A Balloon on ‘Riverdale’ Is Making Fans Think Veronica Is Pregnant

A recent op-Ed by Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times had two simple words as the headline: “Never Tweet.”

That might be how the official Archie Comics account felt after a simple joke tweeted during last night’s (January 23) episode of Riverdale sent fans into a frenzy, thinking a balloon might mean that Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) is pregnant.

Guys.

Come on.

Guys.

Really?

Really?

Guys.

Please.

…

Okay, fine, let’s talk about this, because I have been getting tweets, Tumblr asks, Instagram messages, and presumably people stalking the outside of my house demanding answers all day long.

So, here’s the setup, in case you missed it (and spoilers past this point). Hiram Lodge (Mark Consuelos) has been shot, and is lying comatose at the Riverdale hospital. Veronica is there, having just broken up with Archie Andrews (KJ Apa) for the final time. In walks Reggie Mantle (Charles Melton), who proceeds to embrace Veronica, and spark the beginning of hashtag Veggie in earnest.

The uproar was caused by a moment before the embrace, when professional meathead Reggie enters the hospital room holding flowers, and a balloon. And the blue balloon says, “It’s a boy!” Naturally, @ArchieComics wasn’t going to let a good joke pass by, and tweeted about it:

“Reggie walking into the room with a balloon that says ‘It’s a boy!’ is a detail that shouldn’t go unnoticed,” said the account.

Fans, as the saying goes, lost their shit. “I’m sobbing,” said one user. “Could be why Veronica abruptly ended things with Archie again,” another one speculated.

The speculation got so dense and frenzied that after the East Coast airing of the episode, the account had to add a tweet stating, “It’s funny because you know he just grabbed the first balloon he saw. that’s it. not any deeper meaning. unless there is and we’re all gonna find out later. but maybe not. it’s still funny.”

Spoiler, that didn’t help, and about 45 minutes later they tweeted, “to further clarify: it was just a funny detail, please stop yelling at me.”

I’ll note at this point that @ArchieComics is one of my favorite Twitter accounts to follow, perfectly channeling the earnest humor of the comics. This was all funny to them, because they got the joke. Allow me, therefore, to explain the joke.

The joke is that Reggie is such a sweet dumbo, he grabbed an “It’s a boy!” balloon, not realizing that’s super inappropriate to bring to a hospital room to meet your prospective girlfriend, whose father has been shot. You can fill in the blanks yourself, picturing young Mr. Mantle in the hospital gift shop, brow furrowed as he desperately tries to read the words on the balloons, eventually giving up and deciding the color blue is nice.

Even beyond the joke, there’s another thing I’m going to mention, and I cannot believe I have to explain this, but… You all know that girls get pregnant, not boys, right? So Reggie — excusing the fact that he and Veronica seemingly only kissed and didn’t have sex yet, which is a very inefficient way to get people pregnant — would not be able to walk in and surprise Veronica, announcing she was pregnant. Let alone know the sex of the baby, which I will remind you they seemingly conceived through mouth contact alone, since you can’t determine that until 18-20 weeks into the pregnancy.

Look, I get that this is Riverdale, the show where you can be mauled by a bear and everyone just accepts that happened and moves on, only getting truly concerned when you start ordering root beer floats instead of strawberry milkshakes. I’ve even speculated before that time might not be working properly in the town. But there is a 0% chance that balloon was anything other than a joke about Reggie being kind of dumb.

…Unless, of course, it is foreshadowing. I mean, I did write a whole piece about how in “Cabaret,” the character of Sally Bowles sings “Maybe This Time” — which Veronica sang one episode back — and later leads her relationship to disaster and has to have an abortion. So what if… WHAT IF???

Or alternately, sometimes a balloon is just a balloon. Now, those flowers on the other hand…

Where to stream Riverdale