Riverdale Review: Chapter Forty-Four: No Exit (Season 3 Episode 9)
Riverdale Season 3 Episode 9, “Chapter Forty-Four: No Exit,” Archie and the gang each deal with problems that can all be traced back to Hiram. Riverdale begins to jump the shark as the Gargoyle King storyline begins to makes less and less sense.
Recent events on Riverdale feel very familiar. Last season, there was a ton of mystery and intrigue surrounding Hiram Lodge, and it all came down to a humdrum land deal.
On Riverdale Season 3, the eerie Gargoyle King has been explained away as a bogey man concocted by the “religious” hierarchy to scare misbehaving orphans, co-opted as an effective advertising tool for dispensing Fizzle Rocks.
Just as the SoDale reveal proved to be a major letdown, the Gargoyle King storyline has become so convoluted, Riverdale feels as if it might collapse in on itself, and its own usually embraceable silliness.
So, the Gargoyle King doesn’t really exist. He’s a hallucination; an unfortunate side effect of Fizzle Rocks (apparently a drug Hiram’s been working to perfect since he was a teenager).
Hiram, aka “The Man in Black,” has been using G&G to take over towns and brainwash residents into either doing his bidding, or looking the other way while he usurps control. Not to mention, Hiram’s been planning this entire thing since long before he showed up in Riverdale and while behind bars.
Does anyone remember Riverdale Season 1? The simplicity of a season-long murder mystery intermingled with good old-fashioned teen drama, including the Archie-Bee-Vee love triangle? What about the equal parts gross and delicious incest twist?
Viewers have barely seen the fab foursome together, particularly with Archie’s assorted stints in exile (by the way, we know Archie isn’t going to perish in that cabin, and this near-death experience will probably result in his return home).
So, let’s break down how and why the Gargoyle King storyline is slowly destroying Riverdale. It all begins with the sheer complexity of this G&G scheme. It’s easy enough to make, distribute, and get people hooked on drugs without all of the bells and whistles.
Also, any good businessman would want repeat customers, and that’s difficult to do if they’re all sacrificing themselves to a fictitious deity. Sure, it’s an effective way to tie up loose ends, but so are bullets to the brain and payoffs.
Here’s the really tricky bit: if the Gargoyle King is a figment of Fizzle Rock users’ imaginations, why has he/she/it been seen by Jughead, Betty, and Alice (none of whom have –prior to Betty’s single exposure — in the candy-coated death)? There’s also the mysterious seizures which take down Betty, Josie, Penelope, and the entire squad of Vixens sans Cheryl.
Does this mean Hiram has found a way to expose the entire town without them knowing? Or, there’s something or someone else casting a spell over the residents of Riverdale. How convenient that Edgar Evernever is so willing to take in all those troubled Sisters of Quiet Mercy outcasts.
Former helicopter mom Alice Cooper has become a very watered down version of Stevie Nicks. The extent of her nurturing instinct is now limited to dropping her daughters off and picking them up from the Sisters of Quiet Mercy.
Fred Andrews is relegated to Uber driver who dispenses fatherly advice as part of hallucinations. Hermione Lodge is an affront to feminism and should have her V-card revoked immediately. The portrayals of women on Riverdale continues to be spotty and problematic.
Kevin’s sole purpose is to be a fascist-in-training? Riverdale has traded his love story with Moose for the far more tantalizing and exploitive lesbian Choni pairing.
The answers we get to the many mysteries that plague Riverdale aren’t always what we expect, or predict, or hope for. But even a teen soap with a subversive take on American ideals and values needs to make some sort of sense (Hal Cooper is a nut job, Jason Blossom bailed on the family business, Archie was never working for the FBI, Hiram sees the benefits of privatizing prisons).
No matter how far to the edge Riverdale takes the key players, the series needs to be able to bring them back together again for the next chapter. Viewers will hang on through grizzly attacks and an assortment of Trojan horses, but they will jump ship if the wildest resolutions to our heroes problems are unsatisfying.
What did you think of this episode of Riverdale? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
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Jennifer Lind-Westbrook
Jennifer has been working as a freelance writer for six years, contributing to BuddyTV, Screen Rant, TVRage, Hidden Remote, Gossip On This, and PopMatters. She prefers binge-watching old episodes of The Office (British and American versions) to long walks on the beach. She's still holding out hope that Happy Endings will get a revival.