This Is Us Star Defends Kate & Toby’s Divorce Storyline
Warning! Spoilers ahead for This Is Us season 6.
Chris Sullivan defends Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Toby's (Sullivan) divorce on This Is Us. The NBC family drama's flashforward sequences have provided fans with valuable clues about what the future holds for the characters. So before it happened, it was already revealed that the couple's split was looming. Still, it doesn't make it any easier when it finally happened.
This Is Us flashforwards hinted at a dark future for the Damons when it featured a visibly depressed Toby not wearing his wedding ring. But it wasn't until the This Is Us season 5 finale that it was finally confirmed that Kate and Toby were indeed going their separate ways as it revealed the former was re-marrying her current boss, Phillip (Chris Greene). Much of the Damons' story in This Is Us season 6 had been setting up this heartbreaking development, and after countless fights and a lukewarm attempt to make a long-distance setup work, they finally gave up.
That's what happened in This Is Us' 100th episode, "KaToby." Although Kate and Toby's divorce had been a long time coming, the split was an emotional one. But, as Sullivan explained to THR, tragic things like this happen all the time in the real world and This Is Us is committed to telling relatable narratives, not sugar-coated ones. Read his full comment below:
We spent six seasons trying to build this thing. But, ironically, that’s how real life feels. You spend all this time and energy trying to build something that works and it seems like, all of a sudden, things fall apart. So it’s a bummer of a way to go out. But it’s the portion of human relationship that Chrissy and I have been tasked with communicating back to the audience.
Some might still feel like Toby and Kate's divorce could have been avoided. After all, a lot of their problems came externally, and most of them only started when he got a job in San Francisco. Kate was the one to make the call about divorcing, Toby didn't want it at first. To be fair, This Is Us made it seem like he was the one at fault for the split. The fact that the show breezed through Kate and Phillip's romance emphasized this. But, it's quite unfair for Toby, especially since his misgivings were due to the circumstances. This doesn't mean that Kate should've just agreed to uproot her family and move to be closer to his job, but considering everything that they have been through, it feels like if This Is Us wanted them to be together, Kate and Toby could've found a way to make it work.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Now, Kate and Toby are over; Kate gets to enjoy life with her new husband. But while Toby seems to have come around from their divorce, This Is Us' first flash-forward, which showed him in a less than ideal situation, suggests that he may have never really gotten through their split.
Source: THR