‘Riverdale’ Adds to the Mystery of That Flash-Forward Murder (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 4, Episode 8 of Riverdale, “Chapter Sixty-Five: In Treatment.”]
In a few months’ time, we’ll have caught up to the flash-forwards on Riverdale, and that means we’ll finally learn how Jughead (Cole Sprouse) is killed (or “killed”).
But for now, we continue to get bits and pieces about the crime. Betty (Lili Reinhart), Archie (KJ Apa), and Veronica (Camila Mendes) were seen burning bloody clothing (including Jughead’s beanie) in the Season 3 finale. We’ve since seen FP (Skeet Ulrich) and Betty identify Jughead’s body and the sheriff arrest the other three members of the Core Four for his “cold-blooded murder.”
And now, FP has witnesses to that “crime”: Bret and Donna from Stonewall Prep. “Those are the kids we saw kill Jughead,” she confirms at the end of “In Treatment.” Sure, let’s believe two people who are, in the present, the subjects of the victim’s investigation.
Instead, it seems much more likely that this is some elaborate plan — or story — part of Jughead’s search for the truth or even his story for the contest to continue the Baxter Brothers. As he discovers in Episode 8, all members who were in the Quill and Skull literary society with his grandfather have died in “accidents,” except for his MIA relative and Mr. Dupont. Betty suggests he transfer, but Jughead refuses to do so when they’re so close. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she says as the scene transitions to the flash-forward.
But every single time the show tells us that Jughead is dead, it seems less and less likely he actually is and instead there’s much more going on than meets the eye. Even if Jughead is dead, the likelihood that his girlfriend and closest friends killed him are slim to none.
(Colin Bentley/The CW)
Furthermore, everyone’s behavior — FP, Betty, Archie, and Veronica — is just completely off. Would FP really be storming through a classroom door like he did to arrest his son’s murderers? Would they really all just be standing there like they do as Bret and Donna identify the “killers”?
We’ll have to wait and see just what’s really going on and what leads to that moment, but it seems safe to say that we can’t trust anything we’ve seen so far in these flash-forwards.
Riverdale, Wednesdays, 8/7c, The CW
