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Let’s Talk About ‘Return to Rivervale’:
- With Percival unaware that the dead are alive again, the group meets to figure out what they know and how they can stop him.
- Cheryl delivers some shocking new to Betty about a loved one.
- Jughead theorizes that he’s not just a mind reader, but he can travel to alternate dimensions and there are two portals in the bunker.
- Percival agrees to a sit down interview with Alice on live TV to reveal the truth about himself … in exchange for the TV station carrying the execution of Kevin, Reggie and Mr. Mantle live.
- Veronica learns she’s been ousted from her position at the Babylonium.
- Rivervale and Riverdale are, in fact, bleeding into each other because there was not a clean break between the two when the bomb went off in Archie’s bedroom.
- Kevin, Reggie and Mr. Mantle try to trick Frank and Tom into thinking Reggie’s pop has had a heart attack.
- Percival’s guillotines may have been used, but not on the intended victims.
- Did Polly actually wash away Betty’s MAOA gene, giving her a new golden aura?
Wow, this was a complex episode as the Percival Pickens storyline is explained completely, along with why Riverdale has become such a hot bed of the supernatural. And I’m more than a little pleased with myself for guessing that Rivredale and Rivervale were more connected than anyone wanted us to think. But I have to hand it to the creatives for giving us a ‘Five Episode Premiere Event’ months before the season started proper just to make us think it was a one-time visit to the land of the supernatural. But this episode finally gave us Percival’s full story, and it was a doozy. It also gave Jughead a chance to play Doctor Strange and travel through the ‘Archieverse’ to also reveal exactly what has been happening in Riverdale. Betty also got the shock of her life, while Kevin, Reggie and Mr. Mantle came thisclose to losing their heads. But have the citizens of Riverdale suffered a shocking loss, or three, in the end?
While Archie and company tries to put all of their knowledge about Percival together (hmm, where was Toni and Fangs this week?), the one thing they came up with is that there is no record of a Percival in the Pickens family history. So with his magical powers, does that mean he is in fact Riverdale’s incarnation of Mr. Cypher from Rivervale? Percival aims to clear all that up in a sit-down interview with Alice, in exchange for her station carrying the executions of Kevin, Reggie and Mr. M live. Alice is a bit shocked at first but when he mentions the ratings, Alice smiles and agrees to the terms (a little more mind control didn’t hurt). During the interview, while Percival tells Alice the most fantastical things that anyone else would question, she just goes on with the interview as if everything he says is perfectly normal … like the fact that he is immortal. Nope, he’s not the Devil or Mr. Cypher, but that is from whom he gained his powers. Percival and the ancestors of the core Riverdale families arrived on this land in the 1500s … but not this land. They were in the alternate universe in the town that became Rivervale. And while everyone else was busy trying to create a functioning, inclusive society, Percival was busy tampering with the Dark Arts, and that got him sentenced to die in the stocks (the same one that he was almost imprisoned in again in the Babylonium safe). But Mr. Cypher arrived and Percival made a deal with the Devil, his soul in exchange for his powers and immortality (a trick he used to keep Cypher from taking his soul). For 500 years, Percival traveled the world gathering more knowledge and power, and on the night he was returning to Rivervale to get revenge upon the ancestors of those who did him wrong (sort of like how Cheryl tried to do once upon a time), he heard an explosion and the sign that had just read ‘Welcome to Rivervale’ now said ‘Welcome to Riverdale’. He figured out that he was somehow transported into a different, yet similar, dimension, somewhere he wasn’t previously known, and that gave him the perfect opportunity to still exact his revenge, even if it wasn’t the exact same group of descendants, and become the most powerful person in Riverdale. All he wants is power. And now that that cat is out of the bag, exactly how will the residents of Riverdale react? Will they fall in line behind their overlord, or will Archie and company be able to lead the charge to defeat him? That may ultimately be up to Jughead, using some knowledge he gathered while in the Rivervale universe.
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He and Tabitha used a portal to make the trip, walking into the alternate bunker where they shocked that version of Jughead, the same one Jughead Prime saw in his bunker. Alt-Jughead revealed to them that the bomb did cause a rift between their worlds, and the stories he was ‘stealing’ from Jughead Prime were actually his stories. The voices Jughead had been hearing were coming from Rivervale, and that’s what he’d been writing about so Alt-Jughead felt he had to sneak over and take them back because they belonged to him. But Alt-Jughead has not been above ground in years, mainly because there is yet another Jughead up above and he wants Juggie and Tabitha Prime that they cannot be seen interacting with their other selves. But they decide to take a chance anyway. But first a visit to Thorn Hill to go through the Blossom family records. Britta greets them but informs them that the records were transferred to a university two years earlier. Jughead aaks if they can talk to Nana Rose, but Britta has to inform them that Rose is inhabiting Cheryl’s body, which was Abigail’s body, and all of her ailments have manifested in the younger woman. Jughead tries to get into her mind, but all he can find are dusty, deteriorating comic books so she will be no help. They will have to face Jughead, but neither of them can get into Pop’s without freaking everyone out so Tabitha uses her power to put Alt-Tabitha into a time loop where she just keeps taking the trash out. That gives her a chance to talk to the third Jughead, getting him to go back to ‘their’ apartment … where he meets himself, and is very excited because he’s thought about the concept of multiple universes for quite some time. They also discovered that his comic books feature a team of teen superheroes who bear a suspicious resemblance to their friends in Riverdale, to the point that the comic characters all have the same powers. Jughead III’s upcoming comic, however, concerns them because the heroes are all dead at the feet of the Devil, and Tabitha knows from her conversations with Raphael that the character is Mr. Cypher who, like Percival, is staying at this world’s version of the Babylonium.
Cypher is engaged in a chess match billed as the ‘Battle Between Good & Evil’ and he is in a game with Raphael, who loses and that concerns the two even more. Evil can’t win. But they talk to Cypher, who has been wondering where Percival has been all these centuries, and gives them some shocking news — Percival wasn’t interested in Pop’s, they just fell into his trap by moving the building. It’s the land he wanted because Pop’s was built over a hellmouth (are Buffy and company about to show up now?) in the same way churches were, to keep the evil from escaping into the land. They did Percival’s work for him by moving the building and allowing the hellmouth to open. That all goes back to something Betty learned from Cheryl, who told her that Jason said he was glad to be home so he didn’t have to go to war. In the Sweet Hereafter, General Pickens had been running around trying to gather an army, so there is definitely a war coming. Cypher also drops one little bit of perhaps helpful information on them — Percival thought he was being clever by asking for immortality to get out of having his soul taken when he died. Cypher said that always comes back to bite people in the ass, so perhaps Percival does have a vulnerability they can exploit.
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When they get back to the bunk, Alt-Ethel is there as well, shocked to see Jughead and Tabitha, very upset that they are there. She asks Jughead how he could be alive if he was near the explosion, and he reveals that Betty had received a phone call warning them to get out of the house. Ethel knew Alt-Jughead made that call and that is what set all of this into motion. For some reason, Rivervale was already bleeding over into Riverdale and the explosion was meant to create a clean break so the two worlds would exist separately. By Alt-Jughead saving them, it only made things worse with both universes bleeding into each other. In Alt-Jughead’s defense, he was just trying to save Betty’s and Archie’s lives, but Ethel knew he was just concerned about his ex-girlfriend and now it’s going to fall to her to clean up everyone’s mess. This all made the Primes very uncomfortable so they slipped back into their own universe.
But they just came back to more bad news. After being shooed out of the casino, Veronica was still able to log into the security cameras and saw Kevin, Reggie and Mr. M locked in the safe. She also saw their attempt to fake Mr. Mantle’s heart attack, and she told Jughead and Tabitha about the impending execution. Not even Kevin could talk his father out of saving them, so all seemed lost. But maybe portals are good for something other than dimension hopping, and before they could fathom what was happening, Jughead pops out of a wall in the safe and ushers the men to safety, thinking they were able to thwart Percival this time. But not long after Percival discovered his prisoners were missing, the group got a text with a photo of Alice, Frank and Tom blindfolded and kneeling before the guillotines. Kevin said it had to be a trick, but the image was followed by a news report that the three had indeed been executed. The question now is have they? Hopefully this is a case of we haven’t seen the bodies so we can’t believe they are dead (sort of like we haven’t seen the reveal of TBK). If they are, necromancy can probably only go so far if your head’s been lopped off. On the positive side, Archie did manage to blow up the railroad tracks, which will make it more difficult for Percival’s Ghost Train to arrive in tandem with Bailey’s Comet. With just two episodes left this season, it’s shaping up to be a wild finale.
Riverdale airs Sundays at 8:00 PM.
What did you think of this episode? Let us know in the comments section below.
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