The weirdest show on television is getting even weirder, it seems. Riverdale is in its fifth season, and it’s doing a time leap, baby. After years of dealing with gang violence, cultists, illicit organ harvesters, and serial killers, the gang finally graduated from high school, and the episode airing next Wednesday sets the show seven years into the future.
Do I watch this show? No, just the occasional wild recap. Did I scream my way through this promo? Yes, because I know enough about this show to realize that this is some lawless shit.
The promo features some gripping narration from the ever-deadpan Jughead, played by Cole Sprouse. Here’s what he has for us:
“Archie had been in a war...”
Cut to Archie... fighting in armed combat on what appears to be his old high school football field?
What war is this? Is this a dream sequence? Why does it look like Saving Private Ryan out there?
I consulted Jezebel staff writer and resident Riverdale expert Joan Summers about this.
“He’s already worked as a hitman for the mob, committed murders, and went to prison,” Summers said. “So him being in some future war makes perfect sense.”
She added, “The best Archie plotline, though, is when he learned boxing so he could fight a bear.”
What?
“He was stuck in a murder mystery game based on the ’80s Dungeons and Dragons panic where he and his friends had to role-play to not be murdered by the council of secret villains that run Riverdale,” she said. “And one of Archie’s trials as ‘the knight’ was he has to fight a bear.”
Okay. Got it.
“I was a published writer...”
So here we have Jughead, the weirdo, who is a published author and is... uh....
Not having a great time!!!
“Veronica was married...”
Veronica’s job is married.
It looks like Veronica has an awkward run-in with Archie and has to explain that while he was fighting a war on the high school football field, she got married to a dude named Chadwick. Let’s take bets on what this dude does for a living. Real estate? Corporate law?
Knowing Riverdale, he’s probably the bear Archie fought way back when or something.
“Betty was an FBI agent...”
So we have Betty, an FBI agent, running through the woods in a very obvious rip off (homage?) of the opening scene of Silence of the Lambs, in which FBI trainee Clarice Starling is running through some fuckin’ woods too.
The promo cuts to Betty having a therapy session, in which she has flashbacks of, uh... some monster hissing at her?
Maybe I should start watching Riverdale.