Screengrab
Let’s Talk About ‘Biblical’:
- Plagues are being visited upon Riverdale, the signs of the coming Apocalypse.
- Toni asks Veronica to plan her wedding to Fangs, which gives the former ‘She-Wolf of Wall Street’ an identity crisis.
- Jughead’s writing — about some very familiar subjects — seems to be lessening the voices in his head, but after he writes them they disappear.
- The Sweetwater River runs red, and Toni’s pre-wedding feast rots in minutes.
- Kevin tells Toni and Fangs he’s dropping his lawsuit against them for Baby Anthony after he finally saw the light about Percival’s control over him.
- Percival warns Archie there is more to come unless his workers end their strike, and Cheryl offers a simple solution to the problem — she’ll incinerate him, but no one is on board with murder.
- Veronica seems to go a little overboard with her song ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ at the pre-wedding dinner, making everyone very uncomfortable and wondering if she had lost her mind.
- Percival delivers another plague to the construction crew and offers to ease it up if Archie works on the railroad alone … and they deliver Baby Anthony to him.
- The group thinks they have the upper hand, but Toni and Fangs’ wedding comes with a surprise ending.
This episode of Riverdale certainly amped up the crazy but the Jughead storyline is beginning to make me wonder if this entire season now isn’t some sort of fever dream in Jughead’s mind, caused by the explosion at Archie’s house. That would certainly be a bold move, and not unprecedented — Dallas had an entire season that turned out to be a dream between the seasons when Patrick Duffy left the show and returned, and classic hospital drama St. Elsewhere surprised — and angered — viewers when the final episode revealed the entire series, all six seasons, was a fantasy in the mind of an autistic child. So with Jughead now locked in the bunker to keep all the voices of Riverdale out of his head, he’s discovered something that helps — the voices he is hearing are basically giving him ideas for stories, and as he writes them all down the voices begin to dissipate. But it seems that the stories are coming to life as we see La Llorona (but it isn’t Toni, who we saw take on that mantle in the ‘Rivervale’ episode) enter the bunker while he sleeps and takes the story. And every time he does sleep, another story vanishes but somehow someone left a plate of food from Pop’s for him, which he thought he shouldn’t eat but he did anyway. He also received a message in a bottle, which brought up a quick flash of a younger Jughead with a ship in a bottle, and the message inside said ‘Keep writing.’ But the burger made him very sick, and when he woke there was someone else in the bunker — another Jughead. So now we have to wonder which Jughead is the Riverdale Jughead and which is the Rivervale Juggie. He’d also had a nightmare while ill from the burger that Cheryl entered the bunker to ‘help’ him by plunging a dagger into his stomach, and when he woke up there was a knife stuck into his desk. But before he could question anything or make sense of seeing himself … well, we’ll get to that in a minute.
In Riverdale, Biblical plagues have been visited upon the town — frogs, flies, lice — and Archie and company are sure that Percival is behind it all, proving that his powers go beyond simple mind control. Cheryl has the answer to the Percival problem — she’ll incinerate him with her pyrokinesis. No one wants to stoop to murder, but Archie knows that everything that’s happening is because his crew is still on strike, further delaying construction of the railroad for Percival’s Ghost Train. In the midst of these plagues, Toni and Fangs are still planning to get married, and she asks Veronica to help plan the wedding because she’s the only person in town who can get it done, and done right. Veronica is flattered but it also gives the former ‘She-Wolf of Wall Street’ a major identity crisis — Toni has Fangs, Betty has Archie, Tabitha has Jughead … Veronica, for once in her life, has no one which makes her question her place in Riverdale. But while she puts aside her own feelings to focus on helping Toni, Percival brings more plagues to town, causing the Sweetwater River to run red and causing the pre-wedding banquet at the Babylonium to rot within minutes.
What Percival doesn’t know is that Kevin overheard him through the wall reciting his incantation to bring on a plague and it seems to have shaken him back to reality (that and the little bombshell Percy dropped on Kevin about Fangs being Baby Anthony’s father). He pays a visit to Toni and Fangs and tells them he’s dropping the custody battle against them because Toni is Anthony’s mother and Fangs is his father. He tells them he has finally recognized that Percival was filling his head with these ideas and now he’s coming back to reality. The couple are so relieved that they even invite Kevin to the wedding, and of course he can bring Moose (side note — there has been no talk of TBK since Betty ‘killed’ him, but we never saw his identity revealed so I’m still going to be suspicious about Moose). And now that Kevin seems to be out from under Percival’s control, he could be very useful in the fight against him.
With the plagues escalating, Archie decides that it’s time to end the strike but the crew wants to stand fast and Archie is impressed with their fortitude, even with the hardships the strike is causing. But their resilience may fade quickly as their defiance leads to another plague — boils upon their skin. Everyone on the crew is affected except Archie, so he has to do what’s right and make Percival an offer to relieve the men of their curse. Percival agrees on one condition — they will heal, slowly, if Archie agrees to work on the railroad by himself and get the construction done within a set time frame. Archie agrees and goers to work.
Screengrab
But Percival isn’t done with Riverdale’s plagues. Kevin had revealed that Percy kept a diary of sorts that he was always writing in, and knew that it might be the key in stopping his plan. Visiting the curiosity shop, Percival almost caught Kevin up to no good but he came up with a quick story about how he didn’t feel like he fit in anymore and was having a lot of self doubt. Percival fell for it and showed Kevin his latest shipment of antiquities — crossbows, swords and a stock in which to imprison the Harlot of Babylon. Relating this information to the group, Betty remembered that during some conversation with TBK he called her the Harlot of Babylon, so was the stocks meant for her? She pays a visit to Percival and asks if he plans on imprisoning her, and he knows now that Kevin has betrayed him. But he reveals it’s not just her that he wants — he wants Baby Anthony as well. While Archie works on the railroad and the group devises a new plan, Percival brings about another of the End Times plagues — darkness in the form of a surprise and unending eclipse of the sun.
Delivering this news to the group, they all know that giving him the baby is out of the question but Heather informs them that the stocks render powerless whoever is held in them so they have to figure out a way to ensnare Percival but all of them showing up at the shop together would certainly tip him off. Cheryl, however, has a solution. Earlier she and Heather did try to incinerate him, but he was strong enough to fight back with a counter-spell, getting himself to an antique wheelchair and turning the heat up on Nana Rose, engulfing her in flames. So when Betty shows up again at the shop with the baby, Percival is surprised she was brave enough to come alone. But when he saw the baby was just a doll, Betty said she wasn’t alone and the rest of the group materialized around him, using Cheryl’s spell of invisibility. The get him into the stocks, and Veronica locks him in her strongest vault at the casino, and with him powerless — the daylight returns — they can get on with the wedding.
But Percival isn’t as powerless as they assumed because he’s able to conjure up a plague of locusts in the vault which he uses to eat the wood of the stocks, using his powers to unlock the door once he is free. And he has one more plague up his sleeve. While everyone is partying at the Whyte Wyrm, Percival makes his way to Thorn Hill and surprises the badly burned Rose, calling her the oldest of Riverdale’s first born, invoking a curse upon all the first born, and snuffing out her life.
Screengrab
At the reception, Veronica asks Tabitha if she saw the future of how her life was going to end up. Was Archie going to be with Betty or with her? Tabitha doesn’t want to tell her but finally agrees but it has to stay between them. Before she can reveal the future, Archie suddenly grabs his chest and begins gasping for air before collapsing to the floor, then Toni and Fangs collapse. Everyone watches in horror as more of the guests collapse, and when only a handful are left they realize all of Riverdale’s first born — except for Baby Anthony — are dead (and hey, where’s Reggie and does he have older siblings?). Betty, Veronica and Cheryl were the youngest children so they are alive. Apparently Kevin has an older sibling we don’t know about, as does Moose. Tabitha as well and she realizes Jughead is also a first born … which bring us back to the bunker and his doppelgänger. Before Jughead can ask himself anything, he also grabs his chest and collapses while his other self watches with confusion. As the survivors try to put the pieces together, Heather says there may be a way to reverse all of this but they will need the help of a necromancer much stronger than she, and her name is … Sabrina!
So now we have to wait for another two weeks before Sabrina Spellman makes her second appearance on the show which also strengthens my belief that we never left Rivervale because this is all part of a dream caused by the explosion. But we have four episodes to go before the truth is revealed … unless they carry it on to the seventh and final season in 2023.
Riverdale airs Sundays at 8:00 PM.
What did you think of this episode? Let us know in the comments section below.
Share this post
