NBC moves up This Is Us season 5 premiere date

You're going to find out what's going on in the Pearson households a little sooner than you thought.

NBC announced on Wednesday that This Is Us will return to the air two weeks earlier than planned. The multigenerational family drama — and the network's highest-rated series — was scheduled to unveil its two-hour season premiere on Nov. 10, but now it will see the light of day on Oct. 27, from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET/PT.

Of course, one could argue that fans are still getting new episodes later than they imagined back in March, when NBC aired the season 4 finale. New seasons of the show typically premiere in late September, but Hollywood's shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic delayed production, as it did for most series.

The show's writers have been working remotely on season 5 for months, and This Is Us is beginning production on these new episodes this week. And recent top-of-mind world events — including the coronavirus outbreak and the Black Lives Matter movement — will be incorporated into the show, without altering the end game. "We have a carefully crafted plan through six seasons of the television show that hundreds of people have now devoted for four-plus years of their lives executing," creator Dan Fogelman told EW. "And we're going to execute that plan, no matter what's happening in the world. What's happening in the world may shift the details of how things happen, but the big moves continue to happen — and actually potentially heighten and make better the television show then maybe some of our initial plans, because that's our job. Here are the new rules we've been given. How do we continue to try and top ourselves and make things even better than they were?"

For more hints on season 5, see what Sterling K. Brown had to say.

UPDATE: Fogelman tweeted a photo from the first day of filming, writing: "A 2020 television sex scene, We're back. #ThisIsUs."

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