Warning: Spoilers for the season five premiere of Jane the Virgin below!
Jane the Virgin [1] returned on Wednesday to answer the mother of all cliffhangers: how is Michael Cordero still alive [2]?! The season five premiere wastes no time in getting into the nitty-gritty of Michael's miraculous return to the world of the living, which comes with an unfortunate side effect. Sadly, while Michael seems to be unscathed on the outside, he tells Jane how he now goes by the name Jason, speaks with a Southern accent, and also has amnesia. It begs the question will Michael/Jason ever get his memory back? [3]
Raf fills Jane in on how Rose (aka Sin Rostro) lured him to the prison for a quick chat, where she told him that she's responsible for kidnapping Michael. Apparently she orchestrated Michael's "death" by giving him a toxin that slowed down his heart rate long enough for her personal EMT drivers to take him away from the testing site. From there she bribed the morgue's pathologist to sign a death certificate and then put Michael through multiple rounds of electroshock therapy to wipe his memories.
Raf also notes to Jane that he ordered a DNA test, so it's definitely Michael. Then he asks Michael/Jason to tell his side of things. According to Michael/Jason (MJ? Mason? Jasel?), Rose dumped him in a field in Montana after stealing all his memories, and told him to start over. "So that's what I did," he says. "The lady said that I was in a whole lot of trouble, so I didn't know if I was a good guy or a bad guy."
So, will Michael/Jason ever get his memory back and get rid of all traces of that truly terrible accent? The neurologist he, Jane, and his mother go to see says that "there's so much about the brain that we don't know" and that it isn't an exact science, so . . . that's a solid maybe, people. The doctor suggests having Jane try to immerse Michael/Jason in familiar places and experiences and to bring him around people he used to know in an effort to jog his broken memory.
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Jane goes about this by reminiscing about their adorable first meeting. Unfortunately, he finds Jane's description of the moment "sad." His bad attitude remains throughout the rest of the day, which involves taking him to eat Cubanos at his favorite food truck, meeting Petra at the Marbella, and a ride on their beloved Ferris wheel. Sadly he seems almost disgusted by Jane's tales of his former life and can't imagine why he ever fell for her ("You do talk an awful lot").
But in the end, a small shred of the real Michael must still be in there because he comes over to Alba's house to apologize to Jane for his brusque behavior earlier that day and makes an endearing speech about how he knows "he's blowing up your life," and that if she wants him "to go back to Montana, just tell me. I'll go."
In the end, Jane decides that she's going to help Michael/Jason try to recover his memories, but that doesn't necessarily mean a romance between them is in the works — after speaking with him and reflecting on what they once had, she runs to Rafael's office to remind him that nothing about their relationship has changed and she wants to move in ASAP.
However, if Michael/Jason was to regain all of his memories, restoring him to the man Jane once fell in love with, would it be enough to woo her away from Raf? That's the question we'll likely have to contend with over the next few episodes, because something tells me Jane the Virgin is going to milk this wild twist for all it's worth.