Cheryl Gets Her Vixens Back (But For How Long?) On This Week’s ‘Riverdale’

One good thing about finding out your parents were secretly working for the Russians in America during the 1950s? Their decision to remove you as captain of your high school cheerleading squad suddenly doesn’t hold much water. At least it looks like Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) is back in a Vixens uniform in the trailer for this week’s episode, but then Tabitha (Erinn Westbrook) is back, too, so a time jump might be in order.

You would’ve thought an atomic bomb would’ve been the perfect trigger for a time jump, if that’s the direction Riverdale wanted to go in, but in the end this week’s deep dive into ’50s Cold War paranoia just resulted in a very late answer to the whole Milkman murders. Given that the murders had already (seemingly) been resolved, it’s not an answer anyone was necessarily looking for but now we also know Ethel Muggs (Shannon Purser) is really a Cooper, except she’s not changing her name. Turns out living with them for the past few episodes hasn’t made her want to join the family (who’d have thunk it?).

In other news, Jughead (Cole Sprouse) had to complete an investigation without a “Girl Friday” (though he did have a “Boy Friday” in Dilton (Daniel Yang)).

Mary Andrews (Molly Ringwald) finally kicked Uncle Frank (Ryan Robbins) out of the house (though permanently inviting him to Sunday dinner afterwards took out a lot of the sting). At least she got to throw in a dig about Frank talking a big talk for someone who’s never served in the army himself.

The decision to go black-and-white last week, while paying homage to B-movies, was fairly arbitrary, but the gothic stylings of Cheryl’s B-movie were definitely the most successful.

Some other thoughts on last week’s episode:

• Upon further research (aka a visit to Riverdale‘s Wikipedia page), it turns out Ethel’s new boyfriend, Ben Button (Moses Thiessen) has appeared on the show before and wasn’t just invented for last week’s episode, but the show could’ve done a better job re-introducing him.
• If Riverdale is planning to return to the present day for the final episode, is that really the best use of the series time? To just name one change, present day means no Choni and that’s been a highlight of season seven.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays on The CW.