Riverdale’s Midseason Premier: New Faces, New Drama (Recap)

Riverdale returned for the midseason premier last night, and though the shows typical high drama was somewhat subdued, there’s plenty for us to talk about.

First, Southside High is closed, which means Jughead and some of the Serpents are at Riverdale High now. The Lodges are behind the shutdown of Southside High, and they’ve bribed Mayor McCoy to make it happen. As part of her newfound dedication to the family business, Veronica’s all in on her parents new scheme and is trying to help smooth the Southsider’s transition to Riverdale High. Cheryl is on the warpath though and determined not to let them get comfortable. She even tries to coerce Archie into supporting her by revealing that she saw his kiss with Betty.

Betty had a brief and unfulfilling goodbye with Polly, who’s had her babies and is living in an isolated community called The Farm. I know Tiera Skovbye is moving on to new things, but it was a pretty weak close to Polly’s character. With her sister gone, Betty starts looking for her lost brother. When she and her mother find him, the meeting doesn’t go well though. Later, Betty goes back to try again, and finds Chic in trouble. Betty brings Chic home, and it’s not clear yet whether that’s going to be a good thing or a bad thing. What do you think? Will the siblings bond? Or is there going to be trouble in the Cooper household?

A federal agent has got Archie looking into Hiram Lodge, which gets him looking into Nick St. Clair. When he goes to Cheryl for more information, he’s surprised to learn about Veronica’s trouble with Nick. Using Cheryl as an excuse, he seeks out Nick and gets Cheryl her “blood money”, but loses his temper when Veronica comes up.

Mr. Weatherby is coming down hard on the Serpents after someone leaves a Serpent tag at Riverdale High, but Jughead isn’t backing down. Finally, FP convinces Jughead that it’s ok for the Serpents to lie low for a while (Please let this be the start of a winding down of the Jughead/Serpents storyline). Am I the only one with my fingers crossed that there’s a new romance on the horizon for Kevin though?

Fred Andrews finds out the Lodges covered his hospital bills, but now that means he’s indebted to them. And Veronica isn’t happy when she finds out Archie confronted Nick. Archie admits to her that he and Betty kissed, but Veronica has faith in Archie, so she’s not too upset. However, will she still be so trusting when she finds out Archie’s working with the feds to investigate her father? And, what happens when Archie finds out that she told Hiram about Nick, but hid that from Archie? Trouble’s on the horizon for #Varchie, my friends. Not only that, it seems like Archie is having doubts about what happened with the Black Hood.

Riverdale seems to be struggling to reconcile some of the plotlines from earlier in the season, so this episode felt a little disjointed in parts. Hopefully the show will be less muddled and things will go more smoothly now that the Southside kids are finding their place at Riverdale High. What are your thoughts on the new faces and new drama in this week’s Riverdale?

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