Riverdale Season 3, Episode 9 Recap: Is Veronica Over Archie?

Warning: Spoilers for Riverdale season 3, episode 9, “No Exit,” ahead.

It’s a new year, but our Riverdale peeps are up to the same old tricks…except Archie (KJ Apa). Archie is up in Canada with his trusty canine companion Vegas while the rest of his friends and family are living in the chaotic post-quarantine town that bears little resemblance to what it used to be.

Betty

When we last left Betty (Lili Reinhart), her mother had picked her up from the mental hospital where she had just taken down the Nuns of Quiet Mercy and freed the other kids who were under their care. With nowhere to go, Betty takes them all in at the Cooper household despite her mother’s request to let Edgar Evernever help them at The Farm. The kids are not easy to deal with. They’re having nightmares and, even worse, Betty finds a stash of Fizzle Rocks that one of them bought from a Southside Serpent.

In the midst of dealing with all of this at home, Betty was also working with DA McCoy (Robin Givens) to build a case against Hiram Lodge (Mark Consuelos). They’re hoping to get the evidence they need through testimony from the (now imprisoned) nuns from the hospital who were drugging the kids with Hiram’s supply and letting him use them as test subjects.

The sisters have taken a vow of silence, which doesn’t help things, but while meeting with a social worker about getting the orphaned hospital patients into foster homes or adopted, Betty learns that the sisters are not technically nuns after the church stripped them of their affiliation a while back. This is exactly the ammo Betty and DA McCoy need to get them to end the vow of silence and start talking. Sister Woodhouse agrees to turn on Hiram in exchange for the case against her and her fellow “sisters” to be dropped.

Back at home, Betty’s orphans are getting restless and are even starting to distrust her after one of them says he saw the Gargoyle King out in the woods despite Betty claiming she killed him as the Griffin Queen. The kids need to go. She calls a meeting with Fred Andrews, Cheryl Blossom, and DA McCoy to see if they’d be willing to foster some of the escaped patients. They all agree to help but once Betty arrives home to move the kids, her mother informs her that Edgar Evernever took all of them to The Farm.

Then, Betty gets a call from DA McCoy that someone bailed the sisters out of jail and they’ve gone MIA. Betty knows exactly where to find them and returns to the now-abandoned hospital to find the sisters dead from poison in the Gargoyle King room that they used to lock the patients in.

Jughead & Veronica

Jughead (Cole Sprouse) is losing control of his gang. Apparently fleeing town to help your BFF hop the border doesn’t leave you in good standing with the people that rely on you. Not only have Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) and Toni Topaz (Vanessa Morgan) become cat burglars, but Fangs Fogarty (Drew Ray Tanner) is dealing Fizzle Rocks. Jughead gathers the gang together to announce that dealing/using drugs or crime of any kind is not permitted under his rule as Serpent King. Everyone is annoyed because they’re all just trying to make some extra money.

Meanwhile, business is booming for Veronica (Camila Mendes) at the speakeasy, but her father is trying to shake her down for a piece of the action. Reggie (Charles Melton) gets jumped by Hiram’s gargoyle gang while driving his truck on a beer run. When Veronica confronts her father about it, he demands a percentage of the club’s profits in exchange for protection from the gang. She attempts to pull one over on her old man by agreeing to 10% of the business based on her financial records, which she changed to reflect a reduced amount. Hiram sees right through his daughter’s scheme and has one of his goons attack Josie (Ashleigh Murray), the club’s resident performer. Following the scary encounter, Josie informs Veronica that she will no longer perform at the club until Hiram is no longer making threats.

Over in Serpent land, Jughead confronts Fangs about the dealing and threatens to kick him out of the gang if it continues. Cheryl and Toni completely ignore Jughead’s request by breaking into the Lodge apartment and stealing a Glamergé egg. During yet another shakedown attempt, Hiram finally gets his daughter to agree to his terms and he also asks that she convince Cheryl to give back the egg she stole from the apartment. Veronica brings the subject up with Jughead, who agrees to help in exchange for her hiring the Serpents to be the club security. Seeing this as a way to avoid forking over the protection money to her father, Veronica agrees.

During another meeting with the Serpents, Jughead announces that he has to kick Cheryl and Toni out of the gang for breaking the rule he just put in place. They argue that Fangs got special treatment after getting caught dealing and demand the same punishment. Jughead reluctantly agrees and all three members are stripped of their Serpent membership. The gang is clearly not happy. FP (Skeet Ulrich) convinces Jughead to let him step in.

Back at the Lodge household, Hiram find the Glamergé egg smashed into pieces on his desk along with a note from Veronica informing him that their deal is off. The gargoyle gang tries to stop Reggie during another booze run, but the Serpents are there to stop it. Reggie returns to the club to find Veronica singing on stage and making eyes as if she’s singing just for him. As she wraps up her performance, she and Reggie finally have their first kiss after spending months together getting close while running the speakeasy. New couple alert!

Archie

Our boy Archie has been through the ringer. After everything that happened to him in the first half of the season, it seems like he’s finally living a peaceful life in a secluded cabin with just his dog Vegas and a CB radio connecting him to the outside world.

A woman contacts him on the radio asking if he plans on heading home or staying on for another rotation of helping to clear hiking trails in the Canadian wilderness. He admits that he’s still figuring out when to make the journey home and agrees to help for the time being. The voice warns that some grizzly bears have been spotted in the area. Archie and his trusty sidekick head out into the woods and (of course) the danger-prone ginger gets mauled by a bear. He races back to the cabin to call for help but passes out while waiting for someone to arrive.

Thus begins Archie’s metaphorical dream journey to find the courage he needs to return to Riverdale, in the form of a G&G game where he is tasked with defeating three of his personal demons. The first demon, assigned by Cassidy Bullock and his murdered friends, is The Black Hood. Archie finds himself back in Pop’s Diner, where he stops his father from being shot. The next assignment is given by Warden Norton and Archie must defeat The Gargoyle King, a.k.a. The Man in Black, a.k.a. Hiram Lodge. He goes through a door and appears in Hiram’s study at the Lodge apartment. With0ut much hesitation, he stabs Hiram and returns to the Warden, only to find his friends waiting for him. Betty, Veronica, and Jughead reveal that Archie’s final assignment is to defeat himself.

Archie appears in his own bedroom back in Riverdale with a baseball bat in hand. His father (Luke Perry) tries to convince him not to do it, but Archie swings away and beats the old Archie. Is this a sign that our guitar-strumming football-tossing Archie is officially gone forever? It’s pretty hard to go back to that life once you’ve been through all of the traumas Archie has experienced over the last few years. The episode ends with park rangers entering Archie’s cabin and attempting to revive him. He appears to be unresponsive but this is Riverdale…it’s basically Archie’s show. There’s no way he’s actually dead.

Riverdale screens on The CW Wednesdays at 8 P.M.