Yahoo Finance Riverdale recap: The devil drags [Spoiler] to hell
At this point on Riverdale, Rivervale is really racking up quite the body count: First Archie lost his heart. Then Toni went to live at the bottom of a lake. And now Reggie's in hell. And that's not even mentioning the fact that both Kevin and Jughead signed their souls away to the devil in this episode. Speaking of which, let's get into it!
The plot of this episode revolves around one man. He's blond. He wears a black suit. He can cause heart attacks in an instant. And he really has a thing for souls. But most importantly, his name is Lou. Lou Cypher. GET IT?! I honestly have not stopped laughing since he first said his name, and I'm not sure I ever will. LOU. CYPHER. Truly, Riverdale, you've lost your mind, and I don't know if I love it or hate it.
Anyway, Lou over here shows up and instantly gives Pops a heart attack, so obviously we hate him (if we didn't already hate him for being the devil or whatever). He then informs Tabitha that her great-grandfather once sold him his soul in exchange for Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe to be successful. Then when Pop Tate discovered that about his father, he sold his soul to save his dad. I know what you're thinking: Now Tabitha is going to sell her soul to save Pop Tate. But Lou doesn't want her soul! He want's the Chock'lit Shoppe instead! (The devil just really loves a good milkshake, you know?)
But Pop Tate, once he wakes up in the hospital, tells Tabitha no. She can't sell Pop's because it's the soul of Riverdale. But we'll come back to that.
When Lou isn't hanging out with Tabitha and Pop, he's attending the soft opening of Reggie and Veronica's casino, which Alice has claimed is an abomination. Upon arriving, Lou wastes no time in giving Kevin a glimpse at what his future could look like: a stint on Broadway paired with Fangs — sorry, Finn — as a manager/boyfriend. One musical number later and Kevin signs his soul to the devil. Literally. He looks at a contract that says, "Sell Your Soul," in massive letters and signs it like it's someone's yearbook. But unlike a former classmate, the devil really will K.I.T.
Once Lou starts dominating a table at the casino, Veronica kicks him out, which is where she finds out that Kevin isn't the only one making deals. It seems Reggie made a deal with the devil a while back to get the casino off the ground, and come Saturday — it's not clear what day of the week we're currently on — he's collecting his soul.
Kailey Schwerman/The CW Camila Mendes and Charles Melton on 'Riverdale'
Veronica snaps into Save Reggie mode and comes up with a plan: She offers the devil a better (a.k.a. worse) soul, the one belonging to Nick St. Clair.
Veronica then invites Nick to the casino and convinces him to tell her all his sins. She has a thing for details. (Get it? The devil's in the details!) And once he confesses to a couple hit-and-runs, the occasional DUI, and so much more, the senator is sent to hell. So that happened.
But wait, Lou says he'll still see Veronica on Saturday. Why? Because Reggie never sold his soul — he sold Veronica's! He tricked her into signing the contract one week when she thought she was signing invoices. Talk about true love! So what's Veronica's plan to save herself? Give the devil Alice.
Before we get to that, let's talk about Betty, who spends the episode talking to the devil. At first he appears to be TBK — I still don't understand how that mask is made out of a trash bag but doesn't suffocate him — and then the devil confesses. Naturally, the devil wants Betty's soul, so his plan is to make her listen to her family members as they're tortured in hell. It doesn't work at first, mostly because Betty doesn't care about her dad. But when Betty hears Polly's voice, she snaps, stabbing the devil in the chest repeatedly.
Only it wasn't the devil, it was Glenn. So yeah, Betty just murdered her ex — and an FBI agent! — and shoved him under her house. She might not have signed a contract, but I'd say the devil won that one.
As for Jughead, he actually calls Lou over to the school because, get this, he wants to INTERVIEW THE DEVIL. Lou agrees to grant him an "exclusive" if Jug agrees to one of two conditions: Either he publishes their chat, achieves fame, but then can never write again, OR he hears all the juicy details of the devil's life but can never write about it. Jug says he'll decide after he hears the story. He then asks the devil to "start at the beginning." As in… the beginning of time?! How long is this conversation about to be, Jug?!
In the end, Jug is an idiot and chooses to publish the story — because the whole world is just going to believe that he sat down with the devil — in exchange for never writing again. And, spoiler alert, he regrets it! To reverse his deal, weak "I'm nothing if I"m not a writer" Jughead Jones signs his soul over to the devil. Honestly, why does this not seem like a big deal to anyone in this town?
This brings us back to Tabitha, who gets a little help from a guardian angel. Literally. Raphael shows up at the diner and hands her a container filled with the tears of the Virgin Mary from the Crucifixion. And when Tabitha sneaks a few into a milkshake she gives to Lou — I told you he likes milkshakes — he vomits up blood. She and Pop then throw him out, rub some tears around the doorframe of Pop's, and declare that the diner has been consecrated and is now protected from any evil! Pop and Tabitha also drank a couple tears, so they're protected too. While I can't say I ever anticipated the day that Pop's would be consecrated, something about a milkshake saving the day does feel right to me.
Last but not least, let's get back to Veronica. After she decides that Alice doesn't actually deserve to burn in hell, she performs one final musical number — obviously — and then makes a new deal with the devil. She gets to keep her soul if once a week for the rest of her life she delivers a lost soul from the casino to the devil. So in a way, she and Betty both became murderers this episode. And she starts… with Reggie.
Because relationships are about being fair to each other, she tricks him the same way he tricked her and has him unknowingly sign the contract while signing for a liquor delivery. And now their love story ends the way we always expected: with Reggie burning in hell.
At this point, I have no idea what to expect from the rest of this five-episode event, other than that I suspect Sabrina's arrival will tie into all this hell business. All I know for sure is that I'll never recover from Lou Cypher. (And maybe neither will Reggie.)
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