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Let’s Talk About ‘The Stand’:
- Jughead details in what may be his last article how Percival has basically sealed Riverdale off from the rest of the world, meaning no one is coming to help save the town.
- Tabitha, Cheryl and Heather use the Holy Grail to capture the evil bubbling up from the hellmouth they opened by moving Pop’s (but the Whyte Wyrm is still there so how did moving just the diner but leaving the basement open a hellmouth?).
- Archie has Reggie and Cheryl torch Percival’s now empty shop (save for Hiram’s portrait, which Reggie takes) so he has no place to hide.
- Betty, Kevin and Archie are dealing with the executions of Alice, Tom and Frank, although Archie’s take is that Frank was a soldier in a war and he knew what his fate may be. Toni and Fangs get Moose back to Riverdale to console Kevin.
- Archie and Percival plan to meet to lay out ground rules for their battle, and Veronica is enlisted to negotiate the terms which may include giving him half of Riverdale.
- Tabitha reveals that one of the two successful scenarios she saw involved Archie and Veronica meeting with Percival.
- Percival is controlling more of the town, enlisting them as the new Goolies under Twyla’s leadership.
- Percival allows Archie and Veronica to reclaim their dead, and Cheryl will use her powers to resurrect them but … he still has their heads.
- Percival casts a spell to ensure the deaths of Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Cheryl, which causes Tabitha’s divine senses to tingle.
- Toni and Fangs come up with a plan to defeat Percival using Baby Anthony.
- It finally dawns on Tabitha that all of her scenarios regarding the battle with Percival were in Riverdale, but perhaps Rivervale is where they will actually have success.
Here we are at the penultimate episode of the sixth season of Riverdale and I have to wonder if this season wasn’t written as a possible final season. Yes, the show is coming back for a seventh and final season, but based on the preview for the season finale, I’m already scratching my head as to how things will continue … and how exactly this season will end.
But for this week, the situation grows more dire for those in Riverdale not under Percival’s control. There is no question now that he did in fact execute Alice, Tom and Frank for the sins of their family members. Betty isn’t getting much comfort from Polly who tries to assure her their mother is ‘in a better place’, while Archie just sees Uncle Frank as a casualty of a war, stating that Frank knew what he was getting in to by joining Percival. At least Toni and Fangs took some pity on Kevin and got Moose back from New York to console him. Which wasn’t easy considering Percival has sealed the town’s borders, effectively cutting Riverdale off from the rest of the world. There will be no reinforcements coming to save them. But knowing now that the evil bubbling up from the hellmouth under Pop’s is what is feeding Percival’s power, Tabitha, Cheryl and Heather use the Holy Grail as a vessel to capture the black ooze. This does lead to one slight plot hole: if they moved the physical building but left the foundation/basement intact, then how did they open the hellmouth? I guess I’m just thinking a bit too hard about that.
Archie is leading the charge now to defeat Percival. His first plan of action is to take all of Percy’s cursed objects from his shop, but when Reggie gets there all that’s left is the portrait of Hiram Lodge. Archie orders the place torched so Percival can’t use it as a safe house and Cheryl happily obliges. But Reggie took the portrait with him. Why, we don’t know. Is he going to keep it, or give it back to Veronica? Or does this perhaps signal that Hiram himself might reappear? With the shop now a pile of ashes, Archie and Percival are going to meet at the Babylonium to lay some ground rules for their battle, and he enlists Veronica to be the negotiator. They present some option to the group before the meeting, assuring Toni and Fangs that anything involving Baby Anthony is off the table. Veronica asks if everyone is okay offering Percival half the town, along the same lines that once separated Serpents territory from Goolies territory. Not the best option but perhaps the only one that they can live with at this point. But Tabitha approaches Archie and Roni before they leave, revealing that in one of the two scenarios in which they defeat Percival, the two of them did meet with him … and Veronica shot him point blank. He may be immortal but he isn’t invulnerable.
At the casino, they discover the place is filled with Goolies led by Twyla Twist, but how? Didn’t all of the Goolies die? A closer look revealed that these Goolies are their friends and neighbors (including a leather-clad Principal Weatherbee) under Percival’s control. As the two confront Percival in his office, Veronica does indeed pull a gun on him, but when she pulls the trigger flowers pop out of the barrel. With that not working, Percival tells them there will be no negotiations, he wants Riverdale all to himself, and he also has a weapon in hand that can penetrate Archie’s skin. But as a show of ‘good faith’, Percival allows Archie and Veronica to leave the casino with their dead so they can properly mourn them. Twyla is perplexed as to why he would do this, and is even more concerned when he lets slip that her new band of Goolies are nothing more than cannon fodder … and that includes her as well. But when Archie and Veronica return to the relocated Pop’s so Cheryl can use her powers to resurrect their loved one … they discover that Percival has retained the heads he chopped off. There’s nothing Cheryl can do unless the bodies are complete.
But Percival has more tricks up his sleeve, literally, as he uses a spell over several dolls representing people Archie and company know. At Archie’s house, he is laying out a new plan to Reggie on how to draw Percival to the forest for their final battle. As Percival’s spell takes hold, Reggie goes into some kind of trance and tries to kill Archie, stabbing him several times with one of Percival’s Daggers of Meggido. Despite the stabbing, Archie is able to choke Reggie into unconsciousness but Tabitha has sensed that the heart of Riverdale is in danger. Betty, at home alone, finds her house invaded by an intruder — a Frankensteinian version of Glen, gray-skinned and stitched together. She lures him into the garage where she battles him … with a chainsaw, leaving the twitching pieces scattered on the floor. Veronica gets a surprise visit from her rifle-wielding abuelita seeking revenge for the murder of Hiram. Veronica is able to subdue her by using her venomous power to paralyze the woman until she can figure out what to do about the attacker. At Thorn Hill, Jason asks Cheryl to come play but when she tells him she’s busy at the moment, he draws an arrow from his quiver and takes a shot, hitting Heather in the shoulder. Cheryl flees to draw him away before he kills Heather, and after a deadly game of Marco Polo Cheryl realizes that bringing Jason back probably wasn’t the best idea, so she uses her powers to incinerate him (how will this affect Polly?). Tabitha and Jughead race to Archie’s house to save him, and find his dog licking the stab wounds. Within moments, Archie is whole again. The dog once healed himself so his saliva must also have healing properties, and by this point Reggie and Abuelita Lordes are back to their old selves.
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Toni shows up at Archie’s with a plan to defeat Percival once and for all, and this one involves Baby Anthony. They all know that the baby is also an immortal, and that is the one thing that terrifies Percival because they could be engaged in battle for millennia, long after the rest of them are gone but how can a baby be used to defeat Percival? What if Anthony is grown? Fangs and Toni are willing to miss his childhood if this plan saves the town, and Tabitha suggest that she created a time loop with herself in Rivervale so perhaps she can create a time bubble around the baby, allowing him to age while the rest of them stay the same. It works and the now grown Anthony is ready to fight, so the plan is to lead the Serpents into the Babylonium to subdue the Goolies while Anthony makes his way to Percival in a surprise attack since Percival won’t know who the grown man is. While Twyla takes a couple of throwing stars to the face — ouch — Anthony makes his way to Percival led by Kevin, who gets shot walking through the door. When Percival realizes who Anthony is, he transports himself to outside the casino, using a spell to seal everyone else inside.
All is not lost however. As Jughead and Tabitha discuss Jughead’s fate where he dies in every scenario, Tabitha suddenly realizes that all of her scenarios were set in Riverdale. Jughead can open a portal to Rivervale where everything operates differently, so that may be how they can defeat Percival without Jughead dying. Cheryl also has some news for Archie that may help — Bailey’s Comet, which Percival has been counting on to help him accomplish his goals, is arriving over Riverdale a day later than he had planned, so that gives them a slight advantage as his powers won’t be at their peak just yet. As everyone reconvenes at Pop’s, Tabitha and Jughead reveal the plan about taking the fight to Rivervale. First they need to rebuild Pop’s on its original location, and with another time bubble Tabitha is able to speed up the operation into a matter of hours instead of days.
At the appointed hour, Percival arrives at the newly rebuilt Pop’s to confront Archie while the others watch from inside. Percival has his magical mace and Archie has a baseball bat and as the two battle Percival gets the upper hand, smugly satisfied that Archie’s friends we watch… wait, where are they? Everyone is now in the parking lot surrounding Percival but he’s turning their powers against them. Betty is blinded, Veronica is poisoned, Cheryl is an ice sculpture … and Jughead is sitting inside waiting. Percival enters Pop’s and Jughead suggests a game of mind control, with the loser getting lobotomized. Percival assures Jughead he’ll never be able to break into his mind, but they forge ahead. And he was right because that door is firmly locked, while Percival easily gains entry to Jughead’s, quickly tearing pages out of his memory. But he is surprised when Jughead shows up in his own mind and reveals that Percival isn’t where he thinks he is because when he entered Pop’s diner, he actually passed through a portal and is now in Rivervale with a different Jughead and a different set of Jughead’s friends … who all have one of the seven daggars, and while he was distracted by Jughead they all took turns stabbing Percival (all seven had to be used to actually kill him). As Percival slowly bled out, Tabitha took him to the forest to meet with Mr. Cypher. Percival tried to argue that since he was immortal he couldn’t have sold his soul, but Mr. Cypher’s contract begged to differ, and off the two went to Hell. But before he left, Percival mumbled something that sounded like an incantation.
Back in Riverdale, things are slowly returning to normal. Percival is gone, and Cheryl was able to resurrect Alice, Tom and Frank, reuniting them with their families. But all was not well as Cheryl and Heather asked Archie to gather everyone together for some shocking news — Bailey’s Comet is not going to pass over Riverdale … it’s going to crash into Riverdale causing an extinction level event, thanks to Percival’s final words before his soul was snatched away. So now the question is how will Riverdale survive for one more season?
Riverdale airs Sundays at 8:00 PM.
What did you think of this episode? Let us know in the comments section below.
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