Season 5 of 'This Is Us' will end May 25 with two fewer episodes

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 4/14/21

The 13th episode ("Brotherly Love") of This Is Us's fifth season aired Thursday night, and that will have to be enough to tide viewers over until May 11.

The promo clip shown for the next episode revealed that this season's schedule has been altered and condensed: Episode 14 will not air for nearly a month and only three episodes remain in Season 5:

Initially, as was the case for each of the NBC hit drama's previous four seasons, Season 5 was intended to have 18 episodes. It will instead have just 16 episodes. The Dan Fogelman creation was renewed for three more seasons in May 2019, though Milo Ventimiglia, who plays television's most beloved patriarch Jack Pearson, spoke about the plan for Season 6 to be the last with Ellen DeGeneres in February 2019:

"We never set out to make a television series that was going to last 18 seasons, so we have a very direct plan," Fogelman told The Hollywood Reporter in May 2019. "I have script pages I have written and I'm writing that really are deep, deep, deep into the future. We have a plan for what we're going to do, and I know what the plan is."

In the short-term, this won't be the first time This Is Us's production schedule is affected this season. In January and into February, "COVID-related production delays" forced re-runs from Jan. 12's "Birth Mother" episode to Feb. 9's "There."

When on, This Is Us airs Tuesdays beginning at 9 p.m. EST on NBC.

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