Inside Jane the Virgin’s Most Magical, Heart-Bursting Twist Yet (2024)

This post contains spoilers for Jane the Virgin Season 5, Episode 3.

Only Jane the Virgin could pull off a twist like the one dropped on fans Wednesday night. It was the kind of emotional reveal that takes years to set up—and a real mouthful to explain. The short version: after years of indecision, the show’s heroine, Jane Villanueva (Gina Rodriguez), decided Michael Cordero (Brett Dier), whom she’d loved since the age of 21, was her soulmate. The two got married in the Season 2 finale—and then Jane’s swoon-worthy groom got shot. Although Michael survived, the telenovela-inspired series had a devious trick up its sleeve: one season later, Michael died from complications resulting from the gunshot.

But then, in last year’s Season 4 finale, Michael was revealed to be alive. As fans learned this season, Rose faked his death and gave him amnesia through multiple rounds of shock therapy; he woke up in Montana with no memory of who he was or what had happened to him. A woman told him to start over, and so he did—as a bean-eating dog lover named Jason, who has a very thick mountain-man accent. And now, in Wednesday’s episode, came the big moment we’d all awaited with bated breath. After weeks of annoying the hell out of Jane, “Jason” finally remembered everything—thanks to a fishing pole and some falling insulation. The problem, of course, is that Michael re-emerged right after “Jason” told Jane he was going back to Montana—well, that, plus Jane’s heart now belongs to Rafael.

Playing “Jason”—a completely different version of his original character—was a heap of fun for Dier. Show-runner Jennie Snyder Urman told the actor about six months after his character’s death that Michael would come back. When he found out how that would unfold, Dier said, “I was so on board. I was so stoked.” The only hard part was keeping the reveal secret. “People would come up to me all the time and say, ‘Oh my God, I cried so much when you died,’” he recalled, “And I couldn’t say anything!”

Snyder Urman came up with the Montana twist; the idea of Jason eating from a can of beans, Dier said, was all him. He sent Snyder Urman several videos of himself driving in the car, honing his character as his phone recorded from the dashboard holster in front of him. “I think I was pretending there was a dog in the back seat,” Dier said.

Rodriguez remained on set to watch Dier film the scene in which Michael regains his memory—and she reacted pretty much how you might expect. “I just started bawling,” she said in a recent interview. “Because for one, Brett Dier is such a phenomenal f*cking actor. Acting across from him, between action and cut I was like, ‘I’m head-over-heels in love with this man. This is the love of my life. This is my husband.’ . . . He’s just such a love.”

That scene is brief, but pivotal. As Dier put it, “That was a really fun scene to shoot even though it was very hard. . . . I wanted to play it like Michael had awakened and he was living in a dream world the whole time.” Brad Silberling, the episode’s director, talked the actor through the montage moment by moment, as Dier worked to time his performance perfectly—making sure to turn around at precisely the right time. In total, the actor recalled it took eight or nine takes.

“I think he nailed that moment,” Rodriguez said of her co-star. “As an actor, there’s a lot of really cool challenges, especially on this show because they’ll always go from zero to a hundred like this. It’ll be like, ‘Oh, you’re going to find out your husband died on a phone call and there’ll be no words. Cry!’ . . . It really is an exercise.”

In the end, what really sells this twist is the same emotional grounding that’s always made even Jane’s zaniest moments sing: the carefully crafted bond between its characters, as played by two performers whose chemistry and mutual admiration shine through. When asked about working with Rodriguez, Dier matched her enthusiasm: “I love working with Gina,” he said. “She’s just a pro, and we really have good chemistry together, so it’s always fun. We’re always working off each other; she’s always so present to work with. Every time she does a take, it’s different.”

And so, it’s with a tip of our cowboy hats and a click of our spurs that we bid a hearty adieu to our friend Jason. He might be a good line dancer, but we can’t say we’ll miss him too much; Michael’s better. And more than anyone, it’s Dier’s girlfriend who is probably the most excited to kiss that bearded lug goodbye. Dier adopted a strict diet of black beans and lentils to put on weight for the role: “Basically, all I did was eat beans,” he recalled. “I would have the worst gas for three weeks straight.” That said, he added, “I wanted to keep doing it.”