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Let’s Talk About ‘The Witching Hour(s)’:
- The appearance of Bailey’s Comet once every sixty-five years drives three intertwined stories of the Blossom family.
- Nana Rose Blossom is preparing to shuffle off this mortal coil, and Cheryl has a plan to help.
- Abigail Blossom, circa 1892, is operating a school for girls out of Thornhill, and the arrival of a potential new teacher, Thomasina Topaz, brings danger to the house.
- Abigail is also confronted with the death of her twin brother in the war, and the arrival of a man claiming to be his best friend.
- Poppy Blossom, circa 1957, enjoys sharing time with the women of Rivervale, often offering them special herbs to deal with their domestic problems. Things get out of hand when Bitsy’s (Betty) husband finds out just exactly how Poppy has helped his wife.
- The husbands of town rally and accuse Poppy of being a Communist, and when she refuses to sign a confession she is thrown in jail, with Bitsy being the one to come to her rescue.
- In the present, Cheryl sits with Nana and reads her the storis of Abigail and Poppy while they await the arrival of a friend to help with Nana’s transition.
- The friend arrives, Sabrina Spellman, and she and Cheryl perform a spell over Nana under the glare of Bailey’s Comet that has a very surprising outcome.
- Does anyone writing for this show know how comets work?
The fourth of the five Rivervale stories dropped this week, and unlike the previous installments that featured all of the core characters in their own little vignettes, this week’s puts Cheryl Blossom and two of her ancestors (all played by Madelaine Petsch) in the spotlight in their own eras. Besides the Blossoms, the stories’ linking device is the arrival of Bailey’s Comet, a celestial phenomenon that passes over Rivervale every sixty-five years. And boy, does it pass over, defying all the actual physics of a comet. The stories of the Blossom women come as Cheryl sits with Nana Blossom, who is beginning her transition to the afterlife. While they await a friend to help with the process, Cheryl reads to Nana the stories of Abigail and Poppy from the Blossom journal. The episode cuts back and forth between the stories so we’ll break them down separately.
Abigail Blossom, 1865
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Like Cheryl, Abigail has turned Thornhill into a school for girls. Abigail receives a visitor, a young woman looking for employment as a teacher by the name of Thomasina Topaz (suggesting Cheryl and Toni were always fated to be lovers). Upon learning that Thomasina (Vanessa Morgan) does not have a husband, Abigail is more than happy to give the young woman a teaching position, but it isn’t long before their styles clash when Thomasina wants to school the girls on Bailey’s Comet, subverting Abigail’s curriculum. The woman eventually smooth things over but a knock at the door after their love is declared brings some shocking news — Constable Keller (Casey Cott) is searching for a murderess and believes her to be at Thornhill.
Abigail lies and shoos the constable away with the warning of a pox upon Thornhill, and demands the truth from Thomasina. She confesses that when Abigail asked if she had a husband, she did not lie however her husband was abusive and she had no choice but to kill him. Abigail sympathizes and protects Thomasina but it isn’t long before there is another knock at the door, this time a man named Finn Fogarty (Drew Ray Tanner), a soldier with claims of being Abigail’s twin brother’s best friend (and the way it’s laid out it seems they were more than just friends). However, he has come with bad news — James has died in battle, and a letter from James asks that Abigail marry his best friend. Thomasina, however, believes there is something shady about Finn but Abigail’s sight is clouded by thoughts of her dear brother.
While Finn is chopping wood, Thomasina encourages Abigail to go through his belongings and they discover tools of witchcraft in his trunk, including photos of posed dead people that he’s killed, but he comes back sooner than expected and catches them in his room. Finn threatens to kill Thomasina unless Abigail marries him within the hour and he demands she go to town to fetch the vicar. The ceremony is performed but Abigail has a plan to take care of Finn during his most vulnerable moment, while they are preparing to consummate the marriage. Abigail consummates it with an axe to his chest, but finds he’s already murdered Thomasina and posed her body (also photographed her and developed and printed the picture!). Finn, somehow still alive after a few whacks to the chest, and curses Abigail as the comet’s blinding light shines through the windows to live alone, without love, forever. And then he dies.
Poppy Blossom, 1957
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Poppy enjoys socializing with her lady friends of Rivervale – Elaina (Mädchen Amick), Bitsy (Lili Reinhart), Velma (Camila Mendes), and Tammy (Erinn Westbrook). Abigail’s ‘salon’ is meant to discuss topics of the day but they end up being bitch sessions about the women’s husbands. After the women leave for the night, Tammy stays behind and tells Poppy that her husband refuses to let her work at Pop’s, so Poppy offers her some of her own special herbs that she can put in her husband’s drink to make him sick so Tammy has to run the diner and show him she can do it. And the ploy actually works.
Bitsy then reveals to Poppy that he marriage to Jack (Cole Sprouse) is on the rocks, and he wants her to have another baby. Poppy suggests divorce but that is off the table (he’s Catholic!), so Poppy gives her some ginger root from her garden that will act as birth control, and he’ll never have to know. Overcome with the love and support from Poppy, Bitsy surprises her — with a kiss! Which she then has to completely play off before running out of Thornhill. Velma also comes to Poppy to complain about the spark missing from the bedroom and Poppy offers her a blend of herbs for her own special aphrodisiac, and a copy of the Kama Sutra.
But the gift and the kiss are quickly discovered by Jack, who threatens to kill Poppy if he doesn’t stay out of his marriage, and the other men soon show up to run Poppy out of town. But Thornhill is her home and she puts on a show of having a meal at Pop’s for all the town to see. But it all backfires as when she arrives home the men are ransacking Thornhill, with Kirk Keller informing her that she’s been accused of being a Communist (but like Lucille Ball, the only thing red about Cheryl is her hair … and dress). Refusing to sign a confession, Poppy is put behind bars but she’s surprised to receive a visit from Bitsy, who reveals she in indeed pregnant. But the tender reunion quickly turns ugly as Bitsy once again conforms to her husband’s ideology and turns her back on Poppy again.
But when Bitsy is ready to deliver, it’s Poppy who is summoned to act as a midwife, delivering the baby under the glare of Bailey’s Comet … and slipping Bitsy some special herbs to place in her husband’s tea. A year later, Jack is dead, suspected of poisoning but it seems some natural ingredients don’t leave a trace in the body. As for Poppy, her reward for helping deliver the baby was house arrest at Thornhill where, like Abigail, she would live out her days alone.
Cheryl, 2022
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While Chery’s students venture outdoors to watch for the arrival of Bailey’s Comet — seriously, do they really need a telescope considering how bright that thing is? — Britta comes to Nana’s room to find out what’s going on. She knows it’s something but she doesn’t know what. Cheryl agrees to let her stay while she reads the stories and awaits her friend. And when she finally arrives, we see that it’s Sabrina Spellman … finally! It seems the women are longtime friends and their covens shared a softball league. They explain to Britta that Sabrina is there to help with a transference. But Britta must leave the room. Only witches can be present during the transference.
Asking Nana if she’s ready, the trio begins reciting an incantation just as the comet blazes past Rivervale once again. This is a ceremony that can only be accomplished during a major celestial event like a comet, so Nana had some good timing. Of course, this transference wasn’t just something to help Nana cross over to the afterlife — it was a Freaky Friday style body swap! Cheryl was never Cheryl, she was Poppy who was Abigail, the result of Finn’s curse that rendered her immortal and loveless. Sabrina explains to Britta that witches never really die, explaining she died and came back (a sly explanation of how she was able to return after the events of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series finale over on Netflix), and now they have transferred Abigail’s spirit into Nana so she could die and be reunited with Thomasina (which she is!). And now Roseanne Blossom is young again, her spirit now contained within the body of Abigail/Poppy/Cheryl. And seeing how Britta is completely intrigued by all of this witchcraft business, Sabrina and Cheryl offer to chat with her more about it … over milkshakes at Pop’s.
And that brings us to next week’s Rivervale finale which raises the question: was this whole alternate universe storyline just a series of stories written by Jughead … or has he lost his mind, believing there actually is an alternate Riverdale universe?
Riverdale airs Tuesdays at 9:00 PM.
What did you think of this episode? Let us know in the comments section below.
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