The entirety of Jane the Virgin‘s final season will make you cry, if Jennie Snyder Urman and Gina Rodriguez have their way.
The executive producer and the star of the CW series took the stage at the TV Critics’ Association press tour on Thursday to talk about the fifth and final season, and not only did they tear up as they addressed reporters, but they promised there will be more tears.
“How much are you going to cry throughout the entire season?” Rodriguez said in answer to a question about how much the finale will make us cry.
“I cried a lot in the editing room if that’s any indication,” added Urman. “A writer in our room, Carolina Rivera, once described telenovelas to me as ‘a pornography of emotion,’ and that crystallized in my mind somehow. It’s just like, you juice it to the max and you feel everything and then you ground it after that, but let these characters feel. And so we go through all the feels this season, certainly.”
The final season of course has to immediately address the return of Michael (Brett Dier), who died in season three and now appears to be back, but in a broader picture, Snyder says the focus is on “things coming full circle.”
“I want to revisit certain moments, like moments that visually, emotionally, and in storylines that feels similar in some ways, and mirrored, in some ways, where we started, but have showed how much these characters have grown and changed.”
For example, some fans who know the pilot well might recognize the moment when Jane shows up at a guy’s workplace in a bright yellow dress.
“There’s things like that all throughout,” Snyder said. “We’re going to revisit a few issues that have come up with the couples in their relationships that are handled in different ways because you’re not the same person five years later.”
Snyder says she wants “a real sense of closure at the end,” and that’s the one word she was able to use to describe how people will feel at the end of the show: closure.
While she didn’t want to spill much and there’s not much she can spill without spoiling the season four cliffhanger (Is Michael really Michael??), Snyder was able to say one thing, romance-wise.
“You should hold out for a romantic ending in some way. What the romance is is going to be TBD.”
And finally, will not see narrator Anthony Mendez on screen, but the series finale will explain “the context of the narration, and who the narrator is within the world of the show,” so all those “the narrator is Mateo” theories are still alive, friends.
As for what you can expect from the beginning of the season, we are in full agreement with Snyder that the first episode is pretty shocking and the end of the third is extremely shocking, so it’s likely going to be a full season of shocks, tears, and if you’re us, some screaming. (We love this show, what can we say?)
Jane the Virgin returns March 27 on The CW.