Salt Water & Sunshine

gif request meme: riverdale + favorite minor character (requested by @nilequynh)

bughead baby for the tl <3333

(i stg if one of you puts this on twitter….just remove my username pls, I don’t have time for that heat, tyvm.)

(portrait of a tumblr user, 2020)

A Theory, in two parts:

Fact: Charles has successfully hypnotized Betty (episode 409 Tangerine). 

What if Charles continued to hypnotize Betty and altered her childhood memories such that certain fond memories she has of bb Jughead were messed with so that she thought they were all about bb Archie. 

Listen, obviously not all of them—Lil Archie’s proposal after Lil Betty helps him learn to read was mentioned as early as idk, episode 102. I’m not denying the fact that Betty has in the past wondered what-if about Archie. But that’s the thing—she already did it and decided how she felt about it. It was resolved in season 2. 

Literally in the episode before 417 she says to Jughead “You’re the only man for me.” It just feels too obviously a confusing turn-around. It’s just weird. And I don’t think that’s my bias telling me it’s weird (I know I’m biased). 

What evidence do I have for this theory. Two bits: one solid, the other a little more sus:

1. THIS photo RAS shared on Feb 9 2020:

We see this scene in episode 418. What we don’t see in that episode is whoever those feet in the upper left belong to. 

This is not a casual phone snap from the set—this is a production still. Stills are not taken at random, they’re specific marketing materials. I’m not the only one to have theorized this is bb Jughead. 

2. That rumor from reddit a long long time ago that production was knitting a smaller version of Jughead’s beanie. Now, that source is a little sus because they said some other things that didn’t really track (iirc, something about length of filming). But they were clear that the info they were sharing was from a third-party. (if someone can source this for me I’ll update with the link.) 

These two pieces of information suggest that there are scenes filmed with a bb Jughead that we have not yet seen. 

Do these scenes reveal the scenes of Betty’s childhood memories in 418 were false, or incomplete because they elided Jughead? Maybe. It would make sense to film all of these scenes at once, even if they were to be used in different episodes. The episodes are close enough in the season that both scripts would have been written, and child actors are subject to some very strict oversight rules. Doing all the filming for these scenes in one go is logistically sound from a project management standpoint. (omg i cannot believe how deeply down this rabbit hole I have fallen lol.) 

So part one of the theory is that Charles has messed with Betty’s memory (which we already know is wonky, given her lapses of memory in s3—the leeches at the swimming hole, playing King of the Mountain—which I’ve always just assumed were supposed to lead up to the reveal of her childhood concussion and the subsequent discovery of her ~serial killer genes~)

Part two of the theory is that Charles also alters Betty’s diaries to reflect the ways in which he’s messed with her memory. 

Betty burns all her childhood diaries at the end of 418—except for one. She keeps one diary, and in my opinion this is Chekhov’s diary because it feels too significant a thing to write into a script if it were not going to come back up again.

Admittedly, Riverdale historically is not always good at looping back around to dropped plot points. See also: Fred’s post-gunshot wound med issues. Betty’s diary though—it feels different, at least to me. It’s so close to the end of the season, and they probably have the finale mapped out at this point, if not already written and in pre-production. 

So if Charles messed with enough of these memories, AND altered Betty’s childhood diaries to match these memories, it might go to explaining some of Betty’s actions in 417 and 418, which are such a one-eighty from 416 as to be nearly incomprehensible. 

Aside: how do we explain Archie’s actions? (I won’t go too deep here bc I feel like people other than me have more sophisticated thoughts on this, beyond the obv.)(The obv is: it’s just bad writing.) 

Among literally dozens of (nearly absurd) traumas over four seasons and grieving the loss of his father, Archie is notably seen struggling with his future in the latter half of season 4. It’s not absurd for him to perhaps do something completely out of left field: acting out of character or erratically can also be a symptom of PTSD, among other mental health issues.

I’m legit just sharing this to have receipts in case this batshit theory ever comes to fruition. My mantra when it comes to Riverdale is always it will either be so obvious as to be a very boring reveal, or it will be so out of left field that we could never have predicted it. There is no middle ground with this show. 

that they still have not figured out how to put these on private lol

some girl is missing.

Toni is a social worker!

Pick a favorite bizarre murderboard:

1.) The makeshift murderboard made out of a metal cabinet in a dead kid’s bunker

2.) The murderboard from the Blue and Gold that they hauled all the way over to Betty’s house and up the stairs to Betty’s room