The last episode of RIVERDALE was a big one. Jughead officially became a Serpent, Veronica’s friend Nick St. Clair blew into town and hosted a party full of drugs, Betty broke up with Jughead at the Black Hood’s insistence, Nick tried to date rape Cheryl before Veronica and the Pussy Cats managed to stop him, and Betty offered Nick up as the next victim to the Black Hood.
In other words, there’s going to be a lot of fallout in this week’s episode.
During a visit to the RIVERDALE set in Vancouver, we spoke to the cast about what’s to come this week.
Offering Up the Name. At the end of the last episode Betty essentially marked Nick St. Clair for death as a result of what he did to Cheryl. But Lili Reinhart (Betty Cooper) said that “I think the minute the name comes out of her mouth [Betty] is horrified that she would do that, but she also knows that the Black Hood is threatening to kill everyone that she loves. So she goes into fight or flight mode and has to give a name, and considering what just happened and the place that she is in, she said it and she said his name. She did what she had to do. [But] right when it came out of her mouth she knew she needed to try and stop it and I guess that is kind of what you see at the beginning of 2.06.” Does Betty manage to save Nick? You’ll have to wait and see.
The Parents’ Reaction. Once the parents find out about their kids doing jingle jangle, the ramifications of that is going to lead to something far larger. Although, the first problem is that all the kids themselves get into trouble the moment their parents find out the truth. “[The parents] all handle it poorly,” Ashleigh Murray (Josie) hinted. “They make decisions that are going to affect not only them, but the kids. Being a parent is really hard, and if you’re a crazy parent, it makes it even harder.”
Civil War. One of the decisions the parents make is to essentially blame the South Side for the problems in town, which leads the Mayor to declare war on that part of town. “I think the South Side is always going to be a strawman for the North Side,” Cole Sprouse (Jughead Jones). “It takes a lot of the flak just because it’s the easiest victim to point at, which is something that we continuously talk about until the eventual culmination of basically a civil war. And I think — because institutionally the South Side is an area where a lot of that stuff is forced to take place — people see that as the very first source of that — of that trouble and that drama. Eventually the North Side just says, We don’t want this blemish on our town anymore and how are we going to end up dealing with this?” But I think they’ve always been the fall guy and Jughead realizes that they’re the fall guy and Jughead — because he’s got a foot on the North and the Southside — has to figure out a way to mediate that, which is kind of the continued narrative.”
Feeding the Civil War. Marisol Nichols (Hermione Lodge) hinted that “The war between the South and North Side to me is like old school Outsiders, wrong side of the tracks stuff. The Lodges feed into it, particularly Hiram, because in my mind he’s the type of man who loves to watch chaos and loves to create it. The Lodges aren’t as innocent as they may or may not seem at all, and they are invested in what’s going on, even if we haven’t seen it yet.”
The Drag Race. With South Side High and the South Side in general being targeted by the Mayor, that leaves the Serpents in danger of getting taken over by a rival gang. Jughead is determined to put an end to that as he’s afraid it could lead the Serpents down an even darker past. At his father’s urging, Jughead challenges the rival gang to a drag race, and he asks Archie to ride with him. “I think the drag race also isn’t what people think it’s going to be,” KJ Apa (Archie Andrews) hinted. “Jughead obviously feels like he needs to do this to prove something but…Archie’s plan for the drag race is something different.”
Reflections of Their Parents. Why is Jughead going to such pains to become a Serpent like his father and to preserve the gang’s future? According to Sprouse, “the kids in the town are all reflections of their parents and are kind of these ghost-like images of their parents. Even when we start to learn the parents’ story in Season 1, we see that someone like FP made some mistakes that Jughead is either stumbling into blindly or trying to acknowledge. I think Jughead has a tremendous yearning for the approval of his father, who was probably not there too much when he was a kid. He’s a kid whose mom is not around. He’s a kid who takes his childhood friendships super, super seriously and is all about the kind of purity and moral rightness of whatever person is making the bad decisions that they’re making. And I think he sees the potential for greatness in his father and he sees the potential for greatness in himself and he’s slowly but surely realizing that there are a lot of different shades to good and bad and that his father is definitely sitting right around the middle of that and what that might mean for Jughead. In that way, we have Luke Perry’s character, who’s very morally righteous, and Archie is a spectre of that moral righteousness as well, sort of a lawful good. And then we have Jughead sort of sitting on that spectrum, trying to figure out what part of that spectrum he sits on and if he leans either way and it’s definitely a shade of his father — and if his father can end up influencing him towards either direction, that’s yet to be said.”
Archie and Jughead’s Relationship. Jughead joining the Serpents is going to continue to put a strain on the boys’ friendship, Apa said. “It kind of progresses as the season goes on. Archie doesn’t like the Serpents and Archie doesn’t like seeing his friends make choices that can put them in danger. Archie’s number one thing is friends and family. He prioritizes those people over himself. It definitely affects their relationship in a way where they’re still friends but Archie is worried for him constantly.”
Don’t miss an all new episode of RIVERDALE tonight (November 15) at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
