'Jane the Virgin' Showrunner Unpacks All Those Finale Twists, Drops Season 2 Hints

Warning: This post contains storyline and character spoilers for this week’s season finale of Jane the Virgin.

We knew that Monday night’s Jane the Virgin season finale would feature the arrival of Jane’s baby — but we didn’t know that they’d throw a bunch of shocking twists at us, too. (OK, that’s a lie; this show lives on twists.) Jane’s baby snatched by Sin Rostro! Petra stealing Rafael’s sperm! Xiomara and Rogelio, married in Vegas! It’ll take all summer for our heads to stop spinning.

To untangle all of this madness, we got on the phone with Jane showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman, who reassures us that yes, Jane will be reunited with baby Mateo “sooner rather than later.” (Whew.) Plus, she sings the praises of her cast members, explains how the show proves that “good people can be interesting, too,” and drops quite a few juicy hints about what’s coming in Season 2. Like the Narrator says, let’s have some fun!

That finale! After all those twists, do you really expect us to wait till the fall to find out what happens next?
[Laughs.] Yeah, I know, it’s shocking. We decided at the end that we really wanted to lean into the telenovela aspects of the show. And also, we knew how it would hit our characters emotionally, and right away, it gives us a strong point of view and mission at the beginning of next season.

Did you see any of the fan reaction last night on Twitter and social media?
I saw some last night as we were watching. I think people were traumatized. I was traumatized! I’ve seen it a million times, and every time I see it, my heart is in my stomach. That’s why I didn’t put Jane saying “Where’s the baby?” or anything at the end. I just had the Narrator say that he’d love to tell them how it ends, but you’re gonna have to wait till next time, because I wanted that sense of the storyteller telling you this is a bump in our gigantic story, but to make you feel like it’s gonna be OK. [Laughs.] And it will be! We’re not going to be playing a missing baby for too long, because we’re a comedy and Jane won’t be able to smile until it happens. So getting the baby back is obviously the first agenda, and then it’s: What are they left with after, emotionally, and how does that change our characters?

We see at the end that baby Mateo is put into the hands of Rose/Sin Rostro… but we don’t see her face. Could a different actress be playing Rose next season? Because that would be a very soapy thing to do.
Yeah, I can’t say, but I can say we’re going to be playing with that. Did her face change? There will be a certain amount of suspicion every time we introduce someone who could potentially have been her. But it will be revealed!

We also saw Petra walking away with Rafael’s sperm. Will Gina Rodriguez be handing the pregnancy belly over to Yael Grobglas next season?
I would say it’s certainly possible. And that’s going to be a big part of [Petra’s] arc at the beginning. She’s going to make a surprising decision, I think. It just felt like coming full circle: Petra was trying to steal that sperm right at the beginning, and then she got her hands on it at the end.

And then Rogelio and Xiomara drunkenly got married in Vegas — and it was only like the third or fourth most shocking thing that happened in the finale!
I know! [Laughs.] Yeah, it’s not the biggest cliffhanger. They got married; they’re both shocked. But until the baby’s back, I don’t think they’re going to say, “Oh Jane, we’ve got something to tell you…” Because there are bigger fires they have to put out. But eventually, it will come out, and people will have very different reactions to it, including both of them. Their relationship is one that we’re continually interested in exploring, and we’re bringing in people from their past… there will be a bit of resolution next season with Xo and Ro.

Of course, the show’s central love triangle rages on: Jane, Rafael, and Michael. Are these two guys going to duke it out for Jane’s heart the rest of the series?
No, definitely not. There’s going to be a pretty big decision made in Season 2. I can’t quite tell you when, or how it plays out, but it will be a definitive decision. All of our [stories] are complicated by twists and turns, but I think where we’re leaving Jane is truly torn. You know, we’ve all seen The Bachelor: It can happen! [Laughs.] You can like two people at once! But I think she will approach it as Jane does, trying to be honest, which will bring certain things to a head, and then there will be a choice, definitely. The relationship, once they get the baby back… things will shift once that happens, I think, in interesting ways.

Video: The ‘Jane the Virgin’ Cast Chooses Sides in Rafael vs. Michael

And even if she chooses one of these guys, the other one will still be in her life, right?
Exactly. They’re a family. What we have to do is figure out the dynamics, so that whoever she chooses, the other will still be in her life. And whether that’s Michael bonding early with the baby, or… we have ways of connecting them so that once she chooses, the other person is not out of the show, or anything like that.

So much has been said about how great Gina Rodriguez is on this show. Did your idea of who Jane is as a character change once you saw Gina play it?
I think you can’t say enough about how extraordinary she is, as an actor and as a person. It’s really just remarkable. The performance she gave in the pilot was the performance she came in with at the audition. She just had that character. And suddenly, I understood more about the character than what I wrote. She made her so grounded and emotional and optimistic, sexy, accessible… all the things that you dream of, but you don’t know quite what that will look like or what shape it will take. When she came in, for me, it was like the angels singing. [Laughs.] Because she came in with it all. Right away, she carried that pilot so beautifully.

And where it doubled down for me was in that second episode. Because we’d gone through all the plot machinations of this accidental insemination, but we had to slow down in the second episode and really have this character take a moment where she is talking about how she’s not ready to be a mom. And Gina’s performance on the porch — I think it was nearly a minute and there are no cuts in it; it’s just her breakdown — and I remember watching that and thinking, “Oh my God.” I knew she was amazing, but… there’s nothing she can’t do. Then once you know she can do all that, you just want to keep having her do more and more.

Another great discovery for me was Jaime Camil as Rogelio. I’m ashamed I didn’t know him before this show. I’ve been saying he’s the funniest man on TV right now.
I think so! He is brilliant. There’s no other word for it. I had seen a movie of his called Pulling Strings, but I didn’t know him; he was brought to my attention. But I knew he was a big deal. In the pilot, he has like three lines, so we had a talk on the phone early on, because he had a lot of pilot offers from different shows. And he said he loved the script, but where was his character going to go? So I had written him the scene in the fourth episode where he tells [Jane] he’s her father. Because I wanted him to know that a big part of our season was going to be this blooming relationship between Jane and her father. And he just attached to it immediately.

But it was really that second episode, when he came to the door and told Xo he had too many phones but she could reach him on Twitter, that we were like, “Oh my God.” From then on, he’s been one of the writers’ favorite characters to write for. If you’re looking for a bright spot, just bring in Rogelio. He’s hilarious, but he’s also this totally sincere, loving dad who really does want this relationship with his daughter. And that’s a really hard balance, to make a completely lovable narcissist. [Laughs.] And Jaime has done that.

Video: The ‘Jane the Virgin’ Cast Shows Us Their Best Telenovela Faces

At its heart, Jane the Virgin is actually a very conservative show: It has strong family values, and shows the virtues of morality and purity and faith. That’s rare on TV these days.
Yeah, I would say it’s a show about good people. Good people can be interesting, too, and have moral dilemmas. The purity aspect, for Jane, it’s a promise she made to her grandmother, and when you make that promise, it’s important to you. But what I hope we’ve also shown is, being a virgin is not who she is. She’s still sexy and accessible… all of those other things. It’s just one aspect of her life, and we try not to make her “other” or marginalize her because of that choice.

We try to show different points of view and not judge them too much and really just respect our characters’ choices. And if we respect our characters’ choices, we can have the interesting moments between the characters without feeling too judgmental. But inherently, I wanted this to be an optimistic show, and a show that you like to watch, and it didn’t have to be dark to be interesting. It still has its wicked moments, and it still has sly jokes, but it’s about fundamentally good people in a really crazy situation.

You’re already working on Season 2. I know you can’t say too much, but are there broad strokes you can tell us about what’s coming up? I assume we’re picking up right where we left off?
Yes, we’re going to pick up exactly where we left off, because we need to figure that out — how they’re going to get the baby back. And that’s obviously the focus, until the baby gets back. And I will say: The baby does come back. Sooner rather than later.

Beyond that, thematically, it’s Jane as a mother, and especially having had this traumatic experience with the baby, how she’s going to balance her own life, and normal mommy guilt vs. mommy guilt with a baby that was taken. The love triangle will reach an interesting resolution. There’s going to be just as many twists. For us, it’s about finding the balance: Where are the telenovela twists? Where are the comic twists? Where are the set pieces? We have big ones for every character; Petra has a giant one. And then we’ll be exploring family, and how do these three women raise a boy? What’s their idea of the perfect man? What values are they trying to instill in him? There’s a lot they don’t know. They know girls. They’re got girls down pat. And now they have a son, and how do they raise a great man? That’ll be part of the journey.

Jane the Virgin returns for Season 2 this fall on The CW.