In “The Hill,” we’ll also see how Kate interprets her the directive her mother (MandyMoore) gave all three of her kids earlier this season to live their lives to the fullest. For Kate, does that mean fighting to save her marriage… or acknowledging that being miserable in a long-distance marriage is not really living her best life, and letting it go? Here’s everything we learned from the promo for This Is Us Season 6 episode 9, “The Hill.”
Is there a This Is Us Season 6 episode 9 promo preview?
The promo for “The Hill” shows that the episode will return to the same three time periods that were visited during “The Guitar Man”: the mid-’80s, the year 2000 or so and the present day. Everything in the episode seems as though it will be centered around Kate’s relationship with Toby, and will see Kate examining what she really wants out of her life. “It’s overwhelming living in two different cities,” Kate says in voiceover as the promo for “The Hill” opens on an image of her and Toby standing by their car. “So I’d like to go to San Francisco with you for the weekend.” We are then treated to a quick image of Kate and Toby waiting to catch a cable car in his home-away-from-home, the city where he works four days a week while Kate and their kids remain in L.A. The promo then flashes back to the same childhood trip to the pool that we saw from Kevin’s point of view in “The Guitar Man,” this time with Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) trying to coax a young Kate into finally putting her face underwater. “I believe you can do it,” Jack tells her. And then we’re back at the same pool, now drained and abandoned a decade and a half later. Kevin and Kate walk around the perimeter following their uncomfortable Thanksgiving family dinner in the Season 6 episode “Taboo,” as Kate admits, “When I look into my future, I see nothing.” The rest of the promo sticks with adult Kate, as she tells someone (presumably Toby), “I have a full life that I could’ve never dreamed, but I miss the old Toby.” As she speaks, we see quick flashes of Kate walking alone in San Francisco, Toby smiling at her, the two of them walking and laughing in San Francisco and taking a silly selfie on a cable car, and looking solemnly at each other in a hotel room. The promo ends on a close-up of Kate’s pensive face during that solo walk through the streets, and then with her sitting on a set of vine-covered steps as she is joined by the Toby of Season 1, before he lost a significant amount of weight. She rests her head on his shoulder, looking sad. Interestingly, Kate appears to be wearing the same outfit and hairstyle in that scene as she is in the hotel room scene where we see her speaking to present-day Toby, making us wonder if the closing shot of the promo isn’t a flashback at all, but rather takes place in Kate’s imagination. We’ll have to wait until “The Hill” premieres on March 22, 2022 to find out.
What happened on This Is Us Season 6 episode 8?
“The Guitar Man” followed Kevin through the same three time periods that we see in the promo for “The Hill.” In the first, during his family trip to the pool, a young Kevin became fixated on the idea of jumping off the diving board in the deep end, and was frustrated when his father told him he needed to learn how to swim first. In the second, a newly separated Kevin lamented to his siblings that maybe he was just a shallow person, destined only for shallow things in his life. And in the third, which took up the bulk of the episode, Kevin flew with his infant twins to his family cabin in Pennsylvania to check in on the early stages of construction of his mother’s dream house. Overseeing the day to day construction efforts are Kevin’s Uncle Nicky (Griffin Dunne) and their mutual friend, Afghanistan veteran Cassidy (Jennifer Morrison), who Kevin has considered pursuing a romance relationship with in the past, only for Cassidy to turn him down, insisting that such a relationship wouldn’t be healthy for either of them. Also at the cabin are Cassidy’s 12-year-old son Matty (Noah Salsbury Lipson) and Nicky’s girlfriend (and eventual wife, as we’ve learned from the flash-forwards) Edie (Vanessa Bell Calloway). After initially bristling at a construction error that required the crew to repair the foundation and questioning Cassidy’s decision to hire former army veterans to perform the work, Kevin apologized to Cassidy and the group had a pleasant evening. But that night, Kevin was awakened by a phone call alerting him that Cassidy had been in a car accident. Upon going to visit her and learning that she was injured but okay, Nicky confronted Kevin with his strong suspicion that Cassidy had wrecked her car on purpose as a result of a deep depression that she’d been hiding from them. When Kevin hinted at his suspicions to Cassidy, she admitted that she’s been struggling quite a bit with her mental health after returning home from Afghanistan. However, the night before when she decided to drive, she was happy. Yet, when she found herself drifting off at the wheel, she didn’t fight it, and instead sped up. Kevin resolves to help her in whatever way she needs, while Nicky puts her in touch with a counselor at the VA who specializes in situations like hers. Meanwhile, although Kevin arrived at the cabin overwhelmed by the demands of fatherhood and feeling like he was in over his head with the twins, he gained confidence over the course of his visit, to the point where he ultimately gave away his emotional support guitar (a hobby he had picked up in his efforts to be good at something… a goal at which he was woefully failing) to Matty, realizing that the child needed it more than him. When he flew back to L.A., he was much calmer and more competent with his children, causing even the flight attendants to comment on how much they admired his parenting.
Are there any This Is Us Season 6 episode 9 spoilers?
In an interview with EWahead of the season, Metz said that episode 9 will be “a massive turning point for Kate and Toby.” Metz co-wrote the script for the episode along with David Windsor and Casey Johnson, and it will be directed by Moore, who called the episode “truly extraordinary” in an Instagram post. “There will be a turning point when she chooses herself," Metz told EW. “And I don’t think she’s really, truly done that. She has gone through everything she’s gone through in order to say, ‘Yeah, this isn’t working for me, and I have to make my own decision for myself.’ And I think that is such a testament to how far she’s come and how she walks into this next chapter of her life.” In a separate conversation with Us Weekly, Metz said, “We’ll come to find that neither Toby or Kate are wrong or right. They’re sort of just growing apart… We’re gonna see that these are two people that love each other desperately. But just aren’t meant to be together forever.” And when the split between the two eventually does come—whether that’s in “The Hill” or further down the road—Metz told People, “It’s going to be a doozy. It’s going to be really difficult to watch.” Feel the need to emotionally brace yourself for Kate and Toby’s inevitable split? Fortify your feelings with these 90 sad love quotes.
