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Are Deja and Malik Over for Good? A This Is Us Writer Weighs In
"The truth of the matter is every young love doesn’t turn into forever love."
Deja (Lyric Ross) and Malik (Asante Blackk) shippers will not be happy with how This Is Us Season 6, Episode 10 ended. The young couple has officially split, and the journey to this point was not pretty. Remember: Deja initially wanted to drop out of high school, get her GED, and move to Boston to be closer to Malik. This plan was shot down by her parents, Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown), causing tension within the family. Then, Randall added fuel to the fire by pulling Malik aside and telling him he should break up with Deja because it's in her best interest. Everything came to a head after Thanksgiving, when Deja found out about Malik and Randall's conversation and, naturally, was livid. So she took off in the middle of the night for Boston to convince Malik not to end their relationship. Randall followed her—with Rebecca (Mandy Moore) in the passenger seat—but by the time they reached Boston, the deed was done. Deja and Malik called it quits.
But are they over for good? Or is this just a hiccup on the way to endgame? Kay Oyegun, who wrote Season 6, Episode 10, tells NBC Insider, "The truth of the matter is every young love doesn’t turn into forever love. And sometimes young love does turn into forever love. I think this is an instance where we get to see what ends up happening or doesn’t happen with the two of them."
Regardless of the outcome, fans have gotten to see Deja through a myriad of phases, stages, and emotions—and that's something Oyegun is proud of. "A lot of times whenever you have these stories about a kid with a hard life who gets adopted, they’re used as some sort of token or cautionary tale or angelic creature or anything like that," she says. "I think with Deja, we’ve had a front row seat into her psychology. This is a young Black girl’s inner world and inner workings of her world. You get to see her terrified and scared, understand her origin story, watch her fall in love, watch that love consume [her], and watch that love be actualized. It’s just been such a wonderful gift to kind of explore that."
This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC. Catch up now on NBC.com.
