Warning: this post contains spoilers for the mid-season premiere of This is Us.

The mid-season premieres are upon us, finally, and for fans of This is Us, so is good news about one of the show’s favorite couples. If you remember, during the winter finale, Toby traveled across the country to spend Christmas and reunite with his girlfriend Kate, only to collapse and be rushed to the hospital – with his fate unknown for five long weeks.

Well, I guess the #PrayforToby campaign worked, as we discover in the beginning of the episode, entitled “The Right Thing to Do,” that Toby is still alive. He’s not out of the woods yet, as doctors found an arrhythmia in his heart that requires surgery. Toby initially rejected the surgery, but with Kate’s support, went through with it and is now recovering. Toby and Kate expressed their love for each other and Toby told Kate he’d “marry her in a minute.” Aww!

In his time on the show, Toby has become a fan favorite and show creator Dan Fogelman said that he wasn’t ready to kill the character off (yet), telling The Hollywood Reporter, “We had conversations early on about what would be Toby’s fate; we always knew he was going to have this kind of collapse halfway through the first season. We decided pretty early on that he would make it.”

Chris Sullivan, who plays Toby (and is quite the snappy dresser), was also happy to have survived his heart issues, telling People, “It’s really nice of Dan and the creative team to create a character that people are so attached to. Even last night, I was out having dinner, and my waitress, the last thing out of her mouth was, ‘Are you coming back?’” Thankfully, he is, and he shared the good news on Twitter with the hashtag #WeMadeIt.

#WeMadeIt #ThisIsUs pic.twitter.com/ZD7NxVBXHj

— Chris Sullivan (@SullivanTweet) January 11, 2017

Entertainment Weekly also spoke with Dan Fogelman about our new favorite TV couple, Toby and Kate (“Tate?”), giving us some hints that there still might be some bumps in the road before the couple finds their happy ending. Here are some highlights:

How did Chris Sullivan take the news of Toby’s recovery? He seems very happy to be alive. He also seems to be taking great pleasure in teasing everybody about what happened to him.

Why put Toby’s life at risk on the first place? With Toby, if I was a sophisticated television viewer, I might make him survive only to kill him at the end of the episode in a different way. So I thought it was an interesting thing to re-bring in the tension and see how an audience followed that and handled it. Because at this point, you have to be aware of how sophisticated your audience is getting, so sometimes in order to play with expectations, you need to get ahead of guessing what the expectations of the audience might be.

Are Toby and Kate engaged? They act before thinking, and they act before analyzing, and that has both charming and positive consequences but then also can lead to problems. So I think you’re meant to feel a little easy about the proposal in terms of the very question you’re asking: “Are they really engaged?” [It’s] something we return to many times in the upcoming episodes.

[From Entertainment Weekly]

In the show’s other plot lines, we go back in time to the time when Jack and Rebecca discovered they were having triplets – right after signing the lease on a lovely 2-bedrooom walk-up. In present day, we get to see Randall struggling with the discovery that his biological father William was bisexual and spending lots of time with his lover Jesse. William also revealed to his son that his chemo meds were no longer working and that he wanted to stop chemo treatment. Poor Randall.

As for the third Pearson triplet, Kevin, he and Sloane declared their mutual like for each other just as terrible Olivia returns from “finding herself.” Of course, Kevin manages to mess things up, telling Olivia he was staying with Sloane because it was “the right thing, even if it’s not what you want.” Sloane overheard the conversation and didn’t want a boyfriend sticking around out of some sort of duty and ended their relationship. Ouch.

You really need a scorecard and a box of tissues when you watch this show. Especially the tissues. Chris joked with People that, “Each actor is compensated based on how much they can make an audience cry. We’re all doing our best.” They sure are, aren’t they? What did you think about the premiere? I’m all in for the second half of the season and can’t wait to find out what happens with “Tate.”

Photo credit: Getty Images, WENN.com