‘Riverdale’: SPOILER Has a Major Change in “The Blackboard Jungle”

Riverdale returned tonight, and it turns out the death of the Black Hood isn’t the only development for the characters of The CW drama.

Spoilers for Riverdale‘s midseason premiere, “Chapter Twenty-Three: The Blackboard Jungle”, below.

After finding out that Jughead is likely returning to Riverdale High now that Southside High has suddenly and mysteriously been closed by Mayor McCoy, Betty goes home only to discover that, while her parents aren’t home, someone is upstairs. Betty arms herself with pepper spray and follows the sounds.

It turns out that the person in the house isn’t an intruder. Instead, it’s Polly. She’s packing up some things into boxes, and it’s revealed that Polly has already had her babies. She didn’t call her family when she went into labor or even after the twins were born. Polly explains to Betty that the leader of the farm she’s staying at has decided that it’s best if Polly completely cuts all of her ties with her family. Betty protests, insisting that the farm sounds like a cult, but Polly is unmoved. She does, however, tell Betty one piece of information. It turns out that Polly gave her twins some curious names: Juniper and Dagwood.

While the names of Polly’s twins don’t appear to have any significance related to Archie Comics history, they are fitting considering that Polly ran off and joined this mysterious collective called the Farm. Juniper is the name of a type of tree in the cypress family while Dagwood is another term for dogwood, which is also a type of tree. Considering that Polly gave birth to them on a farm where she said they not only are free of the stigma of their parents technically having been related, but that the leader told her to cut out her family entirely, these unusual names just seem to be further hints that Polly didn’t just take herself away from Riverdale. Betty very well could be right, and Polly has unwittingly joined a cult and as we’ve seen, Riverdale doesn’t make casual mentions. If Polly’s farm sanctuary really is a cult, that very well could be a problem later on.

For now, though, Polly and her babies have nothing to do with the rest of the Cooper family, a truly heartbreaking situation for Alice Cooper. It’s one more of her children out of her life, though her long lost son Chic may be making his return very, very soon.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.