Riverdale has undergone so many twists and turns since Jason Blossom’s body first washed up all those years ago. The hit The CW series has encountered everything from serial killers to fantasy lore to suicidal organ-harvesting cults, but surprisingly has yet to do an official Halloween episode. With this week’s episode, that changes in a pretty epic way. Here’s what you need to know about this week’s episode, “Chapter Sixty-One: Halloween”.
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Jughead, Betty, Alice, FP, and Charles watch the videotape that turned up on their doorstep, which ends up being six hours of their house being surveilled. Cheryl and Toni, Archie, Veronica, and even Pop Tate get videotapes, which show the same footage of their respective houses.
At school, a group of students dress up as the Black Hood and the Gargoyle King, which triggers Betty. Betty finds more people dressed in those costumes while handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. Betty later gets a call from someone pretending to be the Black Hood. She later finds Jellybean upstairs in a pool of blood, but it ends up being a prank. She gets a call from the Black Hood again, who says that he’s calling from inside the house. Charles arrives and learns about the prank calls, and suggests that they try to trace the call. Betty is suspicious of Charles, but he admits that he wants to be part of a real family. The Black Hood calls again, and Betty deliberately keeps him on the line to trace the call — from the treatment center where Polly is staying. Betty calls Polly and accuses her, but she denies it. Charles suggests that Betty consider joining the junior FBI club, and she agrees. Later, as Jughead and Betty talk on the phone, Charles monitors the call.
Veronica suggests that Archie and Mad Dog throw a Halloween party at the community center, to help the local kids be out of the way of Dodger and his crew. She offers to have her friend Katy Keene make costumes for them. Archie and Mad Dog dress up as two superheroes named Pureheart the Powerful and The Shield. The party at the community center is a hit, until Dodger and his people arrive. Dodger refuses to leave and flashes a gun at Archie. FP arrives, just as one of the kids, Eddie, is shot by Dodger. Archie questions if he’s doing enough to help the town, and suggests that he suit up as a masked crime-fighter.
At Stonewall, Jughead finds a flyer for Army recruitment in Moose’s things. Jughead tells Moose to stand up against Brett. During class, they all talk about their favorite horror stories, which sparks up a conversation about the Stonewall Four — a group of students who vanished after being sealed up in a brick wall. Jughead researches the Stonewall Four, but gets drugged by the other students and passes out. He wakes up sealed in a coffin and struggles to find his way out. The next day, he wakes up in Chipping’s office, where he learns that the whole thing was a prank from Brett and the other kids to attempt to get him to leave. Jughead returns to his dorm and finds Moose completely gone.
In the flash-forward sequence, FP and Betty visit the morgue, where they correctly identify Jughead’s corpse.
Other tidbits from the episode include:
- Toni tells Cheryl to get rid of Jason’s corpse, and she reluctantly agrees. After they bury Jason, they find a doll that Cheryl thinks is inhabited by Jason’s ghost. Cheryl and Toni dress up as Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn for Halloween, but are distracted by the sounds of a baby crying. They track it down to the chapel, where the Jason doll has resurfaced. Cheryl suggests they have a seance to talk to Jason. They enlist Nana Rose to help with the seance, and she ultimately tells them about a third Blossom child — Julian, who Cheryl absorbed in the womb. Toni refuses to believe any of it, and argues that this is all just a ploy to convince her to dig up Jason’s body again. Cheryl digs up the body, to Toni’s chagrin. Toni later finds the Julian doll, which Cheryl swears she wasn’t responsible for.
- As Veronica prepares to close Pop’s for the night, she’s visited by a mysterious man, who is driving through the night to see his family. Veronica caters to him, but later hears a news report from Alice about an escaped serial killer named “The Family Man”, who murders people after they cook him food. Veronica tries to escape him and heads down to the speakeasy to hide, making a molotov cocktail and lighting him on fire with it.
- Reggie convinces Kevin to TP Honey’s office, but are quickly caught by him. Honey pulls Kevin aside and gets him to confess that Reggie was behind it, by threatening him from not getting into his first-choice school. Honey later talks to Reggie, and suggests that he’s acting out because of the abuse he gets from his father. He makes Reggie spend the entire night cleaning his office, and when he eventually leaves, he finds his car TP-ed and severely damaged.
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Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
