Jack Pearson gets his family out of a burning house on Super Bowl Sunday 1998, then goes back inside for the dog and a bag of keepsakes. He reaches the hospital alert and stable, but smoke inhalation has already done its damage — while Rebecca steps into the hallway, a massive cardiac arrest kills him. Twenty years later, each of the Big Three marks the anniversary differently: Kate watches the audition tape Jack saved from the fire, Kevin visits his father's memorial tree for the first time since the funeral, and Randall throws a party and delivers a lizard eulogy that cracks open Tess's real fear — that she's being left behind.

The episode closes the loop on the question the show has been building toward since its first season: how Jack died, and what it cost each person who loved him. Seeing the full sequence — the fire, the hospital, Re ...