Riverdalethe long-awaited leap in time has finally arrived, and Wednesday’s episode found our older characters … but not much happier.
We started over seven years later, with Archie and his friends scattered across the country and doing various levels of #adulting before heading back to their old Pop booth for an uncomfortable meeting. TVLine talked to executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa about what’s next for the gang … and how we should be concerned about that truck driver we saw at the end. But first, let’s check where everyone is after the time jump:
ARCHIE | When we see our favorite redhead for the first time, he is giving a stimulating speech in the locker room before he and his fellow Army soldiers receive heavy fire on a battlefield that looks a lot like the Riverdale High football field. But it’s just a dream: he wakes up in a military hospital and a senior officer orders him to go to his home in Riverdale to restart the school’s ROTC program. Archie goes straight to Pop’s house and goes down the stairs to find the stowaway that has become the recently revived Wyrm Whyte, with Toni singing and dancing. She is pregnant – and yet to say who the father is – and she and the reformed Snakes bought Hiram’s place. As Archie said, “a lot has changed” around here …
BETTY | She’s in Clarice Starling mode, running through the woods as an FBI intern. She is also seeing a therapist after suffering a “severe trauma” at the hands of the so-called “trash bag killer”. Betty insists that she is fine (“I caught serial killers in high school”), but she is having horrible nightmares about severed limbs and a crazed man holding a chainsaw. She admits that she “messed up everything” – she didn’t wait for backup and ended up being captured by the Garbage Bag Killer and held in captivity for two weeks, after which he escaped – and she wants to redeem herself by catching him. Oh, and she has a new boyfriend: an FBI colleague named Glen. When she receives a call from Archie, however, she puts Glen in charge of her cat and returns to Riverdale.
VERONICA | She is celebrating her one year wedding anniversary with her husband Chad (played by Broadchurch(it’s Chris Mason), but the happiness of the newlywed has passed. She misses working as a Wall Street broker next to Chad (“They called me a Wall Street wolf”), and now she sells jewelry in a store Uncut jewelry-y clothes. She is lying to Chad, who thinks she is working in a good department store, and they will have a big fight when he finds out. She misses what they used to be like (“The sex was amazing”), but “the accident” changed everything: they both barely survived a helicopter accident, and he didn’t want her to go back to a stressful job on Wall Street. . Ronnie complains to his mother Hermione – who is recording her Real housewives tagline! – that Chad just wants her to be “a baby-making machine”, and when he gives her a “Glamerge” egg as a peace offering, she turns around and sells it in her store. Soon, Archie’s name will appear on your phone too …
JUGHEAD | He’s living the life of a writer: living on pizza and drinking in his messy New York apartment and yelling at his typewriter. He has a serious case of writer’s block, and his agent tells him that he needs to start working on his second book, or he may miss the advance. (In addition, he is being evicted and abandoned by his girlfriend. Who is not Betty.) He stumbles into a bar and is approached by a graduate student who loves his first book, and takes her home. The next morning, however, she reveals that she has a romance of her own – and when she helps him avoid a pair of rude-looking debt collectors, she threatens to denounce him if he doesn’t read his work. Therefore, he is not exactly flying high when he receives the call from Archie.
CHERYL | Back at Whyte Wyrm, Toni explains that she is now the Riverdale High advisor, and Kevin and Fangs are still together – but she and Cheryl are not. Toni tried to reconnect with her ex, but Cheryl dismissed her, preferring to be locked up in Thorn Hill with Nana Rose. Cheryl thinks she is “doomed to a life of unhappiness” and believes that if she continues to renovate Thorn Hill, the curse cannot fully consume her. Meanwhile, Hiram (and the new footman Reggie!) Tried and failed to buy Cheryl’s maple woods, and Nana Rose wants Cheryl to use her newly enhanced painting skills to reproduce fakes of famous (and valuable) paintings.
Toni takes Archie on a sad stroll through a decimated Riverdale: buildings are empty, Skid Row is overflowing and Archie’s old house has been destroyed by the Ghoulies. Hiram is trying to clean up Riverdale so he can build a highway to help his expensive SoDale suburb prosper. So Archie calls Betty, Veronica and Jughead to a booth at Pop’s and tells them that Riverdale is “dying” and that they need to save him. And speaking of “dying”: a Pop waitress hitches a ride with a trucker who has a scary skeleton in front of his truck – and we have a bad feeling about that.
Wow, that was a lot to process, huh? This left us with many questions, so we turned to Aguirre-Sacasa for answers. Read on to learn more about Betty’s search for the Garbage Bag Killer, the cold vibe between her and Jughead – and why that truck driver could spell doom for a beloved character.
TVLINE | When Archie arrives at Pop’s and tells the other three that they all need to save Riverdale, it doesn’t look like they’re as interested as he is. They will be more reluctant to jump on board
Exactly. We think it was too much Archie of Archie to say: “Guys, we have to save the city! Let’s do a show! “And we think Betty, Veronica and Jughead would say,” What are you talking about? We have lives elsewhere. ”… Their reluctance to go all-in with Archie seemed real, and it felt like this was the first big story we had to tell, which was to find a way for these characters to come to Riverdale and reinvest in Riverdale, a place where many of his times were tense and not necessarily incredible.
TVLINE | We see that Betty is training with the FBI and had this traumatic experience with the Garbage Bag Killer. Will she still chase you while you’re in Riverdale?
In a way, all the characters are dealing with some kind of trauma, and Betty is definitely focused on her experience with the Garbage Bag Killer. This guy will haunt the fringes of the show. But the great mystery of Betty’s season doesn’t just focus on the Garbage Bag Killer.
TVLINE | Jughead is a writer struggling with his next book, and it looks like he has lost touch with everyone, including Betty.
One of the fun things about the time jump is that we see that kids kind of went their separate ways, and a more humane mystery is: why didn’t they keep in touch? How did they split up? Probably the biggest mystery is what happened between Betty and Jughead, that they are completely out of each other’s lives.
TVLINE | In the end, we see a Pop waitress getting into a truck and it looks like we might have another serial killer on the loose in Riverdale. So, is this another mystery that we’re going to see this season?
Certainly. That is one hundred percent. I think it’s in the next episode that you’ll see that the mystery is really intertwined with the possibly tragic fate of one of our main characters that we’ve known since season one.
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