Riverdale Really Wants You to Think Betty Killed Jughead

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the most recent episode of Riverdale, "Chapter 70: The Ides of March." Read at your own risk!]

After watching Riverdale for more than three seasons, we should have known that an episode that included Varchie and Bughead romance, plus a Choni sexy dance number, could not come with a happy ending. That's just not how things work in the murder capital of the world!

So, yes, our favorite couples did engage in a lot of smooching (and hooking up in the band room before school), but things turned bad in the last part of the episode when the core four -- Jughead (Cole Sprouse), Betty (Lili Reinhart), Veronica (Camila Mendes), and Archie (KJ Apa) -- decided to attend a Stonewall Prep Ides of March party in the woods. Jughead apparently had a plan to exact revenge on the Stonies who blackmailed him into withdrawing from the school and giving up his Baxter Brothers contract, but we never found out what that plan was because he was found dead at the end of the party.

The show's fall finale, which aired all the way back in December, revealed this was coming, and that Betty would apparently be responsible, but we refused to believe the evidence then. So what if Betty was holding the rock that had clearly been used to bludgeon her boyfriend? Pics or it didn't happen, bro, and we stand by that. Well, Wednesday's episode still didn't show Betty actually hitting Jughead with the rock, but it did shed a bit more light on the situation, and our girl still looks guilty AF.

Earlier on at the party, Betty had followed Donna (Sarah Desjardins) into the woods to confront her about blackmailing Jughead, only she found out that Donna had done some investigating into Betty and come into contact with Evelyn Evernever (Zoe De Grand Maison). It turns out that "tangerine" wasn't the only hypnosis trick Evelyn had programmed into Betty; there's another magic word that puts Betty in a fugue state and ready to take out those she loves most. All that dream therapy and stopping her former self from killing her old cat Caramel didn't free Betty at all!

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There is still some hope that Betty didn't actually hit Jughead with the rock, though. We saw Donna reveal there's another magic word, but we didn't actually hear her say it. And the episode cut to the scene we saw at the end of the fall finale, in which Archie was checking Jughead's pulse and revealing there was none before asking Betty what she did as she looked shocked to be holding the apparent murder weapon.

Since we still don't know what happened between Donna and Betty's confrontation and Jughead ending up on the ground, there's still a chance that someone else hit Jughead. Or, if we want to go deep conspiracy theory mode here, all of this is part of Jughead's elaborate plan to get back at Stonewall prep and deliver the best story the Baxter Brothers publishers have ever seen. It seems weird that Betty invited Veronica and Archie to a Stonewall party, right? We're willing to bet those two are in on it and it's going to be the Stonies who are flabbergasted at the end of all of this.

It's either that or -- gulp -- we really are living in the darkest timeline, in which Betty murdered her boyfriend and we'll be forced to go through next season without Jughead as Betty takes his place at Yale.

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

Lili Reinhart, Riverdale

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