RIVERDALE 3.19 Review “Fear The Reaper”

This post contains spoilers for Riverdale.
Check out our last review here.

Another week, another crazy ass episode of Riverdale in the books. The Farmies get weirder, Jughead’s home life somehow gets even more complicated, Josie has to make a choice, and Hal Cooper is dead. All of this is crammed into an action-packed forty minutes while everyone races against the clock to achieve their respective goals.

We’ll try and save the most interesting tidbits for last and kick things off with Archie and Josie’s respective storylines (sorry girl). Archie has a crisis of conscience after killing Elio’s fighter, despite knowing that it wasn’t his fault. There’s some needless drama tossed in as filler here, with the much more interesting stories racing to the finish line. In the end, Archie gives away his prize money, and ultimately steps back in the ring with the nudge of Veronica. Why Veronica and not Josie? Unfortunately, Ashleigh Murray is making her exit from Riverdale to go spend some time on the spinoff. Looks like Ronnie and Arch might still be endgame after all.

Next up is the Jones’, solely because the Farm stuff is crazy pants this week. Kerts kidnaps Jellybean as leverage to get out of town. In order to get her back, the Jones family must complete a series of daunting tasks. The first? Telling the truth. Gladys outs herself as the new fizzle rocks dealer, which goes over swimmingly with an FP who had thought he’d finally gotten his life cleaned up. She’ll depart at the end of the episode as the result. Next up is robbing Pop’s, which leaves FP shot. Pop Tate ain’t here to be robbed twice in two years. Not today, Sata… Gargoyle King. Gladys must then face the Cyclopes, also known as a one-eyed Penny Peobody. Momma Jones comes out on top, but with a broken arm and a ruptured kidney.

Jug’s task is as simple as making the right choice, but his opponent wasn’t playing by the rules. Our burger-loving weirdo gets trapped in a refrigerator, managing to break out moments later. Needing to save your sister’s life gives skinny nerds a whole lot of shoulder power, apparently. When he emerges, he finds Kerts dead on the ground, and a looming Gargoyle King. There’s little more than an acknowledgment there, as he’s got sister business to attend to. JB’s fine, District Attorney McCoy gets FP off the hook by claiming duress, and Gladys Jones runs away once more. Key difference this time is that she made the right choice and left her daughter with her family.

And finally we’re at The Farm! In order to avoid this review getting into the 1K word mark, we’re gonna do a quick list of the bananas nonsense that went down in this area, and then break out the more interesting bits: Edgar intends to adopt the twins once he marries Alice, Penelope manages to get Dagwood from him, but he insists on keeping Juniper (the girl), Evenlyn is actually a 26-year-old woman who’s secretly married to Edgar, Alice knows this and is chill with it, and they got Toni!

Let’s just ignore the never-ending Cooper family drama for a second and chat about Evelyn since she wins most wackadoo moment of the week. The reveal doesn’t really give us any answers, but it raises a hell of a lot more questions. Clearly Betty was right that her motivation is to recruit in the school while Edgar goes after the adults, but what’s the plan with The Farm? How do they fit into season three’s greater narrative? What’s their tie to G&G, and what other weird-ass reveals do we have in our future? A whole lot of folks have been out there claiming Edgar’s secretly Alice’s clearly not dead son. Prior to this week it seemed like a stretch. Now? Who knows.

Was The Farm responsible for the accident that took out the motorcade that was moving Hal and other prisoners to Hiram’s private prison? Alice doesn’t want him around, and they’re clearly made up of a bunch of crazies. Hal’s also obviously not dead, meaning we’re three episodes out from the finale and just adding more and more mysteries to the season. The final tiny reveal is that Hiram’s working with Elio and still totally holds a grudge against Archie. None of it’s shocking, just more of a comforting “yup, that tracks” kind of moment for the show.

That’s it for “Fear the Reaper”. Next week we see Betty and the Serpents work to take down a Gargoyle King. You know what to do if you had thoughts on this week’s episode in the meantime!