Jane the Virgin EP on Tyler Posey's character and THAT new love triangle

Spoiler alert! This story contains major spoilers about the Jane the Virgin season finale. Click away if you haven’t seen it, lest you want Rogelio to rant at you.

Jane the Virgin has a come a long way this season. After losing her husband Michael midseason, she spent the next three years working to move on from him. And she did, before realizing she may have feelings for her baby daddy Rafael instead. Complicating her love life somewhat is the return of her first love Adam (played by guest star Tyler Posey). Helping her through all her feelings about love and marriage and moving on is a letter penned by Michael from before they got married.

Meanwhile, Petra has her own problems to deal with. Her twin Anezka is out of prison and armed with both a gun and the knowledge that Petra is the one responsible for killing Scott. Meanwhile, Rafael is grappling with losing all his money thanks to Luisa taking over the Marbella and the family trust after discovering that he’s not really her biological brother. Elsewhere in the hour, Xiomara and Rogelio finally walk down the aisle. However, the newlyweds won’t really be having a smooth “honeymoon” phase seeing as how Darci is pregnant with Rogelio’s daughter!

Ahead of the season finale, EW and a few other news outlets had a chance to speak to executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman about some of the season-closing hour’s big moments.

What were some of the things you were thinking about as you headed into the finale?
JENNIE SYNDER URMAN: We ended with Jane and Michael’s wedding last year, so I knew that this season was going to end with a wedding, but it had to be so different from Jane and Michael’s because that was the perfect wedding. So for a while, we were trying to come up with how this wedding would be and look and feel different because I felt like everybody needed a nice happy ending in the finale, especially this season. I didn’t want to end it with a missing baby, or something dramatic because I felt like that was what we did in the mid-season [finale]. I wanted to have a sense of catharsis and hope and future and to come full circle.

This is the first time Brett [Dier]’s returned since Michael died.
We’ve shot him as a photo that talks. But this is was his first time back…

Was it a challenge figuring out the perfect way to bring him back into the fold?
Totally. And in what capacity and how Jane could feel any romantic feelings if we’re also telling a story about Michael was a challenge, [as well as] how to balance that. There are always moments that we wanted to see. I’ve been waiting to see the moment when Alba and Michael practiced their vows, so we were trying to figure out what’s the story that we’re telling in the past and also not wanting to repeat what we did in the season premiere where we told like a full past story and a full present story. This wanted to live a little bit differently and not take up as much real estate with Michael, but just be really specific about the moments and then have him thematically tie everything together was our goal, and everybody loves when he’s back and misses him so much.

So Fabian took her through an arc where she had this other relationship. When that ended she started to think about what she wanted and that brought Rafael back in a small way. But his heart is somewhere else and we’ve always had Jane right in the center of love triangles, so it was interesting to me if it shifted. We’ve had a lot of people clamoring for her, but what does it suddenly feel like to not be the beloved one at the top? Especially because that’s how Jane was raised. She’s always sitting in the middle of the swing between her mom and her grandmother. She’s always been that person as the center. So part of her journey before this episode was being okay with not being in the center of their orbit. And then we wanted this episode to have some cathartic moments with Michael and move her into a new direction.

This new direction could put Jane in the middle of another love triangle with Adam and Rafael. What can you say about how that will change things and what you’re planning for their mindsets for next season?
When Jane sees Adam, you’re going to need to know what his backstory is, why she never thought she’d see him again, and why he was her first love. That’s going to take her on a real journey and obviously, there’s big history there. At the top of next season, Rafael’s lost all his money. He doesn’t have anything. His credit cards don’t work. And we have a villain rising in Luisa, whose heart is out for revenge. So everybody is grappling with their circumstances more than their romances. But it’s all going to play out in that first episode because we’ve already started working on it.

Is there going to be a time jump?
No. It’s continuous.

I’m assuming Adam’s going to be very different from Michael and Rafael. Is there anything that you can say about him?
He’s an illustrator of graphic novels. So he can illustrate and she can write. They’ll have a collaboration at some point. He’s more of a youthful energy. Jane has had a lot of weight on her shoulders and this is somebody that’s going to be reminding her that she’s 27 years old. He’s a little bit more adventurous than maybe Jane is right now.

Can you speak to why Tyler’s right for the role, and what he’s been like on the show so far?
We just love him, so we were thrilled that he said he would do it. Obviously, he has so much experience, but he also had very serious stuff on Teen Wolf and also can play this lighter stuff. I saw this H&M commercial where he just had this energy. And we wanted a new, fresh start for Jane, something that’s going to bring us into a new, exciting arena and he’s just got a natural charisma and an energy that’s going to be so different from Rafael and also Michael. He’s much more of a daredevil, which is trying for someone like Jane, but also exciting.

So we’ll see her stepping outside of the box a little bit?
You might. [Laughs] Yeah, he’s going to be pushing her towards things that she might not be comfortable with and part of that will be explained through their backstory and why they broke up and what happened at the end. He’s just in a different place. He doesn’t have kids. He’s a single guy and what that looks like is going to be interesting for us to play with, and romantic.

Any idea how long he’ll stick around?
I do. But I’m not going to say. [Laughs]

Do you anticipate this being the end of us seeing Brett on screen in new material?
No.

Is he still contracted to the show at this point? Can you say?
He’s contracted in our hearts. [Laughs] No, he wasn’t after the mid-season, but we love him and he loves being here so it’s definitely not the last time you’ll see him.

How much danger is Petra in? Anezka has a gun, so does she want to hurt her?
Yeah, she does want to hurt her. This is a fateful car ride for the two twisted sisters and she really wants to do away with her sister.

I’m going to assume Petra survives. Can you talk about what’s in store for her in terms of her love life? She’s now lost two guys.
Well, she hasn’t really. We left things very in the middle with Rafael. Petra, out of her own defensiveness and her own anxiety, pushed him away and he was disappointed by that. There’s a moment where Jane is feeling this for Rafael and you’re not quite sure what he’s feeling, but he made a big play for Petra in previous episodes and Petra was right. Jane did have feelings for him. So that’s something interesting that we’re going to play with. It felt very paranoid to Rafael, but we, the audience, know it wasn’t and that’s how we can get behind her as well. Their story is not finished.

What about Chuck?
Well, Petra has chosen Rafael well, she wanted to be with him. So, I’m sure we’ll see Chuck as the thorn in the Marbella’s side and the owner of the Fairwick and somebody who’s been dumped and is maybe not going to make their life easy. But emotionally her heart landed with Rafael’s.

Xo and Rogelio are now married. This is new for them. What can you say about how they’re going to be handling it?
The biggest thing is how they’re going to deal with this baby that Xo didn’t want. The theme of the episode was “full circle” and the way that Michael reacted when Jane was pregnant, but then came back. Now, Xo doesn’t want to be a mom, but she lived three years without Rogelio and it wasn’t planned, and she’s going for it. I’m really interested in exploring their marriage and having them be married. How is this relationship going to be with her and Darci and Rogelio together? How do they navigate that? How are you a newlywed when you have a baby on the way with someone else? It’s going to give us a lot of conflict and story potential, but also a lot of real obstacles that they’ll have to fight through to preserve their marriage. This is a marriage that they have chosen and are really working hard for, so they’re going to be in that mindset and it’s going to be more challenging than what they thought their honeymoon period would be, but I’m excited to play it.

Should there be any suspicion about whether it’s his kid or not?
No, it’s his kid. We like a big expanding family. Also, Justina is so incredible. We were all just clamoring to find a way to organically keep her in as much as we can have of her because she and Jaime are so amazing together. I both wanted him to be with Xo, but I wanted to be able to see a lot of Darci too, as much as I could, so I feel like it’s a real challenge, which makes it easier for us on the storytelling side because you don’t have to generate. You know what the challenges are and there are going to be a ton of them, which makes it fun and comedic and dramatic.

Does this mark the end of the Sin Rostro story line now that she can’t get out of jail?
No. She has tricks up her sleeve, but she’s in jail, but Luisa is empowered and we are going to see what it’s like for Rafael with no money.

What can you say about what Luisa in such a power position looks like? That’s so dangerous.
It’s so dangerous. That’s the problem. It’s so dangerous. If she had a helper, it would be Anezka. You can imagine… “Inmates running the asylum” I would say is a good description. Luisa doesn’t love the kids that are all around the kids’ hotel. Obviously, she’s going to struggle to handle everything. There’s twists and turns. She does have to work with either Petra or Anezka in some capacity. Her interest in the hotel ebbs and flows.

For season 4, are we going to ID the narrator at the end?
That will be at the end of the series. It’s not going to be a mystery. It’s part of the last two scenes. There are hints throughout. It’ll make sense eventually.

Speaking of the kind of end game, this episode being so much about fate, I’m curious what you would say to people who have been sort of rooting for Rafael this whole time? Especially after Michael’s death, there are a lot of people who thought that maybe that was the end game.
Rafael’s definitely still in it. But we would never want to go through Michael’s death to get to Rafael. That wasn’t the intention. Rafael and Jane had gone and met each other and had this big, romantic idea of “meant to be” and “fate,” but they didn’t know each other. So the three years for me was most importantly about making them best friends. Now that they know each other, if they do come back together at a certain moment, it’s with much more stakes and realism and not only in that magical, romantic sort of way. It would be more moved to reality than fantasy, which is where we started. I feel like whenever Rafael and Jane are on screen together, people are going to be reading into it. She’s grappling with feelings at the end of this. But he’s in another place. The Jane-Rafael is always going to be a major part of the show, the “what will happen there.”