In just a matter of weeks, Riverdale‘s fifth season will go on a significant hiatus, with a several-month gap between new episodes of the hit The CW series. Before that happens, the show still has a litany of plot twists and turns left to cover — and that was especially the case in tonight’s episode. If you need to catch up on the most essential details and storylines from Riverdale‘s latest episode, we’re here to help. Here are the biggest reveals and Easter eggs from “Chapter Eighty-Five: Destroyer.” Obviously, spoilers for the latest episode of Riverdale, “Chapter Eighty-Five: Destroyer”, below! Only look if you want to know!
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Archie coaches the football team, but they lose game after game — to the disappointment of Cheryl and the Vixens. Veronica offers a cash prize to whichever Bulldog member can score first. Veronica promises Archie that she’ll help motivate the town into caring about the Bulldogs again, and they kiss. Veronica gets Tabitha to agree to hold a free pancake breakfast at Pop’s for the Bulldogs, and Archie and Veronica get Cheryl to agree to have the Vixens cheer one more game.
The pancake breakfast goes relatively well until Reggie shows up on behalf of the football league, asking for the Bulldogs to withdraw from it. Veronica confronts Hiram about it, and they agree to a wager surrounding the next game between Riverdale and Stonewall. The next day, Archie’s potential captain gets recruited by Stonewall, which further frustrates Archie and Veronica. Veronica gets T-Dub — a professional football player, and one of her most frequent customers at the jewelry store — to visit the team and motivate them. Hiram tells Reggie to antagonize Riverdale, and when he refuses, Hiram fires him from his Stonewall coaching position.
At the game, a crowd actually shows up to support the Bulldogs. Cheryl and the Vixens perform “Stupid Love”, and the Bulldogs lose, but they do manage to score, helping Veronica win her wager against Hiram.
Jughead ponders his evidence and the existence of aliens, and lets his book agent know about his latest research. While accepting short stories from his English class, one of Jughead’s students, Lerman, turns in a story that perfectly matches those of the Mothmen abductions, but Weatherbee doesn’t see any harm in it, even though there are signs that Lerman might live in an abusive home. Jughead later confronts Lerman about the story, but he argues that it’s just a recurring dream and not real. The next day, Lerman’s parents confront Jughead about the conversation, and Weatherbee almost fires him over it. Weatherbee later tells Jughead that Lerman went missing on the Lonely Highway.
Betty tries to help Alice deal with the latest reveal tied to Polly, and whether or not she was really killed by whatever crushed the phonebooth. Glen, Betty’s ex from the FBI office, tells her that the blood from the phonebooth matched Polly’s — meaning she might definitively be dead. Betty visits Cheryl about it, and they bond over the similarities between Jason’s death and Polly’s. Betty returns home to break the news to Alice, but lies to her instead, which does provide her motivation. Betty breaks the news of Polly’s death to Jughead, and he takes her to one of his interviewees, who argues that Polly was a victim of the Mothmen, something that Betty refuses to believe. Betty decides to take matters into her own hands by saving some of the other girls at the truck stop and beating up the main trucker. When Betty gets the news about Lerman’s disappearance, she stops herself from killing the trucker, leaving him tied up and tracking down Lerman, who sleepwalked there. As Lerman’s parents later reveal, Lerman once went missing on the Lonely Highway for a week straight.
Betty begins to believe the Mothmen theory, and agrees to work with Jughead to figure out what happened to Lerman in the week he went missing. The next day, Weatherbee reveals to Jughead that Lerman and his parents moved out of Riverdale. Meanwhile, Glen shows up in Riverdale and breaks the news of Polly’s death to Alice, all while taking over Betty’s FBI case about it.
While moving out of Fangs and Toni’s apartment, Kevin argues that he doesn’t deserve happiness, which Tom takes umbrage with. Cheryl invites Kevin and Fangs to hash out their issues together, but Kevin emotionally shuts down. Kevin later meets a man in a sauna and tries to flirt with him, but gets beaten up. Kevin tells Tom that he’s secretly hated himself for being gay, in part because his mom didn’t accept it.
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Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
