"Riverdale" Recap Season 2 Episode 13: Archie Learns the Truth About Agent Adams

Each week, Teen Vogue will be taking you on a journey to Riverdale, a quaint little town hiding some very big secrets.

This week’s episode starts off right where last week’s left off, with Alice explaining that the dead man in her dining room tried to hurt her and Chic…killed him, I guess? She doesn’t really finish her explanation, because she’s busy mopping up all the blood and telling Betty not to call the cops because they’ll take Chic away. (He, BTW, is frozen and crying in the corner.) It’s only when Hal calls Betty to say he’s coming over to pick up some toiletries that Alice agrees to let her daughter help with the clean up of this messy, messy situation.

By the time Hal arrives, the Cooper ladies are totally clean yet totally flustered. Hal can tell something is off, but he doesn’t push too hard — though he does fill Penelope Blossom in on the weird vibe when he returns to Thistle House later that night. The second he leaves the Cooper place, Betty has to rush off the phone with Jughead (who is telling her he loves her) and help her mom dump the body in an abandoned sewer in the woods that Alice remembers from childhood. Ah, mem’ries. Back at home, and after another round of scrubbing the whole house, Betty showers all the dirt and death off of her and passes out for what looks like the deepest sleep ever.

Next door to the Coopers's crime scene of a home, Agent Adams is putting increasing pressure on Archie (even toppling over his drum set) and explaining that someone like Hiram wouldn’t have killed Paul (AKA Papa Poutine) himself, but would’ve had someone else do it. Is there someone who’s always hanging around the Lodges? Not that Archie can recall. I can think of someone who is always hanging around the Lodges — you, Archiekins. But we all know you didn’t execute Papa Poutine.

Over on the Southside, FP has returned from dropping Tall Boy in exile and wants to take a page out of Jughead’s playbook: arrange a meeting with Mayor McCoy, show her the Pickens statue head, explain how Hiram Lodge was behind the vandalism. (Oops, Jughead has already dropped the head at the Pembrooke, where the Lodge family is taking its appearance as a declaration of war from the Serpents!) But Veronica wants them to try to settle things, first — like she used to do in Model U.N. Her parents agree after she reminds them that they kind of have been acting like high school students, themselves.

What a night! But there’s no more time to rest, Betty’s alarm is blaring and her mother and brother are acting like nothing weird happened the night before. Betty can’t shake the bloody flashbacks, though, and when Jughead arrives to walk her to school she is so clearly acting strange. He’s nervous that maybe last night was a bad idea, but she reassures him and says that there was just a lot of family drama once she got home.

On a parallel walk to school, Veronica also asks Archiekins about any regrets from the previous night — and he similarly claims he has none. So she fills him in on the brewing Lodge/Serpents turf war, and next thing we know, she’s inviting Jug over for the détente talks (which Jug agrees to if they can happen on HIS turf, so Hiram can see all the people he’s displacing). Archie and Betty look tired and stressed out during this convo (‘cuz of all of their respective secrets) and Archie ignores a call from the stage-5 clinger known as Agent Adams. Then Kevin rushes in with the latest news from the police station (not sure Kevin is supposed to share all of these investigation details all the time, TBH): the police found another dead body! B, V, and A all tense up as Kevin describes the brutal murder (the one in the hotel, AKA Papa Poutine). Betty runs out and pukes in the bathroom, where Cheryl tries to comfort her but is rebuffed, and Veronica theorizes with Archie that her father was involved somehow. Archiekins calms her down by asserting that Hiram is a good guy, deep down. Arch, when did you commit so hard to Team Hiram? Just two weeks ago he was threatening you on a wrestling mat.

Juggy, meanwhile, has another meeting with Mayor McCoy where he lays out his (totally correct) hypothesis: she’s accepting donations from the Lodges in exchange for land deals. Ruh-roh. Things do not look good for Mayor McCoy, because we all know that once Jughead has a hunch, he’s liable to write about it in the school newspaper, which makes a lot of waves in this town.

Adams and Archie have another meeting, this one involving some cold, hard cash. Agent Adams wants Archie to engage directly with Hiram about Papa Poutine, and appeals to Archie’s sense of guilt over people getting hurt to get him to do it. When Archie brings up Poutine with Hiram, though, Hiram just talks about how many enemies the man had. So Archie tells Hiram that Veronica is worried he was involved somehow. Arch, not super cool to betray your girlfriend’s confidence like that!

All our main characters are very isolated from each other this week, which may be why they’re making questionable decisions like Betty heading back to the sewer pipe ALONE to check out the dead guy and steal his phone (which has 47 missed calls) when she’s not even wearing gloves (don’t worry, she turned off the GPS though). Back at home, she starts reading the guy’s texts and copying them into her notebook (my hand hurts just thinking about it), and the next morning, she confronts Chic: the texts show that the guy was a drug dealer, not a client, and he even has a text from Chic from that very night. She wants to know what else Chic is keeping from them, and when Chic starts to tear up, she screams in his face in one of the best Betty moments I can remember, saying, “EXCUSE ME? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? NO ONE IS BUYING THE WATERWORKS!” It is really something to see, but we don’t get to see a lot of it because Alice drags her daughter into the hallway to tell her to get in line with the family and not worry about the dead guy’s possible family who might come looking for him. Chic, who can overhear everything, smiles through his (fake?) tears. Yikes.

Over at the Pembrooke, Hiram acts on the info Archie told him last night and talks to his daughter — who asks him directly if he had anything to do with Papa Poutine’s death. Hiram says, "No, I did not." Father and daughter hug it out, while Archie lies to Agent Adams about what he asked his girlfriend's father, how forcefully Hiram denied it, and the gambling debts Poutine owed to some guy named Lenny. (To the tune of $86,000? Isn't that the same number your dad owed the hospital, Arch? Hmm.)

And now it’s debate time at the Jones trailer! Hiram says everything was a misunderstanding and he’s not really involved but he wants to pay the back rent for everyone in Sunnyside, anyway. All he wants is peace in return. Oh, and for Jughead to leave him out of the expose Mayor McCoy told Hiram he’s writing. A bribe? FP and Juggy say thanks, but no thanks. I wouldn’t put Model U.N. on your college apps, V.

Speaking of extracurriculars, Cheryl is indulging in some casual (but deadly accurate) archery practice at Thistle House when she notices Hal leaving the house. She asks her mother about it — and brings up the fact that Hal has a family, more than once. But Penelope says that Hal isn’t a client — “It’s real.” This doesn’t make Cheryl feel any better, since Hal still has a family, but Penelope seems unconcerned with Alice Cooper. When do we get our flashback episode to see the Lodge, Jones, Cooper, and Blossom parents as teenagers? There is so clearly some baggage there. Later on, Cheryl confronts Hal and tells him to go back to his family before she tells Betty what’s going on.

Meanwhile, things are devolving quickly at both the Lodge and Andrews homes. Veronica comes home to a screaming fight between the mayor and her parents, and finds out that her parents plan to discredit the mayor by forcing her to leave office with a scandal — they had her followed and know about her affair with Sheriff Keller. And Archie comes home to find Agent Adams in his dining room, interrogating Fred about the hiring of undocumented Canadians, which has Fred stressing, big time. Adams admits to Archie that’s this is a threatening tactic because he knows Archiekins is giving him false information. So he has a new job for Arch: plant a bug in Hiram’s office.

Betty, meanwhile, is trying to figure out the dead guy’s identity by calling his contacts (one of whom screams at her because she assumes Betty is an "other woman"). It’s a dead end, and she ends up calling Jughead and confessing everything because she can’t stop thinking about the guy, and her mom and Chic are just acting like nothing happened. Juggy wants her to call the police, and while they’re discussing it a meter maid rolls by and points out that the dead guy’s car has been parked in front of the Cooper’s house for two days. So B hotwires the car (Betty Cooper: still a boss even in the most stressful situations) and she and Jug roll it into the river. Oh, and they sink the phone, too. Better hope it's not waterproof!

Veronica has decided (perhaps because of the hurt it will cause Josie and Kevin?) that she doesn’t want her parents deploying Operation Scandal, and tells Mayor McCoy what they’re planning. So the mayor resigns, claiming, in a televised speech, that she wants to return to her legal career and spend more time with her family. I hope we get to see this legal career. Will she use it to go after the Lodges? When Veronica and her parents see the speech on TV, V points out that now they don’t have to expose the affair — because to do so now would just be cruel. Interest piqued, Hiram asks his daughter if she warned Mayor McCoy about the plan, which V denies. Is Veronica turning on her dad just as Archie is going full Hiram-defender?

Time will tell. But first, Cheryl approaches Betty at school to talk, and when Betty says she has to go because her dad is at her house and Chic is the only one home (Chic texted her this info), Cheryl is like, welllllllllllll this is about your dad. So B heads home and finds Hal screaming about Chic’s intentions and his grandfather’s watch while Chic is visibly quaking in the corner, silent. Betty and her dad get into it, and she reveals that she knows about Penelope. She defends Chic and kicks her dad out, but tells Chic (who thanks her) that it wasn’t for him, it was for their mom.

Archie is facing a similar familial quandary: should he bug Hiram and thus potentially save his dad from the FBI? He goes to Hiram and spills everything: the FBI approached him but he gave them no info, but now the FBI is threatening to come after Fred and he’s more scared of Agent Adams now than Hiram. So can Hiram help Fred out? The patriarch agrees to take care of it.

Also taking care of it? Betty. She refuses to let Alice live in denial anymore — she knows they’re in over their heads. So they go to FP, who was told everything by Jughead, and is willing to help. He buries the body in the woods and then meets his son, Betty, and Alice at Pop’s (without showering first, weird choice) to tell them it’s done. And p.s. he used some chemical that will dissolve the whole body, even the teeth. Alice is grateful and apologetic for involving the kids, and FP holds her hand and reminds her that they take care of their own (lest you forget, Alice is from the Southside). Everyone agrees: the circle ends here. Chic, meanwhile, is at home flipping through a Cooper family album and cutting Hal out of a photo. Hmm…

But that’s not where the episode ends, oh no. It ends with Andre (the Pembrooke doorman) picking Archie up to go for a little ride to meet the Boss. Archie is pretty clueless most of the time, but he knows enough to be nervous when the ride goes on a little too long…and then ends when he’s at the edge of a cliff, meeting with the Boss…who is Hermione Lodge! Oh wow.

Boss Hermione tells Archie about “omerta,” the code of silence that means “no snitching, ever,” and reveals to Archie that the whole Agent Adams thing was a test, orchestrated by her and Hiram. And Archie passed. Her final words: “Welcome to the family, Archie.”

We'll get to the fact that Agent Adams was a red herring later, because I honesty feel gaslit about it right now. It seems Archie does too, because his face says, uh, what? And mine says, OMG Hermione is the mastermind behind the whole Lodge operation!?! What does this mean!?

We’ll have to wait and see.

Related: This Is What Happens When You Challenge the Stars of Riverdale to TRUTH OR DARE