Three dark, twisty and scary stories. Riverdale always delivers with these episodes.
The story arcs this season teed this episode right up, first, with Archie (K.J. Apa). In the last episode, he was seeing one of his fellow soldiers that died in the war. He has some serious PTSD. This is a serious topic, but it did lend itself to this scary story.
Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) is trying to get her hands on that (palladium. She’s having all the men of Riverdale do her dirty work for her. Archie fliped out in the mine, which wasn’t really a surprise. That mine looked scary, and it could easily play tricks on your eyes.
But it was more than that. There was carbon monoxide in there. No wonder the miners thought they were seeing moth men. Kevin (Casey Cott) and Fangs (Drew Ray Tanner) were totally tripping, and Eric (Sommer Carbuccia) tried to kill Uncle Frank (Ryan Robbins). It was a scary scene.
The craziest part was when Archie flipped out, thinking the drugs the therapist gave him were making him hallucinate, but it was the gas. He was raving nuts accusing his doctor of experimenting on him. He seriously got one of the worst side effects from this.
This story less scared me than just made me seriously worried about Archie. He needs help.
Betty (Lili Reinhart) could definitely use some help herself. She kidnapped the man she thinks killed her sister. He may have done, or maybe one of his family members did since she believes it’s a family of killers.
I want to say this was one crazy storyline, but considering everything Betty and Alice (Mädchen Amick) have been through, it’s pretty up to par with everything else.
Alice gave her daughter permission to kill this man. I am glad that he killed himself before it came to that. But she had that chainsaw, and she was ready to torture the guy. Being captured by the Trash Bag Killer has really made her go over the edge. She had a bright future as an FBI agent, but now she’s the rogue FBI agent that truckers talk about.
They had to get all of them back to Riverdale somehow. And for Betty, it was the traumatic experience she had of being kidnapped thinking she was going to die.
And lastly, we finally know what happened to Jughead (Cole Sprouse)! I kind of like the version he had made up in his head about the Rat King. We did deal with a rat king already. It made sense that that’s what he saw. But it was literal rats that were on him. He passed out underground because he was so drunk.
It’s sad that he felt so alone. That no one missed him. I’m sure if Betty, Archie, Veronica (Camila Mendes), Cheryl and even Kevin knew he was missing for three days, they would all miss him. But he had cut himself off from them. They cut each other off from each other. He didn’t really try to make new friends in Iowa either. I get it. Making friends is hard, but he could have tried.
This was definitely the most surprising storyline. And also the most realistic. With all the crazy things in this show, this is the most grounded thing yet.
There is much trauma to delve into for all of these characters. It lends itself well to these scary stories, but now we have to unpack it all and move forward. They’ve all been through so much. They needed therapy before any of this happened.
If the writers show us that these characters are working on themselves, now that will be a great storyline.
What was your favorite dark tale from “The Night Gallery?” Tweet me @PrimetimeDrama or @MandyTTCarr or comment below.
