‘Riverdale’ Finally Explained Jughead’s “Death” – and Solved Its Biggest Mystery

Since the end of Season 3, Riverdale has been slowly teasing out the mystery of Jughead Jones’s (Cole Sprouse) apparent death, working it into the overall mystery of what’s happening at elite school Stonewall Prep, with the eventual reveal that everyone’s favorite beanie enthusiast was very much alive. But how did Jughead Jones pull off his death and resurrection? Why did the Stonewall students try to kill him? And what does it all have to do with Donna Sweett’s (Sarah Desjardins) real identity, as teased in last week’s “To Die For”?

This week’s episode, “The Locked Room,” revealed the answers to all that and so much more, albeit out of chronological order… So let’s lay it out in order as best we can, shall we?

Spoilers for Riverdale Season 4, Episode 16, “Chapter Seventy-Two: The Locked Room” past this point.

Though there are a few scenes that take place elsewhere, the bulk of the episode finds Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Jughead literally locking themselves in a room with the Stonies and laying out everything that’s happened involving the school, the teen mystery series the Baxter Brothers novels, and up to Jughead’s “death,” tying it all together with a bow. As the Stonewall English teacher Francis DuPont (Malcolm Stewart) and his smug students Donna, Bret Weston Wallis (Sean Depner) and Joan (Doralynn Mui) look on, Betty and Jughead regale them with a tale that stretches over decades.

…and it all starts when DuPont was originally a student at Stonewall. At the time, he was classmates with Jughead’s grandfather Forsythe Pendleton Jones I (Timothy Webber), Theodore Weisel, Jane Dallas Brown and the unfortunately named Charles W. Chickens. All destined to become writers, Forsythe came up with the most profitable idea, a book about two investigative siblings named the Baxter Brothers. However, he didn’t develop the series alone: Jane Dallas Brown came up with another crucial element, Tracy True, a teen detective in the mold of Nancy Drew. DuPont bought the Baxter Brothers from Forsythe for relative chump change, and though it’s not specified seemingly did the same with Jane for Tracy True — stealing their creations in all but name.

Though nothing happened initially, over time DuPont got antsy that the secret would come out, and the massive amounts of money he was collecting from the Baxter Brothers books — the same money that helps fund Stonewall — would be revealed as a fraud, so he started to take out the people who had any knowledge, starting with Jane Dallas Brown and Charles W. Chickens. Terrified thinking about the places he might go, Theodore Weisel warned Forsythe than DuPont was coming for them, and then two days later was found dead in shallow water, despite being an expert diver.

At that point, Forsythe left his son FP Jones (Skeet Ulrich) behind, saying he was going out for a pack of smokes and never came back. Oh, and according to Jughead, that was in 2002, when, if you consider that FP turned 50 in 2019, was when FP was 33 years old and already had a son of his own: Jughead was born October 1, 2001. So, uh, maybe not the big traumatic deal FP has been making it out to be? Anyway, he spent EIGHTEEN YEARS gathering evidence trying to link DuPont to the murders of Brown, Weisel and Chickens while hiding in the woods and drinking, so also perhaps not the most efficient investigator.

Anyway, free of distractions, DuPont set up an insane challenge… He would give up writing the Baxter Brothers novels to a ghost writer of his choosing, but in order to get the contract they had to commit the perfect murder, killing another student of his choosing — and therefore allowing DuPont to own them via blackmail. That happened four times, starting with a Stonewall student named Ryan Allan, who killed one of his fellow students, leading up to the previous Stonewall English teacher/Baxter Brother writer, Mr. Chipping (Sam Witwer). When Chipping was a student, he too committed a perfect murder — by this time, it was a victim who had no family connections, friends, etc. who would look for them — but it weighed on him heavily. Not enough to admit to the crime, but it led to drinking and complaining to his wife about the Baxter Brothers contract. It did not, however, lead to him having an affair with Donna, as she later claimed.

While all this was going on, Donna Sweett was planning her revenge in the background, because, as it turns out, she is the granddaughter of Jane Dallas Brown. She knew about how DuPont stole her grandmother’s creation, Tracy True, and worked her way into Stonewall and DuPont’s class with the express purpose of killing DuPont and taking the Tracy True books back to her family. Maybe not in that order.

Okay, back to Chipping, who recruited Moose Mason (Cody Kearsley) to Stonewall over the summer after he left Riverdale High. Moose was supposed to be the victim for one of the prospective Baxter Brothers writers — Donna, Bret, Joan or Johnathan (Alex Barima) — and we’ll ignore the fact that last time we saw Moose before this he was headed out to go live with his aunt in Glendale, and as may or may not be clear an aunt is, in fact, a member of your family, because whatever.

Then DuPont got cocky. He decided to run two trains at the same time, and had Chipping recruit Jughead to the school as well, in order to try and get Forsythe out of hiding. Unfortunately for DuPont, Chipping grew a conscience once he realized that Jughead had figured out Forsythe’s connection to the Baxter Brothers novels. He told Moose to immediately leave school and join the army, then threw himself out the window of the classroom out of shame and guilt.

Since Moose was gone, the perfect murder “game” shifted from Kevin Keller’s (Casey Cott) ex- to Jughead Jones, in order to take care of two birds with one stone. That led to the night of Stonewall’s Ides of March party, after Jughead had already had his book stolen and rewritten by his fellow students, and was kicked out of school after being framed for plagiarism. Jughead was taken into the woods by Bret, where he was hit on the head with a rock by Joan. Meanwhile, Donna blew a substance called Devil’s Breath (which is a real thing! really!) on Betty, sending her into a zombielike state. Donna handed Betty the rock covered in Jughead’s blood, and had her stand in front of Jughead’s dead body, in order to frame her for the murder. Then they all left the woods, Johnathan neglecting his job to check Jughead’s pulse, and headed back to the party. There they informed Veronica (Camila Mendes) and Archie (KJ Apa) that Betty and Jughead were in the woods, where they discovered Jughead dead, Betty standing over him.

…and the thing is, Jughead actually did sort of die. His beanie protected him from the rock, but when Archie checked he had no pulse — they quickly revived him with CPR, and after Jughead moaned “no hospitals,” though he later admits he isn’t sure why he said that, Betty called her half-brother and crack FBI agent Charles Smith (Wyatt Nash). Charles called an FBI med-van (which is, as far as I can tell, not an actual thing) to take care of Jughead, who was asleep for the next 36 hours.

Meanwhile, Charles instructed Betty, Veronica and Archie to burn their blood-slathered clothes, get rid of the rock in the nearby swimming hole, and not say anything until they could gather evidence to clear Betty’s name — and make sure Jughead was actually okay. They cut into the “burning clothes” scene from the Season 3 finale here, and Betty’s speech that they should never talk to each other after school turns out just to be a hypothetical scenario on the off-chance that Jughead does die and they’re not able to clear their names. Regardless, that explains a lot of their actions in “How To Get Away With Murder,” particularly Veronica being unsure whether Betty hit Jughead or not, and Betty’s frantic emotional reactions.

Jughead did recover, and was hidden away in Dilton Doiley’s (Major Curda) bunker in the woods, a.k.a. the sex bunker. The timeline gets a little murky here, but somewhere in there Jughead’s sister Jellybean (Trinity Likins) overheard Betty talking to Charles, and was brought into the circle of trust once she realized Jughead was alive. Soon after that, and presumably after Jughead recovered, Betty went to tell FP — who was still sheriff of Riverdale at the time — that his son was alive, and they needed to set up a search party in order to prove to the Stonies that Jughead was, in fact, dead. FP and Archie discovered his body, and brought it to the morgue, paying off Dr. Curdle, Jr. (Nikolai Witschl) to fake the results and help Jughead make himself up as a dead body. This was all to show off his “corpse” to Donna and Bret, who burst into the morgue and saw him lying there. Soon after that, Archie told his mom, Mary Andrews (Molly Ringwald) and then Veronica told her sister Hermosa (Mishel Prada), who is a licensed investigator/bar owner, naturally. Veronica hired Hermosa to track down info on Donna, which is how the gang found out about the Jane Dallas Brown connection.

Got all this so far? Good. Because the rest is pretty simple… While Jughead hid in the bunker and put together all the clues, Betty was on the outside diverting the Stonewall students’ suspicions, including “pretending” to date Archie and holding a fake funeral for Jughead. After all that, and finally tracking down Forsythe, they were able to get enough evidence to the FBI that Charles could make an arrest.

Unfortunately for them, DuPont throws himself out the same window Chipping dove out of, Joan gets away thanks to diplomatic immunity, Donna nabs the Tracy True contract — though is forced to give it up by Betty, who swears to reveal her secrets to the news otherwise — and only Bret crumbles after an absolutely merciless beating from Jughead and FP.

After that, it really does seem to be case closed for the Riverdale teens… Jughead heads back to Riverdale High, and the Core Four have happy milkshakes at Pop’s with nary an ominous flash-forward to plague them. There are still plenty of mysteries Riverdale needs to solve before the end of the season, of course. What’s up with those weird videotapes everyone is being sent? Are Charles and Chic (Hart Denton) up to something? Do Betty and Archie have feelings for each other that go beyond a fake-out? But for now, other than the rain that starts to fall outside Pop’s, for once all is right in the town of Riverdale.

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

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