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Let’s Talk About ‘Angels in America’:
- Burning question — why hasn’t the gang involved Veronica in any of this Percival Pickens business, and why has she not developed any powers?
- Tabitha and Cheryl, both unaffected by the explosion, have developed their own powers … but how?
- Percival reveals his latest plan to take Pop’s out of the Riverdale equation — a new railroad stop.
- Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe truly is the heart and soul of Riverdale, a gathering place during major historical events.
- Tabitha can’t get any of the gang to back her in the fight against Percival … except Cheryl, who hasn’t yet had any direct dealings with him and is eager to use her new powers.
- Tabitha’s superpowers are revealed during an assault by one of Percival’s mind-controlled henchmen.
- Jughead slips up and is forced to come clean to Tabitha.
- The gang, minus Veronica, realizes they have powers for a reason — to stop Percival.
- Percival reveals himself to Tabitha and … well, I was right!
This episode of Riverdale was pretty epic, giving Erinn Westbrook a real showcase for her talents, casting two actors who made you believe they were younger versions of Alvin Sanders’ Pop Tate, and finally revealing what I believed all along about Percival Pickens. The only thing I find maddening at this point is the separation of Veronica from the core group. She seems to have been able to fend off Percival’s power of suggestion but so far she’s shown no signs of having any special powers, and we know from Cheryl and now Tabitha that it wasn’t just the explosion that gave Archie, Betty and Jughead their powers. Now it seems there is a higher power at work in Riverdale. Has the rift between Riverdale and Rivervale been left open, allowing supernatural forces to enter this world?
Whatever is going on, it’s clear now that Riverdale is important to Percival but it doesn’t even seem that it’s the town he wants; he needs to destroy Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe. His first plan is to convince the town that Riverdale needs a new train line running through town, with the most logical stop being right where Pop’s sits. Of course he’s got Alice and Frank on board, and Alice has even put him on her local TV show to convince the rest of Riverdale that Pop’s is way past its expiration date. Tabitha tries to enlist the help of her friends but they all pretty much leave her high and dry. Archie can’t go up against Percival because he knowns Archie’s weakness, Betty just advises her to stay away from him, Veronica tells her the satellite location in the casino is doing well so maybe she should just relocate Pop’s to a new location. The only one who shows any interest in joining the fight is Cheryl (who keeps Thorn Hill so cold now — to contain her own internal furnace — that Tabitha can see her own breath), as soon as she learns how to manage her new abilities.
Jughead, having tried once before to save the drive-in, knows that having Pop’s declared a historical landmark will keep the town from touching the place. But while talking with her about the plan, he turns his back and hears her say something which he answers directly. Except she didn’t say it out loud which forced Jughead to reveal the truth about him, Archie and Betty. But Tabitha has bigger issues at the moment and the historical designation seems to be the best bet. Pop helps by giving him and Tabitha a box of old photos and other memorabilia, like The Green Book in which Pop’s was listed as a safe haven for ‘Negro travelers’, and they are certain they can get the state to grant the diner historical place status. But Percival isn’t going down without a fight and he sends one of his henchmen (surprisingly not a mind-controlled Kevin, who had just been with Percival talking about the trouble with Tabitha) to kill Tabitha. He walks in and pulls the trigger and …
1944
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When she opens her eyes it’s December 24, 1944 and a younger Pop (actually her great-grandfather) calls her Teresa (which is also embroidered on her uniform). The weird thing is that Tabitha is fully aware they she is Tabitha and is not sure what is going on. In her confusion, she spots Jughead sitting in one of the booths, but when she goes to talk to him he reveals he’s not Jughead but her guardian angel. She, in fact, was shot and is in the hospital on life support with Jughead at her bedside. She flashes back and remembers meeting him before — further blurring the lines between Riverdale and Rivervale — when he revealed himself to her as Raphael, warning her that a battle was coming and Pop’s was going to be Ground Zero. Raphael has taken a form of someone she knows because to see his true form would drive her insane. He tells her that she is a time traveler, but he can’t tell her why she has arrived in 1944. Only the big man upstairs knows all of the details, but she must be here for a reason. Earlier, Pop had proudly shown her the diner’s new listing in The Green Book, but now they have to get to an important meeting with the mayor.
The sheriff, who looks like Percival, is introducing a new plan to the mayor to make Riverdale a ‘Sundown Town’, meaning a town in which ‘colored people’ are banned after 6:00 PM … to keep the crime rate down. Teresa rightly points out that this is a purely racist plot, and that white people commit crimes just as much as Black people do. The mayor needs to think it over. Back at the diner, a young couple who happen to look like Fangs and Toni, are frantically banging on the door (apparently Pop’s isn’t open 24 hours) to be let in. They and their baby daughter were traveling through Centerville and their car ran out of gas as it started to get dark. Centerville is a Sundown Town and they were being chased by the police. Teresa and Pop offered them a safe haven for the night but the sheriff and his deputy showed up to arrest the couple. They were refused entry unless they had a warrant, so the sheriff had the deputy contact the authorities in Centerville to get one, saying they would stay put until it came. The couple wanted to sneak out the back, but the baby has asthma and they left everything in the car. They can’t chance making a run for it. Tabitha sees Raphael and asks him for help. He says he’s not supposed to interfere but she presents him with a loophole — it’s Christmas Eve, the one time he could and should be able to help. She asks if what he said about seeing him would make her insane was true and he says it is, so she asks him to reveal himself to the sheriff and his deputy. He decides that this is something he can do, so he walks outside and a blinding light reduces the two lawmen to blithering idiots.
Teresa reaches out to Archie … or Artie … at the fire department to help bring the couple and their baby face-to-face with the mayor to show him who the Sundown Law would be hurting. Hearing of their plight, and understanding how such a thing would negatively impact Riverdale, the mayor refuses to enact the law. Feeling she managed to accomplish her mission, Tabitha isn’t sure what’s next but suddenly a deranged sheriff, apparently escaped from a mental hospital, enters the diner yelling that she won’t beat him so stop trying. He pulls the trigger and …
1968
‘Tina’ hops to 1968, April 3 to be exact, the day before Martin Luther King is assassinated. For some reason, she believes she needs to get to Memphis to save his life but the new version of Raphael (who now has taken the form of Toni) tells her that some points in history are fixed because they had such a profound impact on the world. MLK’s death is one of them and there was nothing she could have done. Tabitha should know by now that Pop’s and Riverdale are her focus — and even after the 1944 Raphael gave her a book on time travel that gave her the idea she needed some kind of talisman to focus on to get her back to her own time — she still hasn’t really comprehended the importance of both. But now in this era she is once again confronted with a different version of Percival, now an FBI agent in cahoots with the mayor to once again shut down Pop’s by 6:00 PM or those that have gathered there to mourn, grieve and pray (and let me tell you, this whole segment, as ridiculous as it was, really brought a few tears to my eyes) will be arrested, citing riots in neighboring towns. Tabitha knows that he is just trying to provoke a violent reaction and she tells everyone in the diner to not play into his hands. She somehow gets a direct line to J. Edgar Hoover (!) and tells him she knows all about his secret files on various figures including the president, and if he doesn’t call off the FBI she will call the White House and reveal all. A call comes in to the FBI field office calling off the ‘turkey shoot’ at Pop’s (not the first time we’ve heard this term) … and Hoover also fires Agent Percival. Tabitha watches as a car drives by the diner, the former agent glaring at her as she repeats to herself for him to keep driving. He does but in the back she discovers a bomb hidden away in a cupboard. Taking it outside and dropping it in a trash can — right next to the diner — it goes off and …
1999
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Tabitha arrives in November 1999, now Tess, helping her grandfather remove some racist graffiti spray-painted on the side of the diner (apparently 88 is a white supremacist symbol). Sheriff Keller has nabbed the teenager (one of them, anyway) responsible and Tabitha asks to have a word with him. He tells her he has no memory of committing the act of vandalism, and she asks him if the baseball card she found next to the crime scene was his. He tells her it is and he got it from the curiosity shop on the outskirts of town. He got it from the owner in exchange for … he can’t remember what but it’s obvious to Tabitha that the owner of said shop is another iteration of Percival. Raphael appears again, now in the form of Betty, and she gives Tabitha a pick to get into the shop after Percival leaves. Inside she begins taking Polaroids of some of the artifacts including a Confederate army uniform, the spear of Longinus (you know, the one used to pierce Christ’s side during the crucifixion) and the Holy Grail. THE Holy Grail. Perhaps this is Tabitha’s talisman.
She goes back to the shop but is confronted by Percival, now dressed in the uniform and brandishing a sword. Tabitha grabs the Sword of Longinus and helpfully informs him that she was on the fencing team in college! She asks him who is really is and he tells her his name is Legion, ‘but blow out the candle and I am the dark.’ And with that we get a flash of his true face — the same face we saw peering in the window of Pop’s in the ‘Mr. Cypher’ episode! So my suspicions about Percival were right. He is the Devil (or a demon in service to the Devil) and he has been trying to decades to destroy Pop’s because of it’s significance not only to Riverdale but to the world, the place where many have gathered during major historical events. The two begin to duel, and Tabitha lunges at him with her sword but he vanishes as she stabs him, nailing the uniform to the wall. But she retrieves the Holy Grail and meets up again at the diner with Raphael. Tabitha finally realizes it’s not the Grail that is her talisman, it’s … Pop’s! Raphael seems to have known this all the time and suddenly the Grail is filled with a milkshake. Tabitha begins to drink and …
The Present
Tabitha is back in the diner right where all of this time travel started. In walks the man with a gun, but luckily she is holding the can of tomato soup she was about to prepare for Jughead before she was shot. She nails the guy right in the head with the can, knocking him out. They tie him up and put him on ice, literally sticking him in the freezer, until the police arrive. Tabitha then reveals to Jughead that she has a power now — she’s a time traveler. She was getting so good at it that she managed to jump a second before the bomb went off in 1968. They get Archie, Betty and Cheryl to the diner where they all realize they have been given these powers for a reason. Tabitha reveals that during her time hopping she even went to the future, an unknown time, and it was not a promising place. Pop’s was still standing but … Riverdale was gone. Pretty much everything was gone after some apocalyptic event. Is this a future that can be changed? Tabitha has no idea, but they all know now that their fight with Percival has become more than just a fight to save Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe.
Riverdale airs Sundays at 8:00 PM.
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