In Her Season 2 Finale, Jane The Virgin Looks Forward To A Wedding (And The Stuff That Follows One)

No one who's been watching Jane The Virgin with any degree of attentiveness was surprised that, for Michael, the Season 2 finale ended not with the consummation of his marriage to his longtime love and best friend Jane, but with this.

Our narrator has been telling us since the show's first season that Michael would love Jane until the day he died, in a way that left most of us with little doubt that this would be a day we'd see (and not in a flashforward). And as the second season has proved over and over how well suited Michael and Jane are as a couple -- not just with the lovey stuff, though that's obviously important too, but in the ways they've worked out nuts-and-bolts couple stuff: matters like Mateo's care and household budgeting. These are two people who've been through it and who, having recovered their happiness together, don't seem to have taken it for granted. Did I assume as soon as Jane and Michael got engaged that he was about to face mortal peril of some kind or other? Sure. We all did. So I'm glad the show gave us such a lovely wedding first.

Jane and Michael's wedding has itself faced mortal peril at several points since their engagement, starting with the flood at the Villanueva house and continuing through last week's strike threat, which forced the whole affair to get pushed up by several days. Jane has always held it together through each calamity, and with the finale's flashback story, we find out why: since Jane was a little girl, she's loved the story of Alba's perfectly imperfect wedding, at which Alba broke a heel just as she was starting her walk down the aisle.

The trappings are superficial. Jane has always known that her wedding would be more than an excuse for her to play princess for a day; as she tells Xo in the finale, "This is the important part: the actual sacrament of marriage." Alba couldn't have indoctrinated her granddaughter with fears about ruining her "flower" if Jane wasn't already primed with her own sincere belief in the Catholic liturgy. Jane's wedding isn't just a "We Love Each Other" cabaret she and Michael are headlining; it's a mass.

And of course, since this is a comedy, there must be more calamities as the wedding approaches. Michael forgot to change their honeymoon arrangements when the wedding date moved up; when he splurges on a fancy suite, it sparks a mid-rehearsal fight about his failure to consult Jane about it. Rogelio is furious at Xiomara since he's present when Esteban's "sex basket" is delivered and he knows exactly what it signifies. Then new walker Mateo gets a little too confident on the altar.

After Jane's ordered Rogelio and Xiomara to fake getting along if they must, and Jane and Michael have mutually apologized for the hotel spat, the Villanueva women reconvene at the Marbella the night before the wedding.

And Alba tells Jane the real story of her wedding: that when the priest asked if anyone knew of a reason Alba and Mateo Sr. should not be wed, a guest leapt up, announced that Alba was no longer a virgin, and snatched off her veil. "So the veil I'm wearing tomorrow...?" asks Jane.

All three women burst out laughing, and the viewer is reminded again that while this family was functioning perfectly well before, Alba's admission to Jane that she did not wait for marriage to have sex has opened up this multi-generational relationship immensely. Alba really seems to me like a different person now that she's stopped internalizing her own shame about her early choices, and all three of them are better friends to one another now that they can be more honest and -- particularly in Alba's case -- less judgmental. (Xo's impulsive tryst with Esteban is, of course, an unfortunate exception, for a variety of reasons.)

The next day's catastrophes also put a button on some of the other plotlines that have run through the season, starting with Jane's academic work and her wrangling with her advisor. When Jane gets a new idea for the story she wants to write as her thesis, Donaldson calls her in for a meeting, and even though the wedding is less than two hours away, Jane doesn't whine for an extension or even mention the huge life event she may be jeopardizing by trying to further her career as a writer: she puts her gown in a garment bag, calls Michael to explain the situation (and -- maturely -- give him the opportunity to tell her he'd rather she didn't, not that either of them thinks he will or that she'd necessarily turn back if he did), heads straight to a meeting with the thesis committee, and nails it. It's slightly awkward that when Jane is in the middle of misbuttoning her dress, it's Donaldson -- who "hates the marriage plot!," as the narrator reminds us -- who comes upon her in the bathroom and gets drafted into fixing it (or, as Donaldson puts it, "locking [her] into the patriarchy"). As Jane is hustling out, Donaldson stops her to congratulate her sincerely...on getting her new thesis approved. I love that instead of giving us a storyline about the tough teacher who's ultimately melted by the plucky heroine, Donaldson has stayed utterly herself since we first met her: if her relationship with Jane has improved, it's because she's forced Jane to be more serious and work harder to meet Donaldson's very high expectations. It's an important lesson for the show's younger viewers to learn: not all professional associates are nurturing and warm, and sometimes it's better if they aren't.

Then, there's the matter of Rafael, still in love with Jane. It would have been very easy for the show to take the soap opera route here and have Rafael give in to his feelings and declare himself to Jane literally at the church door, so that even if she did still decide to marry Michael knowing all the facts, Rafael would have soured the day. Instead, the show let Rafael act like most real people would, realizing he'd missed his chance and that telling her anything now other than that she looks beautiful...

...would be selfish. (That's not to say Rafael won't still find himself in a soap opera plot before the season ends -- just that Jane isn't part of it.)

The wedding itself also affords several opportunities to underline the show's important themes. After Rogelio and Xiomara's Esteban-related scuffling at the rehearsal caused Fr. Gustavo to suggest maybe they edit the number of family members walking Jane down the aisle, there's no question the right people end up doing it.

Rogelio gets to escort Jane from the first pew to the altar (giving Michael an uncomfortably long hug after he's done so) -- Jane loves him and wants him involved -- but it's the women who raised Jane and got her to this day who are really seeing her into the next phase of her life. And Michael proves he's prepared to become a full member of Jane's family when it comes time to deliver his vows...

...and he recites them in Spanish. Jane/me:

When Michael and Jane are married, Jane takes her bouquet and sets it at the feet of a Virgin Mary statue on the altar, setting off a fantasy in which the statue, the choir, and Jane's closest relatives all exhort her to "go forth and get laaaaaaaaaaid!" It's cute, because...you know, the series title's not a joke. But the wedding is so lovely and meaningful that we don't feel like Alba's long-ago crumpled-flower analogy has really deprived Jane of much at all. She's married someone she truly loves; that he'll be the one with whom she has sex for the first time -- and every time forever afterward -- is special (and that it now can happen without any moral or religious impediment is surely something for a gospel choir to celebrate in song, if anything is).

With the sweet emotional stuff taken care of, the show can hurtle through the plot points that set up its soapy cliffhanger. Anezka gives Petra locked-in syndrome so that she can assume Petra's identity, "seduce" Rafael (which, let's be honest: it's rape, and now the second time someone with his ex-wife's face involved him in her sexual/reproductive decisions without his consent), and enact her and Magda's plan to get him married either to Petra or "Petra" again. After a tender moment in which Xo and Ro agree that they both still want to be together and would if they were in agreement on the matter of having children together (she's still opposed), she discovers that she's become pregnant by accident, and it looks like Esteban is the father. And juuuuuuuust when Michael and Jane, at very long last, are about to consummate their marriage, he goes out for ice and...well.

That Rose -- for indeed, it is she, and apparently has been all along -- didn't actually die in the hospital all those episodes ago is not a huge surprise (though the fact that this supervillain decided to pose as an Alabamian without learning about "Roll Tide!" is; even I know that and I'm CANADIAN); nor is a delay on Jane's losing her virginity even after becoming a married woman for real. After a Season 1 cliffhanger that revolved around Jane's kidnapped newborn, the stakes had to be raised. Once a couple on a soap opera finally manages to get together, the clock starts ticking on their being pulled apart again, and we got more of Jane and Michael as a happy couple than anyone might have expected -- long enough for me to accept them, then root for them, and now really be heartbroken for them. Even if Michael survives, Jane's really being put through the wringer when all she's trying to do is build a life.

...Though if Michael does die, Jane would probably get a pretty great book out of it. Then even Donaldson would have to admit Jane's wedding really was worth it!