(Warning: This post contains spoilers from “Manhunter,” Wednesday’s episode of “Riverdale” Season 3.)
Welp, “Riverdale” just shook up all its key players and threw them out to different corners of the teen drama’s game board. (Too soon for a Gryphons & Gargoyles reference? Never.)
Wednesday’s installment in The CW’s dark take on Archie Comics ended with Jughead (Cole Sprouse) and Archie (KJ Apa), Veronica (Camila Mendes), and Betty (Lili Reinhart) in three very different places — both emotionally and geographically.
A Gargoyle King-obsessed Jug and a still-wounded, but now exonerated, Archie are on the run. Veronica is heartbroken at home after Archie breaks up with her via phone, telling her even though she’s cleared his name, it’s not safe for anyone if he comes back because her dad still wants him dead.
And Alice has locked Betty up in the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, because she won’t stop poking at the parents’ involvement in the Gryphons & Gargoyles-related deaths mystery — which is where Betty sees that everyone in art class is working on portraits of the Gargoyle King. Great.
“Riverdale” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told TheWrap these very separate paths are setting up his plan for next week’s very separated episode, “The Man in Black,” which he says after the fan-favorite Season 2 episode, “Tales from the Darkside.”
“The next episode after the one this week is sort of a twist on a version of an episode we did last year that everyone really liked, which was three short stories rather than one woven-together story,” Aguirre-Sacsa told TheWrap Wednesday. “And it does find our characters on their individual journeys to stop the Gargoyle King. I really wanted to play with that [format] again.”
When asked if we’ll get to the identity of the Gargoyle King soon — seeing as we have just two episodes left until “Riverdale” goes on winter break — Roberto just said: “Yes.”
But “soon” is definitely a relative word, especially in a bonkers town.
“Riverdale” airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.