‘Riverdale’ Finally Revealed If Jughead Is Dead Or Not… Or Did It?

Since the end of Riverdale Season 3, fans have been losing their minds over the seeming death of Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse). First teased with a season ending flash forward to Spring Break, Veronica (Camila Mendes), Archie (KJ Apa) and Betty (Lili Reinhart) were seen covered in blood, burning their clothes, with Jughead conspicuously missing. And since then, Season 4 has layered in more info, ending with last week’s cliffhanger: Betty standing over Jughead in the woods with a blood covered rock, her boyfriend seemingly dead on the ground.

Adding to the confusion, a lot of weird moments and clues surrounding the Jughead “death” scene. He’s been attending Stonewall Prep, an elite school that recruited him based on his writing, got him hired to write a series of mystery books called The Baxter Brothers novels, and then stole his work and framed him for plagiarism. The main perpetrators behind the cover-up? Two of his fellow students, Bret Weston Wallis (Sean Depner) and Donna Sweett (Sarah Desjardins), who are either working for the shadowy cabal who publishes the Baxter Brothers books, or are just huge a-holes. One of the two!

This week’s episode, “How to Get Away With Murder,” finally brought together all the threads (well, most of them), showing what happened after that pivotal moment in the woods, through the clothes burning bonfire, to the cover-up that followed — and beyond. So what’s the deal, then? Is Jughead really dead on Riverdale? Is Cole Sprouse leaving Riverdale? Is this all some horrible dream, a book Jughead is writing, a set-up for the introduction of Jughead’s identical cousin Souphead, or something else?

Spoiler warning, folks, because we finally have a hint at the bigger game Jughead is playing… And at least at the moment, it looks like Jughead is actually dead???

He’s not, but let’s break down what happened on this week’s episode. After finding Betty in the woods holding a bloody rock, Veronica and Archie are seen burning their clothes, driving home semi-nude, and making very terrible excuses for their nekkidness to their parents. Eventually, they get their stories semi-straight thanks to some help from Betty and Jughead’s half-brother Charles Smith (Wyatt Nash). They also discover that Donna used something called Devil’s Breath to drug Betty, most likely spin her around (according to Charles), and put the bloody rock in her hand. All signs point to Donna and Bret doing the deed, not Betty — leading to an episode ending declaration that she’s going to destroy the Stonewall student, and rightly so.

Devil’s Breath, by the way, is a real thing. As with most drugs its use and danger are somewhat overblown, but it can, in fact, induce a “zombie-like state” in anyone who has it blown in their faces, a la Betty. She’s not getting triggered by a secret word, or becoming Dark Betty again (as Veronica suggests earlier in the episode). She was most likely actually drugged.

Over the course of the episode, the kids pivot and feint and try to delay suspicion, before ultimately making one, big move… Instead of playing Donna and Bret’s game where the noose is slowly tightening, they decide to start a search for Jughead’s body, something we’ve seen before on the show in flash-forward. And this time, we see his father FP (Skeet Ulrich) and Archie discover him in the woods, dressed the same as the night of the Stonewall party where he was “murdered.” We also get to see another flash-forward scene, with Jughead being identified in the morgue, and it sure looks like he’s completely dead:

Next week’s promo, for “To Die For,” promises a memorial for Jughead, more shenanigans from Brett and Donna, and even Veronica’s half-sister Hermosa (Mishel Prada) seemingly figuring out what they all did to Jughead. We also see more flash-forward scenes in the promo, with Veronica, Betty and Archie getting arrested by FP for Jughead’s murder.

So why, given all that, do I not think Jughead is dead? And no, it’s not because he was replaced by Souphead Jones or anything. The reasons are the same as last week: Jughead is still narrating the show, a difficult thing to do if you’re dead; and there’s still missing time. Though we see his body a bunch we don’t get to see what happened when he was supposedly conked on the head; and we don’t see the aftermath with the Core Three dragging his body anywhere.

That leaves open the possibility that Veronica, Archie and Betty are working with Jughead to cover things up, possibly so they can continue to get a one-up on the Stonewall squad in whatever game the latter is playing. That said, the language they use this episode, while skirting the line, falls more on the side of them honestly believing they killed Jughead.

If anything, it’s more likely Jughead is working with Charles. We never see him giving instructions to the other kids, and for an FBI agent he sure seems into helping cover up a murder. What if Jughead contacted Charles before he started whatever plan he put into motion at the Stonewall party, and since Charles has shown a willingness to leave his family in weird, dangerous situations (see his mother in last season’s cult storyline), that seems more reasonable than, say, telling Archie, who definitely blabs something to his mother by the end of the episode. Also, interesting detail that Charles seems to have a working knowledge of strange drugs that can do things like put you in a zombie-like state or — just spitballing — perhaps briefly make it look like you’re dead.

With that all said, is it possible Jughead is actually, really dead? Sure. Anything is possible, this is Riverdale. But right now, we’re in the middle part of the magic trick. We’ve had the pledge, we’re in the turn. Next up? The prestige. And if I know anything from watching The Prestige, it’s that body you think is dead… Is actually not at all. We’re just getting started, folks.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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