Warning: This article contains spoilers for season 6 episode 1 of Riverdale.

With the abrupt ending of Riverdale’s season 5, many fans were anticipating the return for season 6. The first episode, however, left many unanswered questions regarding Betty’s survival, Archie’s sacrifice, and Rivervale’s existence.

At first, when Jughead shows a new town called Rivervale, the shadow town of Riverdale, it was confusing but caught my attention. He showed small and big things in the new town of Rivervale, although not much was different from the old town, Riverdale, besides Archie dying.

Archie and Betty’s house was shown to be blown up by a bomb set by Hiram Lodge in the season 5 finale, but it was shown that Archie was just having a dream. This could’ve been caused by Archie’s PTSD from his previous military experience, but the importance of this dream is unclear aside from communicating that Hiram Lodge is very harmful.

I first thought that Archie dying could have been a dream, like the bomb. It didn’t seem real that Cheryl could actually take out Archie’s heart as a normal human. Although later when Jughead said that Archie’s heroic life came to an end, it was surprising. 

It was interesting that the dolls, called pop-its, related to an unspecified case file that Betty was recently investigating. When Betty found out that they were actually fertility dolls, she used one and later found out she’s pregnant. I wondered if using the dolls would cause the baby to have some kind of “curse.” 

When Archie got the call that Betty was captured it was expected that he hurried to her rescue and that he would sacrifice himself for Betty, as they needed a king who was willing to stand up for his queen. Even though Cheryl can be evil, it was unexpected when she took out his heart, as it felt out of character. This scene was also foreshadowed by the deer that was previously found in Cheryl’s woods. It was also surprising to see characters like Frank and Veronica involved in his murder. Maybe Cheryl’s “secret perfumes” had something to do with it.

Lastly, Jughead said Rivervale is the shadow town of Riverdale. It’s surprising that he said Rivervale is a shadow town of Riverdale, considering Riverdale is already horrific. What other bad things can happen there?

Overall this episode was confusing and had a lot of information for one episode but it also hooked me in and made me want to continue watching the upcoming episodes.