Don’t count on a ‘This Is Us’ spin-off anytime soon

Through one season, it’s hard to find anyone within the TV world who is upset with “This Is Us.” After all, it is a show that has done so much right in terms of being a high-quality, original property that both critics and viewers love in equal measure. The fact that it now has renewals for a second and third season are further verification that NBC loves what they have.

Anytime that this is the case, of course there is a fear that this means network will eventually beat the show into the ground. We feel like it’s far too early to talk about the idea of a spin-off, even if the writing here is so strong and there are so many different characters we could feasibly watch for many months at a time. For the time being, creator Dan Fogelman seems to agree judging from some of the recent comments that he gave in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter:

“We’re still so early. I haven’t thought about it, not yet. Rather than doing a spinoff, I’d rather keep it within this series at first … In a couple of episodes, there’s an episode that’s entirely with Sterling and I think our audience will go with it. If well-executed, what would be a spinoff can just be done as an arc or a couple of episodes in our series. It helps make it so that the series doesn’t become the same thing over and over and over again and start boring the audience. I think that’s important.”

That’s the thing about this show — there is nothing that obligates them contractually to using the same characters almost every week. We just had an installment where Dr. K was front and center for much of it! The challenge is finding fun ways to mix up the show that simultaneously don’t do anything to strip it of its identity or its spirit. You don’t want to drift so far from your leads that the show feels like the first half of “The Walking Dead” this past season and you were seeing people like Carol a tiny percentage of the time.

We’ll see where the remainder of “This Is Us” season 1 goes, but if the following episodes are anything like what we just had with Jack’s funeral scene, we’re going to need more tissues…

You can take a look at a preview for the next new episode of “This Is Us” by heading over to the link here. Meanwhile, tell us in the comments if you’d ever be down for a spin-off in the future. (Photo: NBC.)