We all knew it was coming, but that doesn't make it any easier. The end of Toby and Kate is fast approaching on This Is Us, and the show just gave us a big clue: The smoker has arrived.
In Tuesday's "Every Version of You," we pick up where we left Kate, on top of a hill in San Francisco. On the phone, she tells Phillip (her future husband) that she would like to be considered for a teaching job in Los Angeles, then goes to her husband Toby's hotel room to tell him she can't move to San Fransisco like he wants their family to because they're just not in the right place. Toby also has news for Kate: the smoker has arrived, just in time for Rebecca and Miguel's anniversary party.
Why does the smoker matter? Well, for one thing, it's the object which an adult Jack Damon, Toby and Kate's son, tells his wife is what ultimately led to the breakup of his parents' marriage. Something happened with this smoker that ultimately caused the dissolution of KaToby, but what that is, exactly, remains to be seen.
One theory is that it has to do with an injury Jack received from the smoker — he even has a scar in the future timeline which implies that's the case. Accidents happen, but Kate and Toby's relationship is already on such thin ice that it's easy to see how anything going wrong could cause a rift.
Will Toby be distracted by a work call and not see Jack getting too close to the smoker? Will Kate leave Jack with Rebecca, only for Rebecca's memory loss to affect her ability to care for her grandson? There are a lot of possibilities of what could go wrong with the smoker, but the bottom line is, whatever it is, will ultimately be the final straw. (Enter...Phillip.)
It's all a little ironic, considering how Kate already lost one man in her life due, in part, to a cooking appliance. Her father, Jack (the namesake of her son) died after a fire caused by a faulty slow cooker led him to inhaling smoke, leading to his "widow maker" heart attack.
Of course, Toby's not dead — we know this because, unlike Kate, he shows up in the flash forward when Rebecca is on her death bed. Still, a cooking appliance did break up yet another Pearson relationship — which means we may all want to consider a Seamless subscription.