Riverdale is back for Season 3, which just premiered, and wow, did they start out with a bang! Needless to say, I am so excited for the upcoming season, so let’s review what happened in Episode 1. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
The episode moved kind of slowly at first, with much back and forth between the typical Riverdale drama and Archie’s trial. Framed by Hiram Lodge, Archie is currently in court for the murder of Cassidy Bullock. Things weren’t looking good at first as the prosecutor recounts all of Archie’s acts of violence, but things start to look up when Archie’s mom tells the jury about how he saved Cheryl’s life.
The court is dismissed, and Veronica worries they’ll rule against Archie, so she exacts a plan to sway a jury member. But the jury is hung, and eventually it all ends with Archie pleading guilty. Although I’d like to say the trial was an emotional rollercoaster, it was more like a series of predictable events until the end. When Archie confessed, I wanted to yell at the T.V. screen for him to stop.
Honorable mentions for favorite moments in the episode include: Fred Andrews punching Hiram in his smug face, Betty referring to herself as the serpent queen, and a lovely Choni moment.
There is some real spooky stuff going on in Riverdale this season, and I’m excited to see where it goes. Towards the end of the episode, there were some unexpectedly supernatural elements introduced in the show. Shout out to Betty for having the most realistic reaction to seeing her babies floating in mid-air: having a seizure.
At the end of Season 2, it was suggested that Alice would go to the farm Polly was staying at, and in this episode, she is back with a hippie attitude and some oolong tea. Polly and Alice try to discredit Betty throughout the episode and continuously try to convince her to join the farm and change her ways to help her heal. It all sounds like a bunch of crazy, cult propaganda and may tie into another part of this episode involving Dilton Doiley and Ben. Both of them act pretty sketchy throughout the episode, leaving aside the fact that Ben’s character has a slew of fan theories and unresolved storylines.
Towards the end of the episode, Jughead is led to the Riverdale woods and sees what I can only interpret as a Satanic ritual going on, with both of the young boys folded over unconscious with strange symbols carved into their backs. This along with the ritual Alice and Polly got involved with that led to the aforementioned floating babies, leads me to believe that Riverdale is entering into a whole different kind of dark territory. Whether this has anything to do with the upcoming series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, I’m not sure. But I do know that I am left with many questions and a lot of excitement for the upcoming season.