RIP Riverdale: From time travel to tickle fetishes, here are its most unhinged plot points

When Riverdale first came out we were all obsessed with the plot points such as the Black Hood, and Jughead constantly wearing his beanie. But as the seasons went on the storylines became more and more unhinged, featuring spirits having sex and Archie fully fighting off a bear with his bare hands (haha, I’ll see myself out).

So in honour of Riverdale finally coming to a close here is a round up of the 13 most unhinged plot points in the show – buckle in because it’s absolutely wild.

1. Archie’s bear fight

Whilst the show sadly doesn’t physically show Archie fighting the bear, the aftermath shows Archie looking pretty worse for wear and proudly showing off the scar on his chest where the bear scratched him. The best part is Reggie’s reaction when he asks Archie what he’s even been up to recently, to which Archie casually answers “I was attacked by a bear”. Truly iconic.

2. Kevin’s tickle videos

If you’re into tickling you’ll want to read this vaguely traumatic storyline where Reggie convinces Fangs and Kevin to participate in tickle fetish videos for some extra cash. Reggie does particularly well because of his “deep laugh.” When this goes well, the three decide to start their very own tickle fetish business, which leads to Kevin getting into trouble with his original tickle director.

Ultimately, the entire football team comes to his defence, but the business is shut down by the principal because the teens were wearing Riverdale High logos in all of the fetish videos. What a classic and relatable high school scenario we’ve all found ourselves in, right…

3. The mothmen

Riverdale season five initially seemed to embrace the supernatural when Jughead was seemingly abducted by aliens after investigating local folklore about mothmen.

Some Riverdale residents believed that these extraterrestrial creatures were responsible for abducting townies over the years. In reality, these beings were actually a clan of inbred Blossom descendants who lived in the woods and occasionally preyed on unfortunate passersby, including Betty’s poor sister Polly. Because the one thing more terrifying than an actual mothman is of course inbred Blossom descendants.

4. Tabitha trying to stop the MLK assassination

Erinn Westbrook’s season five introduction as Pop’s Diner owner Pop Tate’s granddaughter Tabitha was easily the best decision that Riverdale made in its post-time-jump era.

By season six, Tabitha got her own storyline when the gang unexpectedly developed superpowers (yeah I’m coming to that). After discovering that she had the ability to travel through time, she eventually wound up in the year 1968, just before Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Although Tabitha resolved to save the civil rights leader’s life, she was forced to reckon with the fact that his death was a fixed point in time. But in doing so she discovered that she’s actually Riverdale’s guardian angel! I think Riverdale was trying to do something here and whatever it was honestly who knows.

5. Julian the haunted doll

At this point, haunted dolls seem to crop up everywhere, like give us some haunted cheerleader pom poms or something.

In season four, the Blossom family’s lore took a turn for the supernatural when Cheryl’s grandmother Nana Rose revealed that she and her Jason had a triplet named Julian, whom Cheryl had absorbed in the womb. In the present, he haunted Cheryl in the form of a very creepy doll who she eventually drowned in her bathtub.

Julian became a real character when Riverdale went back to the 1950s in season seven, taking over for Jason as Cheryl’s jock twin. He wasn’t super interested in seeing his doll counterpart when the gang got their memories back in the penultimate episode, and honestly? Fair.

6. Chic and Charles

When Betty’s mom Alice was a teenager, she became pregnant during an affair with Jughead’s father FP, and gave said baby up for adoption. So yes that means that Jughead and Betty (who were dating at this time of the show) shared a half-brother, which is weird enough as it is, but being Riverdale it took it one step further.

In season two, the baby, now a teenager, showed up as creepy guy Chic, who proceeded to show his gratitude by immediately making Alice and Betty cover up a murder he committed.  The Coopers later found out that he was an imposter, and that Alice and FP’s son was actually an FBI agent named Charles.

For a while, it seemed like Charles was a genuinely good guy, even helping his half-siblings who, once again, were dating at the time, with their investigations into kooky local mysteries. But much to their surprise, Charles was actually in evil cahoots with his boyfriend Chic. So many C names I genuinely cannot keep up.

7. Jason Blossom’s return (sort of)

They say grief looks different for everyone. In Cheryl’s case, it looked like bringing her dead brother’s recently exhumed corpse to live with her in the Blossom family’s creepy manor, because that’s a completely normal thing to do.

For a good chunk of season four, he hung out in the house’s chapel, where Cheryl dressed him in a parade of new outfits like a creepy doll (although not a haunted one like Julian, just a dead one).

8. Archie goes to war

After you graduate you might think of spending your summer relaxing and hanging out with your friends, but not Archie. Oh no, he decided to enlist in the military and go to war. In classic Riverdale style, we never find out where he went to war or even who he was fighting.

What we did get however was one of the most absurd cold opens in the show’s history, in which an injured Archie dreamt that he was engaging in World War I-style trench warfare on his high school football field. There were even Riverdale Vixen cheerleaders urging him on (it’s like the prison scene all over again)!

The dream ended when he came face-to-face with his longtime nemesis, Veronica’s father Hiram, who raised a gun to his head. And here I was thinking my dreams were weird.

9. Going back to the fifties

When a deadly comet nearly hit Riverdale at the end of season six, guardian angel Tabitha saved everyone by transporting the entire town back to the year 1955. In the process, the core characters became teenagers once again in the show’s final season, matching their original comic counterparts more closely than ever.

As such the gang got to experience relatable teen life events, like Veronica becoming a Hollywood starlet who goes on to invent birth control. Yes, invent it. I swear this show was some kind of psychological experiment.

10. Spirit sex!

Rest assured, Blossom family lore doesn’t stop with Jason and Julian! Season five introduced Cheryl’s ancestor Abigail (also played by Madelaine Petsch), who was burned at the stake for witchcraft several centuries earlier and returned to seek revenge upon the descendants of her killers, Archie, Betty, and Jughead.

To do so, she possessed Cheryl’s body in season six, which the others somehow didn’t notice. Along the way, Abigail also tried to seduce Cheryl’s ex-girlfriend Toni, who she viewed as the reincarnation of her dear lover Thomasina.  After Abigail is finally exorcised from Cheryl’s body, Cheryl and Toni agree to let Abigail and Thomasina’s spirits use their body so they can have sex one last time. I’m genuinely speechless, I have nothing to add here.

11. Rivervale

After Hiram attempts to vanquish his longtime foe Archie (which also can we take a minute to appreciate that Hyram is mid 40s and Archie, his arch nemesis, is literally a teenager) by planting a bomb under his bed in the season five finale, the subsequent explosion launched the gang into an alternate reality known as Rivervale, where the paranormal is everywhere.

For the first five episodes of season six, the writers decided to just go fully unhinged. Archie was killed in a town-wide sacrifice, the devil walked into Veronica’s casino and Toni turned into La Llorona!

12. Supernatural powers

After the ordinary Riverdale was restored thanks to some quick work from Rivervale Jughead, our characters didn’t come back exactly right, because that would be far too easy. Instead, they develop unique superpowers like super strength, mind-reading, and pyrokinesis.

One such honourable mention has to go to Veronica who can poison people with a kiss, which she then reverse-engineers to make Cheryl invulnerable to. But as Veronica explains in the season six finale, “It’s not queer-baiting, it’s saving the world!” And yes, yes she really said that.

13. Percivil Pickens

Riverdale’s audaciousness reached an all-time high in season six. Our newly super-powered heroes found themselves up against the evil Percival Pickens, an immortal villain who has his own magical powers thanks to a deal he made with the Devil back in the Pilgrim days (yeah as in the actual Devil). It just so happened that he was originally from Rivervale, but ended up in Riverdale as a result of the bomb explosion.

Deciding to make the most of being in Riverdale he started trying to make it like Rivervale by setting Biblical plagues upon its residents or trying to build a ghost train to bring the realm of the dead back into the world of the living.

The final season of Riverdale is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.

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