RiverdaleThe long-awaited time jump is finally here, and Wednesday’s episode found our characters older … but not much happier.
We come up seven years later, with Archie and his friends scattered across the country and doing different levels of #adults before returning to their old stand at Pop’s for an awkward reunion. TVLine spoke to executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa about what’s next for the gang … and how worried we should be about the truck we saw at the end. Let’s first look at where everyone is after the time jump:
ARCHIE | When we first saw our favorite redhead, he was giving a locker room talk before he and his fellow soldiers fired heavy fire at a battlefield that looked a lot like Riverdale High’s soccer field. But it’s just a dream: he wakes up in a military hospital, and a senior officer orders him to go home to Riverdale to start the high school’s ROTC program again. Archie goes straight to Pop’s and goes downstairs to see that the speakeasy has become the newly revived Whyte Wyrm, with Toni singing and dancing. She is pregnant – and does not yet say who the father is – and she and the Reformed serpents bought the place from Hiram. As Archie says, ‘a lot has changed here’ …
BETTY | She’s in full Clarice Starling mode and runs through the woods as an FBI student. She also goes to a therapist after suffering ‘severe trauma’ from the so-called ‘Trash Bag Killer’. Betty maintains that she is doing well (‘I caught serial killers in high school’), but she gets gruesome nightmares with severed limbs and a crazy man with a chainsaw. She admits that she ‘got confused’ – she did not wait for backup and was eventually caught by the Trash Bag Killer and held captive for two weeks, after which he escaped – and she wants to save herself by catching him. Oh, and she has a new boyfriend: an FBI colleague named Glen. However, when she calls from Archie, she puts Glen in charge of her cat and goes back to Riverdale.
VERONICA | She celebrates her one-year wedding anniversary with husband Chad (played by Broad Churchsays Chris Mason), but the newlywed happiness has eroded. She misses working with Chad as a Wall Street dealer (‘They called me the She-Wolf of Wall Street’), and now sells her jewelry at a shady, Uncut jewelery-y outfit. She’s lying to Chad, who thinks she’s working in a nice department store, and they have a big fight when he notices. She misses what it was like (‘The sex was unbelievable’), but ‘the accident’ changed everything: they both survived a helicopter crash, and he did not want her to return to a stressful job on Wall Street. Ronnie complains to her mother Hermione – who picks her up Real housewives tagline! – that Chad just wants her to be a baby machine, and when he gets a ‘Glamerge’ egg as a peace offering, she turns around and sells it at her shop. Archie’s name will also appear on her phone soon …
JUGHEAD | He lives the life of a writer: living on pizza and booze in his cluttered New York apartment and screaming at his typewriter. He has a bad case of author block, and his agent warns him that he must work on his second book, otherwise he may lose his advance. (On top of that, he is evicted and thrown away by his girlfriend. Who is not Betty.) He ends up in a bar and is approached by a student who likes his first book, and he takes her home. The next morning, however, she reveals that she has a novel of her own – and when she helps him circumvent a rough pair of debt collectors, she threatens to outwit him if he does not read her work. So he does not drive very high when his call from Archie comes through.
CHERIL | Back at the Whyte Wyrm, Toni explains that she’s now the counselor at Riverdale High, and that Kevin and Fangs are still together – but she and Cheryl are not. Toni tried to reconnect with her ex, but Cheryl blew her away and chose to stay with Nana Rose on Thorn Hill. Cheryl believes she is ‘doomed to a life of unhappiness’ and believes that if she continues to renovate Thorn Hill, the curse may not completely consume her. Meanwhile, Hiram (and the new lackey Reggie!) Have been trying to buy Cheryl’s maple orchards, and Nana Rose wants Cheryl to use her newly honed painting skills to portray fakes of famous (and valuable) paintings.
Toni takes Archie on a sad tour through a ruined Riverdale: buildings are empty, Skid Row is overflowing and Archie’s old house was destroyed by the Ghoulies. Hiram is trying to clean up Riverdale so he can build a highway to make his expensive SoDale suburb thrive. So Archie calls Betty, Veronica and Jughead to a hockey game at Pop and tells them Riverdale is dying and they need to save it. And speaking of ‘dying’: A waitress from Pop’s driving a truck with a narrow skeleton in front of his truck – and we’re feeling bad about it.
What was it a lot to process, right? This left us with a lot of questions, and so we turned to Aguirre-Sacasa for answers. Read on for more information on Betty’s quest for the Trash Bag Killer, the cool atmosphere between her and Jughead – and why the truck can spell doom for a beloved character.
TVLINE | When Archie comes to Pop’s and tells the other three that they all need to save Riverdale, it does not seem like they are as happy as he is. Will they be more reluctant to jump on board
Exactly. We thought it was very Archie of Archie to say, ‘Guys, we need to save the city! Let’s have a show! And we thought Betty, Veronica and Jughead would be, ‘What are you talking about? We have lives elsewhere. “… Their reluctance to enter Archie felt real, and it felt like it was the first big story we had to tell, to figure out the way these characters would come to Riverdale and reinvest in Riverdale. , a place where many of their times were loaded and not necessarily incredible.
TVLINE | We see Betty practicing at the FBI, and she had this traumatic experience with the Trash Bag Killer. Will she still chase him while she’s in Riverdale?
In a way, all the characters have to do with some form of trauma, and Betty is definitely focused on her experience with the Trash Bag Killer. That guy will haunt the edge of the show. But Betty’s big-season mystery isn’t just focused on the Trash Bag Killer.
TVLINE | Jughead is a writer struggling with his next book, and he seems to have lost touch with everyone, including Betty.
One of the nice things about the time jump is that we see that the kids went their own way, and a more human mystery is: why did they not keep in touch? How did they drift apart? Probably the biggest mystery that has taken place between Betty and Jughead is that they are so completely out of each other’s lives.
TVLINE | At the end, we see a waitress from Pop get in a truck, and it looks like we may have another serial killer in Riverdale. So this is another mystery we’re going to play this season?
Definitely. That’s one hundred percent. I think it’s in the next episode that you will see that the mystery is really intertwined with the possibly tragic fate of one of our main characters that we have known since Season 1.
Thoughts on Riverdale‘s big time jump? Go to a booth in the comments below.