besides some version of the Orient Express?" I mean, it's the most romantic. And then visually it's so rich. So for me, there were little things that I wanted to do.

Our show has never been about showing off cinematic tricks. I don't think our show ever attempted to have a look. So that was challenging because there had to be some element of it that was metaphoric. It's a couple of little things [cinematographer] Yasu Tanida and I would talk about. There's a couple of things that I did to disorient — the staging, trying to do things subtly that didn't call attention to themselves, like, "Wait a minute, if the girl was standing there and when she walks by, the girl's not there anymore." But I didn't wan to call attention to it. I wanted it to exist in that way that in a dream you don't stop and go, "Oh, that was weird. Wait a minute. How'd that guy become my brother all of a sudden?" I wanted that experience to be about Rebecca and stay with Rebecca and make it as naturalistic from that point of view, yet have elements that were clearly non-linear, not logical.

The other thing that we wanted do was make it a little bit of an homage to the show and the history of the show. So there's a lot of little stuff in there, layers, and there's some visual references that are obvious. And every once in a while there's a few things that if you froze it and blew it up, you'd see a prop that you might remember. We just wanted to do little things that gave it a little bit of a magical feel, but not make it about the cinematic experience of it or try to create any surreal kind of thing.

There's an ethereal element of wonder and discovery. Mandy even referred to as a little bit psychedelic.

Mandy and I talked: How do you act this? And then we both decided, "Well, I think when we're there, what we do is either going to feel right to us or it's going to feel wrong to us, and then we'll adjust." And we both early on [were] like, "That didn't feel right. That felt a little too grounded and immediate." "Oh, wait, that feels too weird." And then you just find it. It's just trying to find whatever seemed to be in sync with the truth of what Dan was going for emotionally.

Was it an obvious choice to have William be the conductor? And what was it like to have Ron back for one last ride?

One of the things that's so incredible about what Dan did was there is kind of a closure in these last two episodes. That William would be somehow your guide on this particular journey is so brilliant, and I don't know why. I don't think Dan writes from this place. I don't think he would be interested in logically explaining to you why Ron's the right choice. It just was… right. And then the same thing — you see Dr. K [Gerald McRaney] in the bar and, "Why is that? That's so weird!" And then the moment where he says "William," you just go, "Ohhh!" I mean, there's just something beautiful about that. And Ron, he's just some sort of combination of elegance and poetry and the ground all at the same time.

He's the kind of actor that when he's in the zone, it's magic. And he has to find that. That was just so nice having him there — and not just having him there for a day or a scene, but to have him there taking us through. And then that last moment I'm really proud of. I'm talking to Hala [Bahmet], our costumer, and she's saying, "What do you think? Do we do the iconic hat?" And I said, "You know, I think it should be in the caboose, and he puts it in on the end." That would be the final moment for him, would be to put on this hat that is so recognizable for his character. It's fun. Because there is no right or wrong. It's not like you go, "Well, wait a minute. He would never do that."

A moment that levels the audience is when Dr. K tells Rebecca, "You, my dear, have earned a rest." He also confides that he shared her fear that she almost died giving birth. What was it like to build that scene at the bar?

Not only does Mac resonate so much as an actor, he is extraordinary, he's like the perfect template for what we always go for in terms of performances on our show. Which is, you want someone to walk up to the line where it would just become sentimental, and you don't want them to cross it. You want to acknowledge the depth of feeling, but you don't want to cross over into some sort of celebration or indulgence of it. And that's what he does. And it's effortless. He makes it seem effortless. Yet somehow he brings the size of what he's talking about to it. He brings the emotion to it. He brings all of those things to it, but he never crosses over to being like, "Oh, that's a little cheesy." I mean, he could totally go there, but he doesn't. He's so smart.

And the thing that's so fun is, as soon as Mandy walked through the door of the train and she looks at him, Mandy immediately starts crying. [Laughs] That character and the history of that character is so intertwined with the entire history of our show. So it was phenomenal. And then that thing where he says, "You've earned a rest," and when he says "William" — just that moment of wow. He takes you all the way to the most beautiful emotional moments and then… Nope! That's as far as I'm going. I mean, that was great.

The episode ends with a Rebecca-Jack reunion, short as it is. Is that the ultimate finish-line moment, in that it makes sense that Jack would be the one to welcome her into the afterlife?

At the end of the day, this show was this incredibly romantic and complicated and rich and fulfilling love story. And Dan believes on some level in the possibility of a happy ending, even in this moment, and no matter how wonderful and redeeming really that the marriage with Miguel was — and the wonderful thing is in terms of Miguel, he never competed with it — but there was no question. [Jack] was the love of her life. That was something from the very beginning that was certainly the cornerstone of the show: These two people were meant to be together. So to have that moment at the end is just an affirmation of that.

And it's wish fulfillment.

Complete wish fulfillment. But I want to say, I think we earned it. That they were meant to be together, and that's where we leave it. But in the end, that even though it's in death, there's still something of wish fulfillment in that. I don't know, I think that's one of the most incredible moments in television.

What was it like to bring all the different versions of Kevin and Randall together? Over the years the show has found creative ways to put Jack opposite the adult Big Three, and this feels like another what-if fantasy moment come to life.

That was cool. There was just so much going on in every one of those [scenes]. "I've got to think of what they're doing: Okay, they're at the table." And then it was just that constant thing of figuring out some little activity or where they could be. And it's not a very big space. But on the other hand, it's so sweet, really. And that's the thing that's so wonderful about this in terms of the closure, because you just really celebrate all this history that we all have. When I'm directing it, there's a lot of stuff going on that I'm thinking about, so it's not a lot of time to let it wash over me. But that was kind of amazing, the layers of things that are packed into these train cars, which are so small.

Ron Batzdorff/NBC Justin Hartley, Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, and Mandy Moore on 'This Is Us'

The show always aims to balance the dark with the light, and here, in this episode where Rebecca dies, we see that the grieving process can have these really weird moments of humor, such as Kevin (Justin Hartley) and Randall at Rebecca's deathbed. As Déjà says, "There are no rules for any of this." How much time did you spend talking about achieving that balance in this episode?

Dan loathes to be self-serious. It's very important to him, and it's one of the essential things to our show: If our show went over into a kind of self-seriousness, it would be deadly. If you don't take some humor in the struggle of our lives, then what's the fun of it? And I think that is just understood between us now. In this episode we would talk a lot about, "Okay, the context for this and almost all of it is taking place in a house where this woman is dying, and we have to be respectful of that. So how do we also get in the part of it that there's some humor in all of this?" Life is so dark sometimes. And so bizarre. And there is a way to deal with it. At least I certainly think a way to deal with it is through humor. And I know Dan celebrates that. So this balance that was tricky for us always, which is, "Well, there has to be laughter and there has to be a sense of humor, and there has to be a sense of the absurd. How and where do we land that so that it isn't disrespectful or cavalier?"… But at the same time, we didn't this to be nothing but the Grim Reaper experience. I think we achieved that.

In a flash-forward to this day from seasons ago, Toby [Chris Sullivan] was seen looking despondent, no wedding ring, as Randall invites him to the house. Here, it's a little awkward, but he seems pretty fine. Was there something that the writers decided not to pursue, or were they keeping their options open?

We all knew that there was a clear decision that Toby and Kate weren't together. What does that mean? I don't think anybody knew exactly where Toby was at, nor that there was going to be an episode that we would do in the middle of this season that was very much about Toby putting his life back together and Kate having her life. I don't think we knew exactly what his life was at that point. We just knew that he and Kate weren't together.

How surreal and eerie was it to return to the hospital on Super Bowl Sunday?

We did certain things to it to make it look the way it did when we did that Super Bowl episode, and I didn't direct that Super Bowl episode. So for me there were just visual challenges that I had to deal with. It didn't feel that weird. Mandy and I talked about it. She said, "This is really weird," because that was so intense emotionally for her when they did it. So some of that stuff came back on her.

In the present day, viewers get another surprise: Déjà's boyfriend, with whom she's going to have a baby, is not the research scientist Marcus that we saw, but Malik. How happy was Dan to be able to pull off one last twist before the show ended?

Oh, I think he was very excited. He called one night and it was late. I was here, and Patty [Wettig, Olin's wife] and I were in bed, and we get a call from Dan, and he goes, "I'm just going to pitch you this idea. I got it! I got it!" He's pitching this story, and it was like, "Okay, that's good. That's good!" He pulled it off. He's really good at that, and he loves doing it. It's not easy. And you don't see it coming, you go, "Oh s---, that was good."

He said there are no plans for a spin-off right now, but when you watch those scenes, and there's Dule Hill and Kelly Jenrette, you start to wonder…

You know what? As soon as you bring up anything like that to Dan, he's like [makes exhausted noise]. I mean, he's tired. Listen, he gave everything everything to this show. I think it's going to be much harder than he knows to cut the umbilical cord here. Maybe in a year or two years he'll go, "I was just thinking about this. I was thinking maybe…" Right now he doesn't want to go down that road.

What can you say about about the finale? There is a funeral to attend, but it sounds like it's an episode with a lot of uplift.

If there's such a thing as a 45-minute coda, that's kind of what it is. There's a wonderful celebration of some of the most beautiful, small moments in their lives. And it's uplifting. It's certainly affirmative about this family. It's really beautiful.

Say goodbye to the Pearsons with EW's special This Is Us edition, available to purchase online or wherever magazines are sold.

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• This Is Us star Chris Sullivan on why Toby & Kate didn't make it — and why that's okay

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