This Is Us Season 3 Premiere: Your Biggest Questions, Answered

Welcome back, This Is Us! Season three kicked off last night with a ton of new storylines. Kate and Toby want a baby but have fertility issues; Beth and Randall discover Zoey and Kevin are an item; Jack and Rebecca have an awkward first date at a carnival; Deja decides she's ready to be adopted by the Pearsons. But in true This Is Us fashion, it's what happened in the last few minutes that has everyone talking. (Spoilers ahead.)

In a flash-forward scene, we saw future Randall and Tess hesitant to see the unnamed woman from the season two finale. While there's still no word on who that is, future Toby made his first appearance—without future Kate. (Uh, can someone find future Kate ASAP?) And just when it looked like Jack and Rebecca's love story was about to begin, things were complicated by the surprise arrival of a blond-haired mystery man.

Naturally, all of this put the fan theories in overdrive. So at the show's premiere event in Hollywood, we asked creator Dan Fogelman and executive producers and co-showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger our most burning questions. Turns out, you'll get answers sooner than you think.

What is going on with future Kate?

At the end of last night's episode, viewers saw an older, more distinguished-looking Toby (Chris Sullivan) lying in bed without Kate at his side. Then older Randall calls Toby from Tess's social work facility and asks if he’s “coming down.” He says, "She wants you there, Toby." So it's gotta be Kate, right?

"I think it's totally open to interpretation," Berger says. "Kate could be in the next room [with Toby], or they could not be together, or something could have happened to her. It's left mysterious on purpose." OK, but that perfectly made opposite side of the bed sure did not look like someone was living there with Toby. "He's very neat in the future," Aptaker jokes. "But that does not feel like a bedroom where someone, a partner, is sharing it with Toby."

Whoever the mystery woman is, when will we get an answer?

While Aptaker tells Glamour that "it's anyone's guess who 'her' is," he, Fogelman, and the rest of the writers are conscious of not dragging it on for too long. That said, you shouldn't rule "anyone off the list" of who "her" could be. "Throughout this year, we're going to be giving more and more answers and ruling people out," Aptaker promises.

How did Kate's PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) diagnosis come about?

The syndrome, which is a hormonal disorder common among women of reproductive age, was talked about in the writers' room for quite some time before the start of the season. "We choose to tackle issues that are going on in our lives, of people we know, and what’s something that people are going through that nobody’s talking about," Berger says. "[PCOS] felt like it organically felt with Kate’s storyline."

"We have a mostly female staff, and a lot of people in that age are having kids, so when we started talking about what it could be, [the idea that Kate would have PCOS] came up a lot," Aptaker says. "Once we started to hear that it's common, then we brought in doctors and said, ‘What does the reality of this look like? And how do we get it right?’ We showed this episode to a fertility doctor, and he was like, ‘Thank you. Nobody is doing this, and it’s so common. I see it every day."

<h1 class="title">this-is-us-kate-pearson-vertical-season-three-2018.jpg</h1><cite class="credit">Ron Batzdorff/NBC</cite>

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Ron Batzdorff/NBC

Will Deja's biological father return for future episodes?

At the moment, no. "In this particular episode, her interactions with him were really about closure," Berger says. "I don’t think she went there with the intention of striking up a relationship, but she’s young and life is long." So, don't rule anything out.

Is Zoey really that bad for Kevin?

According to Beth she is, but Aptaker says it's more complicated than that: "There's darkness and drama to her story, and she's a very complicated woman." Berger adds, "For Beth to warn Kevin like that, she must know something really complex has taken place [in Zoey's past]." In the meantime, though, their relationship will grow, as Zoey and Kevin have their upcoming trip to Vietnam. "Kevin is doing really well for the first time in his life and should probably [be focused on other things than love]," Justin Hartley (Kevin) says, "but when it comes to matters of the heart, what are you going to do?"

Beth and Randall aren't really going to split up, are they?

During the panel, Fogelman said that Randall's story this season "will go in a surprising direction," and he's going to put Beth and Randall "through some stuff." Um, what kind of stuff? Berger wouldn't elaborate except to say that "even the strongest of couples go through difficult chapters. We are going to find them in one of those moments where they truly are tested."

Who's this new guy that Rebecca is kissing?

It's Weeds star Hunter Parrish! As for his character, all we know is that he's a blond-haired, mustached dude who isn't Jack. "I don't want to say how much we're going to see him," Aptaker says, "but we're going to pick right back up where we left off in episode three."

While Parrish's character will obviously factor into Jack and Rebecca's early timeline, Berger says you'll still see plenty of romance between the future Mr. and Mrs. Pearson. "Their chemistry is so palpable, and you'll see more of that electricity this season." In fact, Fogelman teased an upcoming scene that is so "wildly romantic," it gives off Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore vibes à la Ghost.

What's going to happen next week?

Get ready for the return of William. "Ron [Cephas Jones] is back, and we see him in a new period of his life that we haven’t spent that much time in," Aptaker says. He also confirmed that it has something to do with this picture Fogelman tweeted in August: