Jane the Virgin Faces Every Character’s Worst Nightmare in “Chapter Eighty-Five”

And with that, my friends, we return to the land of the Jane the Virgin Love Triangle, also known as the part of every season where I lose all confidence in my ability to assign objective ratings. Consider this 8.1 a begrudging compromise between the 8.7 earned by Jane (Gina Rodriguez) and Petra’s (Yael Grobglas) drunken decision-bonding, Petra and JR’s (Rosario Dawson) truth-bound reunion, and Jane and Michael’s (!) platonic catch-up montag. The 7.5 I’d prefer to give to everything else related to the return of the Toxic Triangle. I am very sorry, folks. I just hate it.

Fitting, then, that the underlying theme of this week’s outing is facing down your worst nightmare—and fascinating that, of all those who face their nightmares, it’s Petra alone who comes out better in the end.

First, the good, well, big, news: Michael (Brett Dier) has his memories back! Like, for real. If you had even a shred of doubt at the end of “Chapter Eighty-Four” that the flood of Michael-memories that hit Jason when his fishing rod knocked plaster snow down from Alba’s porch ceiling was going to stick, “Chapter Eighty-Five” quells any and all of them. Michael may retain Jason’s distaste for cubanos (“cooBAnos”) and slight high plains drawl, but in all the ways it really matters—investing in Jane’s hopes and dreams, marveling at Petra’s personal growth, everything #Brogelio—he’s Michael to the core. (The only reason my 8.7 wasn’t higher, truly, was that we weren’t given the Michael-and-Rogelio reunion scene we’ve all been dreaming of since Jason first showed up in Rafael’s apartment last spring.)

I may not like the love triangle that telenovela law dictates must follow (it is my own worst Jane the Virgin nightmare), but from both a storytelling perspective and just a plain old human one, Michael getting his memories back is a heart-expandingly good thing. Arguably, it dampens the lasting impact of the shock of his death, and undermines the series’ reminder that being a kind and decent person doesn’t guarantee anyone a happy ending, even (or especially) in Jane’s tropical-hued moral universe. Michael was good; he died. Jane is good; she was widowed. Life is just like that. But just because Jane the Virgin is so often about the chaotic, often unfair vicissitudes of life, that doesn’t mean that good people should give up on the possibility of good things happening to them. That is antithetical to Jane’s whole reason for being; Jane the Vigin is about the winds of chaos, yes, but it’s also about sweeping happily-ever-afters. It’s about happiness coming to those open to looking for it, and open to doing the work to keep it. Michael got his memories back, and he and Jane got to catch up on everything the best friends had missed in each other’s lives for the past several years! What a good, happy thing.

Just in case you remain skeptical about the storytelling value of reversing the emotional and interpersonal impact of Michael’s Big Death, Jane’s got you. As “Chapter Eighty-Five” makes clear from the moment Lorenzo Lamas threatens to take Little Jane away from her mom and grandma in the episode’s flashback nightmare framing device, nothing about having the best, most unlikely miracle come your way can protect you from the consequences that will necessarily follow. It may not be realistic, but the frank truth of Michael’s return from the dead puts the same kinds of compelling screws into the narrative as all the radical honesty for which I’ve so often praised Jane. Telling the truth opens up paths in the storytelling darker and more perilous than hiding it ever could: Bringing Michael back into the world, and giving him back his both his memories and his heart, does the same thing, as the last scene between Jane and Rafael (Justin Baldoni) confirms. It is a miracle; it is a nightmare.