Screengrab
Let’s Talk About ‘The Jughead Paradox’:
- A dead body is discovered at the edge of Rivervale … it’s Jughead.
- Archie and Betty are jolted awake from a shared dream about a bomb going off.
- Fangs dreams about Toni drowning and coming back as a ghost. She asks if she was trying to hurt baby Anthony.
- Veronica and Reggie wake up from a shared dream about Reggie being dragged to Hell.
- Cheryl and Nana Rose experience a shared dream of the two swapping bodies.
- Jughead wakes up in Archie’s garage after dreaming of an explosion in the house.
- Jughead reports to Rivervale High for his first day back at teaching. Was Archie talking to Miss Grundy? Why is Ben Button alive and well after he threw himself out of a window after a game of Griffons and Gargoyles with Dilton Doiley … who is also still alive and teaching at the school?
- Archie and Betty are getting married!
- Jughead pays a visit to the morgue to see the body, and discovers something odd about his comic book collection: early issues are titled ‘Riverdale’ but the series suddenly switched to ‘Rivervale’. Has he discovered an alternate universe?
- More familiar faces show up including Ethel Muggs, Hal Cooper, a very alive Jason and Clifford Blossom and … ‘Reggie Prime’!
- Jughead is shocked to learn Hiram Lodge has been dead since Veronica was 15 years old, so who is Rivervale’s ‘big bad’?
- After a series of murders and the reveal of the town’s villain, Jughead is told no one ever dies in Rivervale. They always come back.
- Jughead has to find a way to separate the two universes before they bleed into each other and implode, killing billions in the process. But can he save one without destroying the other?
The five-episode ‘Rivervale’ event has come to an end and, for me, it was pretty satisfying the way the episode sort of made sense of the previous four episodes. It also served as a nifty way for the creatives to write themselves a way out of the Season 5 finale that almost certainly would have resulted in the deaths of Archie and Betty.
The whole story was set into motion back in the first episode when Archie was awakened by the sound of an explosion. We know a bomb went off at the end of Season 5, but this didn’t seem to be what woke Archie. This episode started with the discovery of a dead body at the border of Rivervale clutching a comic book. We don’t find out until later that it’s Jughead when Dr. Curdle Jr. calls Betty with the news … which she believes is a prank since she’s in the same room with Jughead when the doc calls. All of the characters up to this point have experienced weird dreams (basically the plotlines of the previous four episodes) and Jughead is freaked out by his own dream of an explosion at Archie’s house. He’s even more concerned when he wakes up in his old bed in Archie’s garage, apparently having sleptwalked there. Tabitha chalked it up to nerves about his first day back to teaching at the high school.
Screengrab
But at Rivervale High, Jughead encounters people who should not be there. Was Archie having a conversation with Miss Grundy? And why is Ben Button in the men’s room when he died after throwing himself out of a window? Ben reminds Jughead that he must be thinking of his professor at Stonewall Prep, but Jughead says Ben did it first. Ben suggests Jughead is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, but he’s beginning to believe he’s in some kind of paradox. Hoping to get more information, he goes to the library to check out a book on the subject but it was checked out and never returned by Dilton Doiley. Well, he’s dead too … but not according to the librarian who informs Jug that Dilton is right down the hall teaching science. And he is, along with the long out of sight Ethel Muggs as his assistant. Dilton seems to know a thing or two about paradoxes, but he tries to assure Jughead that there is a much simpler solution to whatever is causing him concern.
It only gets weirder when Jughead is reminded that Archie and Betty are getting married that weekend, and he’s the best man, and Jughead sees his body at the morgue, death by strangulation. But the comic book dead Jughead was clutching spurs Juggie to look through his own collection … which reveals something shocking: his comics began with the title ‘Riverdale’ but suddenly between two issues the title changed to ‘Rivervale’. Did some cataclysmic event create this Rivervale universe? Jughead shares the comics with his friends who are all aghast at this situation, remembering some of the events depicted but having blank spaces as well.
Veronica gets a bit of a shock when she gets a visitor at the Pembroke: Reggie Mantle. The OG Reggie that is! And Veronica isn’t mad about it, seeing an opportunity to engage in a little menage-a-trois, but neither of the alpha-Reggies are into that, more concerned with staking out their territory and property, resulting in the two boneheads engaging in a duel that left both of them dead.
Jughead, unaware of the two Reggies, is desperately trying to figure out what’s going on and begins to wonder who the villain of Rivervale is. He naturally assumes it’s Hiram Lodge but … Hiram died when Ronnie was 15. When Jughead goes to talk to Cheryl about her dead brother, she is deeply offended by the suggestion that Jason is dead, especially since he is on his way to play tennis with her. And he shows up (perhaps the very first time we’ve actually heard him speak), stunning Jughead in his tracks. It isn’t long though before Cheryl gets a call — Jason has been kidnapped and is about to be murdered by someone calling himself The Black Hood. Jughead is pretty certain he knows where Jason is being held and gets Sheriff Keller to search the Whyte Wyrm. They find him, alive, and the Black Hood comes out of the shadows, gun drawn. Keller fires and kills him and when Jughead removes the hood it’s Clifford Blossom.
At a party at Pop’s celebrating the impending nuptials of Betty and Archie, with a happily married Alice and Hal Cooper in attendance, it’s not long before Cheryl turns up dead, strangled like Jughead. So who is Rivervale’s ‘big bad’? Jughead pays another visit to Dilton and realizes his friend is a bit off his rocker, hoping to be the first person to watch as two universes collide and implode. Before Jughead can try to stop him, Dilton is shot dead in his tracks by Ethel. She knows how to stop the universes from merging but it will come at the cost of Rivervale. What they need to do is re-create the event that created the ‘pocket universe’ of Rivervale in the first place, as closely as possible. And that would mean setting off a bomb under Archie’s bed with Archie and Betty in it.
Screengrab
But the couple are about to tie the knot so it wouldn’t be cool to ask them, so Jughead asks Veronica with the reasoning that in this sort of mirror universe, they are the next best thing to Archie and Betty. Not wanting to go to the wedding herself, Veronica agrees saying ‘Let’s make Vughead canon.’ While at Archie’s house preparing for the event, Archie bursts in, knowing that when Jughead didn’t show up to the wedding that he was up to something. Jughead tells him Veronica is on her way, but Archie reveals … he is the one who has been strangling the citizens of Rivervale so she won’t be coming. At least not yet, because no one ever dies in Rivervale. They always come back. He killed Cheryl, he killed Jughead, he’s been there since Rivervale was created and he knows everything. He can’t let Jughead destroy this universe because Archie believes his father will be coming back. He’d never miss Archie’s wedding to Betty (Archie’s flawed logic here is that he’s killed people already in Rivervale when the universe was created — Fred Andrews did not exist in either universe at that point but Archie is not thinking straight. Instead he attacks his friend but before he can snuff out Juggie’s lights, a shot rings out and blood splatters from Archie’s head (miraculously, he didn’t get a spot on his white shirt). Betty has killed him.
When Archie stood her up at the wedding, Betty’s life flashed before her eyes and she knew she had to come to the house. Jughead tells her they have to detonate that bomb to destroy Rivervale and save Riverdale. For old time’s sake, Bughead is once more as the two begin their make-out session waiting for the bomb to detonate. But … Jughead bursts into the room with a solution of how to save both universes … after Betty diffuses the bomb (she says she doesn’t know how but he shows her the comic of Betty diffusing the bomb strapped to Polly — and a cool way, among others, to use footage from the past five seasons to illustrate the points). She does and the two Jugheads and Betty sit down for a chat. Newly resurrected Jughead reveals that when he died, he went to the great Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe in the sky (because, as we learned from the ‘Mr. Cypher’ episode, Pop’s is the soul of Rivervale). All of his friends were there in appropriate comic book versions of themselves, and the diner offered not only all you can eat meals, but comic books galore. It was there that Jughead discovered the ‘missing link’ comic between ‘Riverdale’ and ‘Rivervale’. It was then he discovered the new universe would die if it was separated from the original unless there was a new power source to keep it alive. SO he resurrected and came back with the proposition.
The new power source to keep Rivervale alive is … imagination. It’s limitless and all powerful, boundless and always replenishing, there’s no fuel more potent and no generator more awesome. Betty isn’t getting it, but her Jughead does — the explosion was destruction and the opposite of that is creation. Jughead will act as Rivervale’s battery, a story generator to keep the universe alive when the two separate. But there’s a catch — he has to be locked up, alone, forever. Resurrected Jughead assures Betty that her Jughead will quickly fade from her mind as if he never existed, he will be the storyteller and new Jughead will be the narrator. But they need Betty to now agree to make sure the bomb is detonated after Jughead is sealed in Dilton’s bunker, with an endless supply of paper and food.
As Jughead begins writing, the bomb is restarted and Archie is reanimated, now trying to break down the door with his baseball bat as the bomb ticked down to zero. But … Jughead wrote that the bomb never went off, it vanished, the banging on the door stopped, and when the two emerged from the bedroom and went downstairs, the whole gang was there getting ready to enjoy a spaghetti dinner. Jughead and Betty had completely forgotten everything that had just happened. It should also be noted that it appears in this universe now, Cheryl and Toni are together, as are Kevin and Fangs. Veronica and Reggie are a couple, Archie and Betty are a couple. Jughead is moving his things into the new apartment with Tabitha, including his comic book collection which the narrator Jughead suggests will one day save his and countless other lives (so … are they now stuck in a time loop or is this leaving things open for future trips to Rivervale?).
It is also revealed that Ethel is in the bunker with Jughead, and she asks the question we all want to know — what happens to everyone in Riverdale Prime? Jughead says they’ll never know if someone did something to change the course of events in Riverdale. Meanwhile, back in Riverdale Archie and Betty are in the bedroom where we last left them. Betty’s phone rings and a voice, from a very bad signal, warns her about the bomb under the bed, telling her to get out of the house. She isn’t sure who it is but she tells Archie they have to leave now. In the garage, Jughead is writing when the bomb detonates, leaving his ears ringing and us hanging until March 2022.
All in all, this was a pretty well-executed stunt, and I wouldn’t mind some future visits to Rivervale, especially if it’s the only way to bring Sabrina Spellman into the story! What did you think of ‘Rivervale’?
Riverdale will return in a new time slot, Sunday, March 6, 2022 at 8:00 PM.
What did you think of this episode? Let us know in the comments section below.
Share this post
