Jane the Virgin series finale surprise: Adult Mateo is the narrator!

Who is the narrator? We think that this is a question a number of Jane the Virgin fans have been wondering over the past several years and now, the question has been answered — and we feel like it’s an answer that was hidden very much in plain sight!

As it turns out, the series finale tonight revealed that the narrator is an adult version of Jane’s son Mateo telling the story of his mother. We don’t think that this should come as a big surprise, and there are certainly people out there who guessed it. It just makes some sense for the narrator to become a character in this story in his own right, someone who isn’t just there as some disembodied voice who has no connection to anything or anyone. This was a clever way to give a little more of a grounded basis to the overall story when the dust settled.

Speaking via TVLine, executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman chose to address the big narrator question while also explaining why he has the accent that he does:

Well, it’s Mateo, but it’s a step further. It’s [that] Mateo goes on to become a voiceover artist, hence the accent. I wanted it to be a continuation of the layers of meta that we like to play in. I didn’t want to do flash forwards of how people will end up, but I liked knowing that he ended up well and successful and is married and is narrating his mother’s story. I think we’ve always been really clear about the fact that you’re watching a telenovela throughout the five years. There was just a question of how really explicit we’d make it at the end, and I always knew we would make it really explicit.

In the end, the decision was made to not make Jane the Virgin have a series of one cliffhanger after the next for the series finale — while we still take a never-say-never approach to the idea of either a season 6 or a spin-off down the road, this was a satisfying ending that makes it okay if it is the ending. There’s no real need to continue these stories now that Jane, Rafael, and so many other characters have the ending they’ve been striving for … but we’ll wait and see what happens.

For now, we want to know this from you: Are you happy with the Jane the Virgin series finale, and the big narrator reveal to go along with it? Be sure to share in the comments below. (Photo: The CW.)