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Imagine that I am giving Riverdale a standing ovation for completely wrapping up the ‘Jughead’s death’ storyline in a clever and satisfying way. I mean, as all over the place the storytelling has been this season, the producer obviously had a plan when this whole thing was teased at the end of Season 3. Add in all of the little flashforwards we got this season leading up to the big event, and these last three episodes have been more tightly focused than anything the series has done since Season 1.
The episode began with a delighted Jughead walking in on his Stonewall classmates, to the mild shock of them all including Professor Dupont. And he and Betty had a plan to suss out the ‘killer’ by locking them all in the study room and laying out the evidence of their whodunit … which was really more of a whydunit.
The episode made clever use of flashbacks to previous episodes that, now with some context, really show how planned out this entire storyline was, from Mr. Chipping’s suicide to Moose’s disappearance to the Ides of March party. We also got to see Betty reveal to FP that Jughead was alive and the need to stage a search party. We got to see the slightly extended moment when Archie said he had something to confess to his mother. We even found out how Veronica revealed the truth to her snoopy half-sister Hermosa and, thanks to her also being a licensed private investigator, how Hermosa got involved in uncovering some juicy facts about Donna Sweet. It was all constructed with such care.
With Jughead’s time alone in the bunker, he had plenty of time to piece together the timeline of what lead to his ‘death’ and during his big reveal, we learned it all went back to his grandfather’s time at Stonewall, when Dupont stole Forsythe’s Baxter Boys novel and sold it as his own. And it turned out that all of their classmates who died under mysterious and unusual circumstances were all by the hand of Dupont. That’s why Forsythe picked up and left his family; he was afraid he was the next to die. So all that bitterness on FP’s part was also because of Dupont’s actions. And this revelation led Dupont to exit the room the same way Mr. Chipping did — through the window. RIP Professor Dupont.
But what about Chipping? He wasn’t having an affair with Donna because the other person she claimed to have an affair with doesn’t even exist. Betty saw right through that story. Chipping, it turns out, recruited Moose as a sacrifice, to join the Stonewall Four who were all murdered by Baxter Brothers authors. But he was actually a decoy because Chipping also recruited Jughead. However, Chipping’s guilt got the better of him and he used that time that Jughead was ‘buried alive’ to get Moose out of Stonewall before he was killed. And that is what sent him out the window.
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But Donna, if she wasn’t having an affair, how was she the ‘mastermind’ of Jughead’s ‘death’? All four of Jughead’s classmates were involved with Bret luring Jughead to the woods, Donna blowing the Dragon’s Breath into Betty’s face and Joan hitting Jughead with the rock, which his beanie kept his skull from absorbing the full impact. Jonathan, who Donna claims has food poisoning, painted the rock with Jughead’s blood. We knew that previous authors had killed the other students, but it took these four to go after Jughead because they all pitched in on rewriting the story Jughead had submitted to Dupont.
Jughead did die but was resuscitated by Archie and Betty using CPR. Betty was able to get in touch with Charles who met them with an FBI medical van (from the 1950s apparently), and it was Charles who told them to clean up the site and burn their clothes. Previously all we had seen was Betty telling her friends that they would burn everything and never speak of this night again but … what she actually said was if Jughead didn’t survive they would go their separate ways and never speak of this night again.
But Donna still had more going on here. Not only did Dupont steal the Baxter Brothers from Forsythe — which Donna will now be ‘relauching’ — but one of the classmates he killed, Jane Dallas Brown, was Donna’s grandmother (that was the information Hermosa uncovered) and he also stole from her, the character junior female detective Tracey True who was introduced in the Baxter Brothers books. And now Donna has taken Tracey back. Or has she? Donna says any ‘evidence’ Betty has against her is circumstantial at best but she’s willing to hear Betty out. Betty tells Donna she should walk away from the Tracey True contract because the character, and her grandmother’s memory, deserves better than someone who would be responsible for so many deaths out of revenge … or not. If she chooses not to, Betty will make sure every newspaper in every major city gets the records of Donna’s connection to Jane. Check and mate.
The episode ends with our Fab Four celebrating at Pop’s. Jughead has been re-enrolled at Riverdale High but neither he nor Archie are on track to graduate this year. But Betty and Veronica plan to put their through their academic paces so they will. And then Kevin shows up to enlist everyone for the school talent show …
… which leads us into the April 5 annual musical episode, this year featuring the music of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and what appears to be a very Kevin-centric episode. The real question is what comes after that? There will be five more episodes to go (or not depending on how the current production shutdown over a crew member’s contact with the coronavirus plays out), so perhaps we’ll finally tie up the mystery of the VHS tapes and the resolution of the Charles/Chic storyline. Whatever happens, my hat is off to everyone for pulling off this complex storyline with real panache!
What did you think of this episode? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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