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After this week there are just two episodes left for the fifth season of Riverdale (Season 6 premieres on November 16 with a five-episode ‘mini-series’), and they seem to have completely wrapped up the season’s over-arching storyline of the Lonesome Highway murders. At least one other storyline was wrapped up as well, so it will be interesting to see where things go from here. Of course, there will have to be a lot of personal healing to be done in the coming weeks.
In a minor bit of story that ties into one of the two bigger stories this week, Kevin begins to question who exactly they’re praying to in the Blossom religion (cult). Penelope begins to put questions into ‘dear, sweet’ Kevin’s mind about Cheryl doing this all for herself, and when confronted she doesn’t even have an answer. So she goes on a fast — and nearly falls over from hunger — but comes up with a painting to show Kevin they are praying to Gaia, Mother Earth. Kevin finally sees the light … that this is a cult, and he’s out but there’s always a place for him if he wishes to return.
Cheryl’s focus on a deity does play into the mining story with Archie. So far they have not hit the ‘mother lode’ of Palladium expected, and the money is not flowing in to keep paying for the crew or the operation. Cheryl gives Archie an advance of $517 (sponsored by Chime … there literally was a Chime commercial right after this scene) and he’s happy enough with that to continue the digging. Archie gets more good news from Veronica — her divorce is final. Of course it came at a cost as Chad wanted everything that Veronica paid for and alimony on top of that, and she was happy to give it to him just to get him out of her life. Probably telling him he’d never be Archie wasn’t the smartest move because the little weasel ran right to Hiram to cry on his shoulder, but Hiram told him he’d never have Veronica if Archie was around.
So handing Chad his untraceable ‘ghost gun’, Chad actually tried to sneak up on Archie and shoot him to death. Archie pulled a nice Captain America move with a trash can lid and hit Chad right in the nose with it, causing him to drop the gun and flee. Armed (no pun intended) with this information — apparently the gun was easily traced back to Hiram by his daughter — Ronnie went back to the tables with their lawyers and informed Chad that he’d get nothing but an attempted murder charge if he didn’t hit the pavement. Totally emasculated, Chad ran to Hiram, again, but Hiram was done with the pathetic ‘little bitch’ and also told him to get out of Riverdale. But did he listen?
With Chad unable to do Hiram’s dirty work, he did it himself by having a bomb planted at the Palladium mine, causing a cave in which trapped Archie and Eric. Hearing of the disaster, Veronica offered any assistance at any price to get Archiekins out of the mine, even helping remove large rocks with the rest of the crew. Gashing her hand open, Cheryl offers some First Aid and tells Ronnie to go home, freshen up and be ready to welcome Archie back to the land of the living. She reluctantly leaves, and Cheryl decides now is the time to call on Mother Earth, praying to the elements as hard as she can … and actually getting some results. But back at the Pembroke, Veronica is unaware that Chad has let himself in (girl, change those locks!) but he’s not stealthy enough for her to not hear him stomping around. Having her home assistant turn off all the lights and blast ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, she manages to get the upper hand on Chad. He drops his gun and the two fight over control, and just as Smithers walks in, he hears two gunshots. Asking for the music to stop and the lights to come on, he sees Veronica standing over the dead, bloody body of Chadwick Gekko.
Knowing all of this was her father’s doing, she managed to sneak up on him and knock him out, tying him to a chair, and informing him that Chad is dead and that if Archie dies, he will die too. She then gets the news from Cheryl that Archie and Eric have miraculously exited the mine, so Hiram lives to see another day, but as she cuts him free she finally tells him that their little ‘dance of death’ is done, and he’s the big loser. As she returns home with Archie, Hiram really does seem like a broken man, burning a photo of Veronica and Hermione, realizing he truly has lost two precious things in his life (he still has Hermosa, right?).
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Meanwhile, Tabitha has called a meeting with Betty and Jughead to help find a former waitress at the diner who’s been missing for some time. She fears she was a victim of the Lonesome Highway killer, and she hopes the town’s best mystery-solving team can figure out what happened to her. Toni also has an issue with a student who is planning to come out to her parents, but even though it seemed to go as well as it could, the young girl still decided to run away from home, causing more worry for everyone. But Jughead managed to get in touch with Lerman Logan (he’d been forbidden to reach out to the boy while he was a teacher, but now that he’s been fired …), and he comes to the diner to talk about his abduction. He mentions the shed, like a spaceship, and how he was actually rescued by a Mothman, who told him he was a mistake. Lerman also revealed that he knew he was near the highway because he could hear trucks rolling by.
Armed with all of this new information, including the fact that the guy who bit off his tongue and choked on it had Blossom DNA, Juggie and Betty pay another visit to Nana Blossom who tries to play coy with them but finally breaks, revealing the ‘alien’ remains they had found in the barrel of maple syrup — and had been stolen from Pop’s — was in fact a deformed human, a result of … Blossom family inbreeding (ick). In fact, there was a whole family of brothers she had taken to the woods to keep them out of public view so as to not bring even more shame to the family name, but they’ve since moved closer to … the highway. And the Mothmen story was just something cooked up to throw people off the trail, and the Blossom family fully embraced it. Jughead and Betty know now that Old Man Dreyfus was their culprit the entire time, and they had already been on the property which makes Betty even more anxious because Polly could have been there the whole time.
Dr. Curdle Jr. had a new body brought to the morgue, but this one was dismembered and difficult to identify, but through a DNA test they determined it was not Polly but it was the missing friend of Tabitha. Knowing that Toni’s student is also now missing, Jughead, Betty, Toni and Fangs form a posse to pay a visit to the junkyard, with Jughead acting as the decoy, conducting another interview with Dreyfus about the Mothmen. While the others search the grounds, Jughead doesn’t take long before he reveals he knows what Dreyfus and his brothers have been up to, and outside the brothers, dressed in their Mothmen get-ups, go on the attack, The Hills Have Eyes style. Toni does manage to find the shed and the girl, but she is attacked from behind, Fangs steps in a bear trap and Betty is nearly choked out. But they all prevail, rescue the girl and get Dreyfus to the police station.
With their rein of terror at an end, Betty asks Dreyfus to tell her where Polly is. She was at the junkyard the whole time, and he drew her a map of where to find her. Taking Alice along, the two make their way to an old car, and opening the trunk they find Polly’s body. It was a tragic and heartbreaking end to this story and to this episode.
So what comes next? From the preview, it looks like poor Alice is not quite ready to accept Polly’s death. And let’s give out some praise to Penelope Blossom herself, Nathalie Boltt, for her terrific directing on this episode.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8:00 PM.
What did you think of this episode? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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