‘Riverdale’ Really Wants Us to Think Jughead Is Dead, and Here’s All the Proof
[Warning: Riverdale spoilers ahead. Keep checking back for more answers as the season progresses.]
If you’ve been keeping up with Riverdale this season, you know that Jughead is allegedly getting killed off at the end of the season. Or that’s what the writers definitely want you to think. While it seems fairly unlikely that the show would kill off one of the Core Four, it’s doing a very good job convincing us otherwise.
Here are all the different reasons Riverdale has given us to sell the fact that Jughead might actually be donezo.
The police lineup scene:
In the second to last episode before the hiatus, there was a flash-forward to a scene with Archie, Veronica, and Betty standing in a police lineup. Two kids in prep-school uniforms were on the other side of the glass, and they pointed at the three of them and said, “Those are the kids we saw kill Jughead.”
The coroner scene:
During the Halloween episode, which included Jughead being trapped in a coffin by his Stonewall peers, Riverdale gave us a flash-forward scene at the coroner’s lab. It looks like Betty Cooper and FP Jones are there to identify a body, and when the sheet is pulled away, there is Jughead on the autopsy table. He might actually be dead, you guys.
I have to be honest though…I’m not quite buying it. Right before this scene, Jughead tells Betty over the phone that he knows if he ever truly went missing, she’d be the one to find him. Sure, in this case, she could have been the one to find his body but I’m leaning more toward a Core Four cover-up that involves faking Jughead’s death than, you know, Jughead’s actual death. I don’t have it all worked out just yet, but I will update you as more details come up.
It is worth noting that we’ve finally learned about the missing Stonewell students, known as the Stonewell Four, who have gone missing from the preparatory school without a trace over the past 30 years (make it Five if Moose is truly a new victim). Clearly, whatever happens next is going to have something to do with that.
The bonfire scene:
At the very end of the season 3 finale, the Core Four started discussing their senior year and how they wanted it to be sunshine and rainbows. Not sure how that was going to work with almost all their parents in jail or on the lam and Bughead dealing with their mutual blood relative….
Just when the gang is gathered at Pop’s discussing their hopes for a stress-free future (they’ve really got to start inviting Cheryl—she’s earned it), we flash forward to Veronica, Betty, and Archie standing over a bonfire, half naked and covered in blood. Archie holds Jughead’s beanie as Betty instructs the group to burn all their clothes, including said crown. Jug is nowhere to be seen.
They definitely want us to think Jughead is dead, but this could be one big homage to I Know What You Did Last Summer. If you haven’t seen the movie starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr., it’s a perfect horror film about a group of four ex-friends who reunite when they’re threatened by a raving serial killer who, you guessed it, knows what they did last summer. Remember what Betty said in the finale?
“We have to burn all our clothes, including Jughead’s beanie. We’ll wash off the blood in the swimming hole. After tonight, we never speak of this. Ever. Not to each other, not to our parents. No one. We finish our senior year, we graduate, and we go our separate ways. That is the only way that we won’t get caught.”
Sounds just like the pact made by the teens in IKWYDLS. More likely than not, Jughead is getting rid of the body we don’t see in this flash-forward, accidentally leaving his sacred cap behind. What would be really cool, though, is if the remaining three believe they killed Jughead and he takes on the role of the blackmailer. Too wild?
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