Someone Died in the Riverdale Flashback Episode and I Need to Talk About It ASAP

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

The flashback episode we’ve been waiting for is finally here! But before we can go back in time, Voiceover Jughead explains that Gryphons & Gargoyles has spread like wildfire at Riverdale High. Mayor Hermione comes to school and bans the game (publicly revealing that Ben and Dilton’s deaths, and Ethel’s near-death, were linked to it) and sets up a 24-hour crisis hotline manned by Kevin, who is actually only there after school. Veronica and Betty have a brief conversation about how neither of them are playing G&G and then Betty gets a call from Dr. Curdle, Jr., the coroner. She later reveals to her mother that Dr. Curdle dug up a case file from when his dad was coroner — another suspicious death with blue lips, right around the time Alice was a teenager.

So Alice (finally) sits Betty down for story time! Back in the early '90s, Alice Smith (played by Lili Reinhart) struts down the RHS hallway in her Serpent best. In the bathroom, she finds out she’s pregnant, and when Hermione (Camila Mendes) hears her crying, she tries to comfort her, though Alice blows her off. Sierra McCoy (Ashleigh Murray) is there, too, writing “End Apartheid” on the mirror in lipstick, and Hermione in turn blows off her attempts to help, though everyone zeroes in on Alice again when she reveals that F.P. is the father but he’s busy hanging out with some Vixen. Young Penelope Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) walks in and asks for everyone’s hall passes, and when Alice says hers is up Penelope’s ass, the two girls get into a fight. Meanwhile, in the locker room, Forsyth Pendleton Jones, Jr., (Cole Sprouse) is being peer pressured to streak as part of some kind of Bulldog initiation (he’s wearing a letterman jacket), and Fred Andrews (KJ Apa) joins him for moral support — and they get caught. So the whole crew ends up in Saturday detention, Breakfast Club style.

There are lots of rules in detention, though present-day Alice makes things more interesting by telling Betty that she was putty in F.P.’s hands and flashing back to them hooking up, which Betty does not want to hear. Detention is administrated by Principal Featherhead, played by Anthony Michael Hall, further cementing the Breakfast Club comparison here. Tom Keller (Casey Cott) shows up with a snack for Sierra, and since everyone is shocked they’re dating, she then suggests a round of Sins and Secrets so they can all get to know each other better. What’s revealed in the game? Sierra and Tom’s parents don’t approve of their relationship so they’re dating in secret; Hermione’s mother, who works hard at the Five Seasons as a housekeeper, doesn’t approve of entrepreneurial teen Hiram Lodge; Fred’s dad is sick and he wants to stay in Riverdale forever; F.P. lives in Sunnyside even though at school he acts the golden boy who lives elsewhere and his dad broke his arm when he said he didn’t want to be a Serpent; and Penelope was raised at Sisters of Quiet Mercy before she was adopted at age 8 to first be Clifford’s sister and then, life companion.

UM WHAT. I am shocked and so is everyone else because WHAT?!

Hermione and Penelope get in a fight about this revelation and Featherhead comes in and gives everyone four more detentions. VO Alice says that week by week, the group’s walls started coming down. As Alice carves everyone’s initials into the windowsill, Hermione breaks into the teacher’s desk to get her GameLab back — and finds the G&G game. Everyone has heard mysterious things about it from other schools, so they decide to play.

The goal of the game is to defeat the evil Gargoyle King by completing missions and ascending to the next levels. Alice plays as the sorceress. Hermione is the thief. Sierra is the siren. F.P. is Deadeye. Fred is the radiant knight. Penelope is the game master. VO Alice says that their maddening obsession started with that first roll of the dice. At some point, Penelope suggests they start playing off-board — she’s hidden a gem in the school and pairs off F.P. and Hermione and Alice and Fred to search for it. Hermione and F.P. find it in the student lounge and almost kiss in their excitement, but she pushes him away and encourages him to take a real shot with Alice. (Reminder: F.P. doesn’t know Alice is pregnant.) Meanwhile, Fred and Alice open up to each other in the Blue & Gold office about feeling lost and/or stuck, and they totally make out. Betty is shocked to hear about this but I’m too distracted thinking about how good Lili Reinhart’s hair looks when it’s down and curly in these flashback scenes.

Anyway, the game play continues for weeks — the group would even sneak into school at night to play. They called themselves The Midnight Club, and pretty soon were in full cosplay mode: playing off-board, wearing costumes, brandishing weapons. F.P. and Alice seem to have recoupled and Fred and Hermione are together (a bit inexplicably, honestly — the show seems to have just thrown them together now to explain what we know in present day to be true about their past). One night they run into another group roaming the halls in costumes: Hiram (played by Mark Consuelos’ IRL son, Michael), Darrell Doiley, Tom Keller, and Marty Mantle (Charles Melton). Turns out they’ve been playing G&G too! So everyone joins forces and plays one big game — which is when VO Alice says the lines between reality and game became even more blurred.

Invitations appear in everyone’s lockers, inviting the Midnight Club members to an ascension party after-hours at school. At the party, the chalices are out and to make it more of a party, Hiram breaks out Fizzle Rocks, a new drug. Everyone seems to partake except Alice, who is thinking about her pregnancy. Before the drugs hit, Penelope and Darrell (both gamemasters) realize that neither one of them set up the ascension party. So who did…?

VO Alice says that the night got wild, quickly. First, the Fred Heads (F.P., Fred, Alice, Hermione, and Sierra) perform. Young Fred makes a hilarious singing face. While everyone else is dancing and running around the school, Alice pukes in the bathroom, only to find the two chalices and a coin laid out on the sink when she exits the stall. The whole bathroom wall is also tagged with “flip for your fate” in lipstick, and the lighting has somehow turned red in the room. Shaken, she leaves the bathroom, turns the corner, and sees the Gargoyle King. The Featherhead walks in — VO Alice says he must’ve heard about them breaking in and that she could’ve and should’ve said something to him…but instead, she leaves.

Apparently she spent the night calling the Midnight Club, but no one picked up. At school the next day, she can’t find anyone, and figures maybe they were caught and maybe even expelled or arrested. Featherhead is also not at school. Finally, she finds Hermione, who is surprised F.P. didn’t tell her what happened: Fred’s dad died last night, and Fred found him when he got home. VO Alice lets us know that by the time of Mr. Andrews’s funeral a few days later, Featherhead had been declared missing. At Pop’s after the funeral, Fred is upset that he wasn’t there when his dad died, which is truly sad. Alice admits that she saw Featherhead at the school that night and Penelope lays down the law: none of them saw anything. Everyone agrees to stay quiet. But by the next week, things get way more serious — because a dead Mr. Featherhead is found locked in the closet under the stairs at RHS (the closet where Jughead once lived, I think; I’m sure he’ll be just thrilled to hear this story). The dead body has bright blue lips.

The Midnight Club meets immediately, and Alice tells everyone that the chalices had blue liquid in them and that the police said Featherhead had poison in his system. She also asks who was wearing the Gargoyle King costume. Everyone starts pointing fingers and turning on each other (mostly Alice) and Penelope shuts it down when Alice says she wants to go to the police. Alice points out that whoever invited them all to the party was trying to kill one or more of them. Hearing thing, everyone bugs out, and Sierra says they have to destroy the game. They decide to destroy the manuals and split up the other pieces of the game (in a Monopoly box, the trophy case at school, the river). They make a pact never to speak of G&G again (a pact Alice has now broken multiple times). Hands in: “to the grave.”

All the members of the MC return to life as normal and start down the paths which we know them to have taken today: Fred sells his guitar and goes into the family business. Hermione accepts a pearl necklace from Hiram, beginning “a lifetime of compromises,” as VO Alice says. Sierra and Tom break up and Tom says he’ll wait for her (at least they’re back together in present-day Riverdale!). Penelope tells Clifford (the actor who once played Jason Blossom) that she wants to live in Thorn Hill forever, as the outside world is too dangerous. F.P. joins the Serpents, trading his letterman jacket for a leather one. And Alice trades her leather for a pink tweed blazer and asks Hal Cooper out for a malt. The Club ignores each other in the halls, strangers again…until present day, of course.

Betty asks her mom some follow-up questions, like who poisoned the cups, but Alice has no answers and just warns Betty that the more you play and think about the game, the more at risk you are — the game gives you permission to hurt or kill. I’m honestly still not quite sure how that’s true. Were the missions violent or hurtful? It didn’t seem like it. I mean, obviously there’s the poison cups but I still think we’re missing a piece re: how that comes into play. Anyway, Betty tells her mom that she can’t not investigate but she does promise never to play the game.

At school, Betty checks out her mom’s story: there are initials on the windowsill and chalices in the trophy case. She heads over to the bunker to tell Jughead what she’s learned…and finds Jughead, Cheryl, Sweet Pea, Fangs, and Toni feverishly playing G&G. Jughead says it’s all making sense and it’s only a matter of time until he ascends and gets to meet the Gargoyle King. Uh-oh. I smell trouble!

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: This Is What Happens When You Challenge the Stars of Riverdale to TRUTH OR DARE

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