Being a This Is Us fan means resigning yourself to go through at least a couple of the stages of grief every week. There’s almost always depression, occasionally anger, and, every time we’re reminded of superdad Jack’s premature exit from this planet and Rebecca’s decision to move on with his best friend Miguel, in creeps a large dose of denial.

But as a few crushing flashbacks in last week’s episode to the big three’s father’s funeral stridently drove home, no amount of bargaining is bringing him back from the dead or saving his kids from the gut-wrenching pain of losing a beloved parent so early.

“We don’t know at this point how Jack has passed away, but surely that has affected her and all of the kids into adulthood,” Chrissy Metz (Kate) said in the series’ official online aftershow.

Knowing this week’s episode is the 14th chapter of an 18-episode season, and judging by an interview creator Dan Fogelman gave Entertainment Weekly, viewers should start preparing to move into acceptance. “By the end of the season, you’re going to know a lot of the details of the how and the ramifications of it. We can’t do a show where every week is this kind of emotional but very safe release,” he explained. “Darkness creeps into the show because that’s what happens in life. We have to dive into the heavy stuff. [In] the back half of the season, people are going to have to put on their seat belts. I just wrote the finale today, and it’s a doozy.”

Not that all the cards will be on the table by the March 7 finale. After all, the writers need something to talk about in the two additional seasons they’ve already been promised by NBC. “It’s going to take even longer for the audience to get the story of what happened in full. There’s a long journey to go on still,” Fogelman continued. “In terms of how he died ­— Was it illness? Was it something tragic? Something else? What was going on in their marriage when this happened? — that’s going to take a minute because we want to show that in the show. To me, even when you’re watching the pilot, long before you knew [about] Jack, this family felt loving and good but broken. You’ve got kids battling severe issues, and clearly there’s strained relationships with Rebecca. [And Miguel!] There was a break somewhere… something formative happened to them in those prominent late teenage years when you’re becoming an adult. It broke this family apart, not irreparably. They all love each other. But there’s stuff here, and I think a lot of it is held with Jack.”

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The slow burn storytelling and mystery surrounding the cause of death has left people searching scenes and storylines for clues, which Fogelman confirmed are in there when Yahoo TV talked with him last fall. “The show will feel almost like watching family home videos out of sequence,” he said at the time. “But there is a purpose to the sequence we show them in, and there are definitely details about what will be revealed later tucked into flashbacks and the present-day stuff. It is a traumedy version of Lost.”

Tonight’s episode may hold more answers, but until the big reveal, here are the current prevailing theories on Jack’s demise floating around the Internet:

View photos Mackenzie Hancsicsak as Kate and Milo Ventimiglia as Jack. (Photo: Ron Batzdorff/NBC) More

1. Most of the details we are already privy to make it seem like Jack’s death was sudden and unexpected. A matter of the heart, as in his fails him, seems to be the most widely held belief. It would certainly explain how Kate reacted when Toby said he was going to skip surgery to repair his ticker. She did not hesitate for even a hot minute before agreeing with the cardiologist’s call and hightailing it out of the room when he first refused the operation. Having lost her dad before she could say goodbye would certainly explain the urgency under which she operates in that situation. Fogelman has admitted that Kate is the sibling most affected by Jack’s death, so perhaps she was alone with him when tragedy struck. Maybe even at a Steelers game, which would explain why it was so hard for her to return to the ritual of watching Sunday football.