This is Us casts Michael Angarano as Jack’s brother

We know how Jack died; but how did his beloved brother, Nicky, die, and how does that affect his short life?

There’s some good casting news for This is Us fans! Michael Angarano has been cast to play a major role in Season 3.

You may know Angarano from his role on Will & Grace as Jack’s son. You probably also know him from tons of other films like Sky High and Lords of Dogtown. Now he will portray Jack’s brother, Nicky, who we know dies during the Vietnam War.

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We don’t know much about Nicky. We’ve seen him as a little boy in a flashback and in pictures. One of his trademarks is his black thick-rimmed glasses.

Now that one major question of the show was answered last season (how Jack died), the door can open for new aspects of Jack’s life we have yet to see. This makes me happy since I get to keep watching Milo Ventimiglia on my screen every week.

And the NBC drama’s showrunners are excited for a more ambitious Season 3, without having to focus on Jack’s death anymore. Elizabeth Berger said,

"“It’s really exciting for us. There’s something very freeing about being past the mystery of Jack’s death and moving into this new chapter and getting to tell a whole completely different kind of story. It’s different than anything we [or] any of our writers have done in our first two years.”"

Isaac Aptaker added,

"“We’re challenging ourselves to jump to decades we’ve never been in before and go into the future, as we’ve seen a little bit, and really play with the storytelling format in a way that’s just much more complicated than we were able to in earlier seasons when we were showing people how the show worked.”"

According to Deadline, Dan Fogelman, the drama series’ creator, said that they would spend a lot of time exploring Jack’s experience during the war. They even tapped The Things They Carried author Tim O’Brien to be a special consultant for that storyline.

Since one of the “flash-forwards” at the end of Season 2 showed Kevin and his girlfriend Zoe flying Vietnam, we can only assume the two experiences will be intertwined.

This is Us returns September 25 on NBC.