Has Stefon moved to Miami?? Because that season ending had EVERYTHING: face-swapping! face-UNswapping! evil twin identity theft! surprise, baby! surprise baby! marriage! murder!?!?
A short recap of Season 2’s majority stress-less finale is below. If you can’t get over the last five minutes of ALL STRESS ALL THE TIME, scroll down and start commiserating/theorizing/holding onto each other for dear life in the comments!
AWARDS
THIS WEEK’S MVP(arent)
Oh man! Definitely Rogelio again, right? I mean, that father daughter-dance ALONE.
Runners-up: Alba, for saving her wedding disaster story for the exact right moment and for secretly teaching Michael his vows in Spanish, and Petra for finally leaning into the tender joys of motherhood with Anna’s first laugh. The sheer number of layers that go down in these characters’ lives offscreen, never seen by us, it’s insane.
BEST TELENOVELA TWIST
YOU PICK:
BEST PRODUCT PLACEMENT
LOL I think the only brands that called out by name were a discount motel chain (derogatorily, and ultimately abandoned as a plan), and Rolls Royce (i.e., the car that broke down on the way to Jane’s wedding). So…the patriarchy? Maybe?
Oh, wait:
GIF from cas-swift
Those aren’t ominous lyrics AT ALL.
Bruno Mars, who was actually at Jane’s wedding. I nearly forgot.
Low-key runners-up: Charo, silently keeping up appearances as Ro’s second-best friend as a member of Jane’s bridesmaids party (No lines! No promotion! No reception song! Just THERE), and Dr. Seuss, whom Jane invokes when she exclaims “Oh, the places you’ll go!” to Mateo as he totters his first steps. Yes, that’s from the Seuss book notorious as a new grads’ gift. Our Jane will never not set a very high bar for her son!
PREVIOUSLY ON JANE THE VIRGIN
You may have forgotten by now (Jane seems to have done), but for the better part of this show’s two seasons she has been the prime vertex of a frustratingly protracted, if (telenovela-)realistically balanced love triangle between her pre-baby fiancé, Worst Detective Michael, and her baby daddy, Worst Luck Rafael. She chose Michael, and her choice made him suddenly be both a human man worthy of her time and love, as well as somehow the best detective not even on the Miami PD payroll (he was “suspended” for a malicious and TRUE tell-all about the Sin Rostro investigation leaked to the press, so is now employed as Rogelio’s head of security/lead technical advisor). They were going to get married in her living room, but it flooded, so Rogelio built an exact replica on the Tiago soundstage, using the un-unionized crew that will, it turns out, be striking for better conditions on the very day the wedding had been scheduled for. So now the wedding is moved up, and the stress is on! Rafael and Petra will both be in attendance, despite that fact that:
1) Rafael is still deeply in love with Jane and is also suffering the double blow of the fact that his birth mother is a bigger deal crimelord than Sin Rostro, with whom his half-brother Derek is in league (presumably), as he just blackmailed Raf out of an entire hotel, meaning that his only GOOD family member is the sister who accidentally inseminated Jane in the first place, carried on a long affair with their stepmother, and is currently in her fifth stint in rehab, and
2) Petra is still deeply in love with Raf, and HER newly arrived secret sibling, Orphan Anezka, has methodically (if “accidentally”) ruined Jane’s life, while simultaneously encouraging Petra’s one-sided Raf-pining.
All this, plus Xo had a one-night stand with Rogelio’s telenovela nemesis, Esteban.
This wedding will be GREAT.
THIS WEEK
FLASHBACK
Growing up, Jane’s absolute favorite love story was her abuela’s, and her absolute favorite reminder of it was the story of Alba’s perfect fairy tale wedding day: her shoes, the veil worn by all the Villanueva women down the line, the mass of loving family surrounding them as her father walked Alba down the aisle. Not even a broken heel could ruin Alba and Mateo’s big moment! Everything was perfect, and then the next day they took off to start a new life together in America.
Don’t mind me, that’s just an ocean of my tears threatening to capsize our ship.
Wedding Time: Rehearsal
Cue Perfect Villaneuva Wedding Numero Dos! Jane and Michael’s big (early) day is right around the corner, and everything is going great, just easy and calm and smooth as Rafael’s jealous muscles.
JK. Everything’s teetering as close to chaos as possible, with Xo keeping her one night stand with Esteban secret from everyone (especially Rogelio); Rafael keeping his enduring love of Jane secret from her; Michael forgetting to have booked a suite anywhere for their honeymoon night; Jane needing to take an academic break in middle of everything to ask permission to start her thesis over from scratch; and Rogelio Father-of-the-Bridezillaing his way to the blacklist of every wedding vendor in Dade County. And that’s all before things come to a head at the rehearsal at the church that afternoon, when Jane and Michael realize they haven’t had a single discussion about how to make Big Decisions as a married couple, Xo’s Esteban-gression becomes known to everyone within the church’s sacred walls, and Matelio totters his way to the front of the church, grabbing the altar cloth for support and destabilizing the priest, who falls headfirst into the altar and knocks himself unconscious.
The #HolyTwinity captures it all for scrapbooking/social media posterity.
Meanwhile, the Solano siblings are catching each other up on their love(less) lives: Luisa is shocked at her new, pure, healthy romance with Michael’s detective partner, while Rafael is still hung up on his passionate pining for Jane, and unhealthy obsession with the idea of telling her before she walks down the aisle. Luisa surprises us all by advising him to just walk away. Raf takes her wisdom into consideration, but considering how his heart glows when he spies Jane on her balcony (romantically hammering out the minutiae of married life chores with Michael over the phone), the possibility that he will take her advice is nowhere close to certain.
Wedding Time: The Big Day
The next day, as Alba is putting the final touches on Jane’s ensemble, expressing her utter surprise and joy at seeing her and Mateo’s dreams being realized in the person of Jane, Jane is struck by a bolt of thesis inspiration: a romance based on her grandparents, exploring history, classism, sexual politics, etc. etc. etc. etc.—
Only problem? The university’s thesis committee is meeting RIGHT NOW. Professor Donaldson will stand by Jane’s side to make her proposal orally, but that means Jane has to get to the school ASAP.
She does. The committee accepts the change. Professor Donaldson is so moved—by Jane’s development as a #wokefeminist romance writer—that she even gives in to helping button Jane up into her wedding dress/the patriarchy. Hooray!
Unfortunately, in his bid to make Jane’s return to the church as smooth and cool as possible, Rogelio kept his vintage Rolls Royce’s engine and AC running for the whole time Jane was in with the thesis committee. The motor all but explodes right as Jane gets in, and the two are forced to take public transportation to travel the 17 stops to the church. NBD! At least it gives Jane and Ro some time to talk about Xo’s night with Esteban (helpfully smirking down at them from the bus’s telenovela poster).
If being officially late to her own wedding wasn’t foreboding enough, Jane is met in the church’s courtyard by Baby Mateo and Heartsick Rafael, and he breaks his heart open for her. Dios mio! Only psych, not really: he plays that scene out in his imagination, but IRL keeps mum. Jane is happy, and that supersedes his certainty that she is marrying the wrong man. I don’t disagree with you on either of those counts, Raf—good job, dude.
And then it is officially time for the wedding. The crowd is happy. The Twins, Lina, and Charo are glowing bridesmaids. The priest isn’t concussed. They get to the vows, Jane walks through hers without a hitch, Michael gives his in Spanish.
GIF from cas-swift
We all cry, and then when the Virgin Mary statue, the choir, and all of Jane’s family start singing at her to Go-ooo have se-e-e-xxxxxx, we all laugh.
And then it is the wedding reception! And Bruno Mars is singing about how I will love you until my dying day and Jane and Rogelio are choreographed jiving and Luisa and Susanna are flirting madly over how homoerotic dude-dancing at weddings is and Rogelio’s new crew bro is teaching Michael the “Roll Tide” tradition to goof on Susanna-of-Tuscaloosa with, and everything is just GREAT.
Well, Petra is back at the Marbella crying with Anezka and her babies about how beautiful Jane’s wedding was and how Petra is sure she’ll never have anything like that, and then the babies are crying at Petra’s pain, and then Anezka is collapsed unconscious on the nursery floor, and on the set outside the wedding Ro and Xo are re-establishing the facts that they love each other most, but neither has changed their opinion about having kids, but other than all of that, everything is SO GREAT.
And, finally, it is the wedding night. Or, as it was always going to be in the Janeiverse, Plot Twist Night.
Twist #1
Anezka is in the hospital in a “locked in” state in which she is conscious, but can’t move anything but her eyes, and no, alas, she is unlikely to make much improvement at all. Only it is NOT Anezka, but Petra! Anezka drugged her into this state, dyed both of their hair, and has now officially taken over Petra’s identity. And the first thing she does with it? Jump Raf’s bones.
Twist #2
Xo gets not one but two unwelcome Esteband surprises: a d*ck pic, and a positive pregnancy test. Dang!
Twist #3
Crossing paths with Susanna in the Marbella’s hall as he goes to get ice before he and Jane finally, finally, get it on, Michael tries out his new “Roll Tide” trick, and when she responds with a blank look, then laughs in recognition at his intentionally incorrect description of the tradition, he puts alllllllll the puzzle pieces together and figures out that she was the mole inside the Miami PD this whole time. And then she shoots him!
Twist #4
Susanna the traitor races back to Luisa, and pulls off her face. Surprise! She’s been Rose this whole time!
Thank gosh Luisa has done so many hallucinogenics in her life—most of us would have a heart attack at this horrorshow.
NEXT TIME
Season 3!
About the Contributor:
Alexis Gunderson is a TV critic and audiobibliophile. A Wyoming expat, she now lives in Maryland, where she runs the DC chapter of the FYA Book Club. She can be found talking about Teen TV on Twitter, and her longform criticism can be found on Authory.
