Dramatic twists can be difficult to accomplish because writers need to prepare the audience for them while still keeping the suspense. That’s why The Sixth Sense works so well. We’re given clues all along, but we’re constantly redirected to other plot points. When done well, writers follow Chekhov’s famous quote about foreshadowing, “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” Keeping this in mind, Monday’s episode of Jane the Virgin delivered on a long promised, yet still shocking, plot twist killing Jane’s beloved husband, Michael.
Way back in the first season, the narrator told us that Michael would never stop loving Jane. In fact, “For as long as Michael lived, until he drew his very last breath, he never did.” We can’t say they didn’t warn us, but once Michael survived getting shot in the chest at the end of Season 2, I thought he was safe. Looking back on Monday’s episode, though, it’s clear that the writers built the entire story around this tragic twist.
When Michael tells Jane about his worst Halloween when he was too sick to go trick-or-treating the narrator talks about flashbulb memories, a phenomenon where “memories around big events seem clearer, but the periphery disappears. You remember the feeling, but not the details.” The spotlight flashes in the scene here illuminate the point both literally and metaphorically.
We revisit this idea again at the end of the episode when Jane tells Michael, “I am so proud of you,” before he leaves for his big LSAT exam. Little does she know that these tender words are the last she’ll ever say to him. Then the narrator gently tells us, “And, friends, it should be noted that Jane would play this moment over and over until it became a memory.” From there we follow Michael as he completes his test and starts to walk up to the front of the room to turn it in before collapsing and ultimately dying from complications from the gunshot wound he suffered. I suppose it was fatal after all.
As we watch helplessly, Jane gets the phone call that her husband is gone. We cry along with her as she falls screaming to the floor while Rafael tries to console her. Nothing can, of course. I think that’s why in the next scene we jump forward three years. It would be too painful otherwise. At least now we know that Jane will be okay, and so will we.
Readerish 