Rivervale (parallel universe)

This article is about the shadow town. You may be looking for its counterpart, Riverdale or the "eventized" story arc of Season 6.

Rivervale
Information
Location	Rockland County, New York, United States
Use(s)	Parallel universe
Slogan	"You'll NEVER want to leave..." "The Town With HEART!" "Perfect for a RAINY stay..." "A HELLUVA town!" "There be Witches Here" "There's no place like HOME!" "The Town With Pop's"

Rivervale is a parallel universe to Riverdale, where residents live in an alternate pocket universe, where the supernatural is rampant.

History

Early History

In 1580, a ship named the Ruby Pearl arrived at the shores, carrying passengers who left the Old World for a variety of reasons. These settlers founded the first colonies of the New World by Sweetwater River. Percival Pickens, Asher Andrews, Blessing Cooper, James Jones, and Charity Blossom were among those early settlers. They began building up Sweetwater Village while Percival pursed witchcraft and sorcery.

The devil makes Percival an offer

Every night, whilst his neighbors slept, he disappeared to the Sweetwater woods to perform arcane rituals. But one night, when he was performing a ritual involving a girl from their settlement, Percival was interrupted by Asher, who exposed him to the village. For his crime, he was brought before Sweetwater's council, consisting of Asher, Blessing, James, and Charity, and they sentenced him to be executed for his crime, specifically to be left in the woods to die slowly from starvation. Percival's exact crime was attempting to conjure the devil. While his ritual wasn't completed, he did gain the devil's attention. And that night, he appeared to Percival, attracted by his spell and enticed by his fate. He offered Percival freedom in exchange for his soul.

After a bit of negotiation, Percival managed to procure immortality from the devil. He left Sweetwater Village and spent the next 400 years going from town to town, acquiring forbidden knowledge, which he intended to use to conquer the town of Rivervale.

Harvest Sacrifice

The Maple Harvest Festival

Rivervale is slowly recovering from years of tragedy. To get the town back on its feet, Archie Andrews and the town council chaired by Alice Smith, Toni Topaz, Tabitha Tate and Frank Andrews organize the planting of maple trees so that every citizen has their own resource of maple syrup. This sends Cheryl into a rage because they're putting at risk her business, and the Blossom bombshell conspires against the townsfolk. Already intent on returning to the Old Ways with the girls she is educating in her Blossom Ministry, she organizes a Maple Harvest Festival.

Archie is sacrificed

Taking advantage of the hardships of her fellow townsfolk - Alice and Frank's romance, Toni and Fangs' concerns over Baby Anthony's health, and Betty's infertility - Cheryl hosts a fair where everyone can have a good time. However, she has baked a pie that will atone for Rivervale's sins. Under false pretenses, Archie eats it and is sacrificed as King of the Harvest. Deceptively lured into the woods where they are all gathered, Cheryl cuts his heart out of his chest.

Vengeful Spirits

Serpents vs Ghoulies

Rivervale is the center of a feud between Southside Serpents and Ghoulies. The two gangs clash over the forbidden love between Xandra and Daniel, who belong to the two rival gangs. In one of the battles, Toni accidentally kills Darla Dickenson's son, Daniel. Some time later, the vengeful spirit of La Llorona haunts the town, attacking the children after rising from the waters of the Sweetwater River. Arriving in town, the ghost tries to drown Juniper, drowned Lucinda's daughter, killed Betty's unborn child, and kidnapped Baby Anthony.

Meanwhile, Tabitha and Jughead are haunted by the ghosts of the previous tenants of their apartment. The couple tries to take possession of their bodies and reenact their murder-suicide. Tabitha and Jughead, however, survive.

Toni becomes La Llorona

Betty and Toni hold a séance, conducted by Cheryl and Nana Rose, during which they discover the identity of La Llorona. She was Martha Mellon, a nurse killed for witchcraft along with her kids. Betty and Toni realize that La Llorona has been summoned by Darla for revenge. To save Baby Anthony and free Martha, Toni offers to take her place and drowns herself in the Sweetwater River.

Souls Collector

The Devil comes to Rivervale

The Devil comes to Rivervale to collect souls. He introduces himself as Louis Cypher and tempts the townsfolk to sell their souls to him in exchange for whatever they desire. Mr. Cypher show up at the hospital where Pop Tate is admitted after a heart attack. Pop Tate sold him his soul years ago to keep the Chock'lit Shoppe open and save his father from an eternity in hell. Tabitha, however, manages to trick the Devil with the help of Raphael, the Tate family's guardian angel. However, the Devil secures Kevin's soul in exchange for Broadway fame and the sinful soul of Nick St. Clair, a corrupt senator. After sowing discord between Reggie and Veronica who sell each other out, the Devil drags Reggie to hell.

The Blossom Women

Abigail and Thomasina reunite

Three blossom women, one story, echoing across time, starting with Abigail Blossom, later moving on to Poppy Blossom, and ending with Cheryl Blossom, the latter two merely being personas created by a lonely Abigail Blossom to conceal the secret of her immortality after being cursed by a warlock. In an attempt to move on to the Sweet Hereafter, "Cheryl" and Sabrina perform a soul transference spell during Bailey's Comet on a dying Nana Rose, moving Cheryl's, or more accurately, Abigail's soul, into Nana Rose and moving Rose's soul into Abigail's body, allowing Abigail to finally find peace and reunite with her lost love Thomasina Topaz in the afterlife.

Saving Riverdale

Jughead reads the comics

After Jughead's doppelgänger is murdered and turns up in the coroner's office, Jughead becomes aware that they're existing in a parallel universe to Riverdale and begins investigating, an investigation that is furthered when he discovers that his collection of comic books now detail events about him and his friends, which supposedly happened in the town of Riverdale. The first 95 issues are called Riverdale and are set in a town called Riverdale until an explosion, and suddenly it becomes Rivervale, leading Jughead to believe that the explosion is the origin of it all.

Ethel and Jughead discuss the universes

However, when events described in Riverdale begin to contradict Rivervale, Jughead digs deeper and discovers that Dilton Doiley is the reason that Riverdale and Rivervale are expanding and bleeding into each other. Dilton was curious and wanted a front row seat to their destruction and to become the first scientist to document a prime and pocket universes collapsing in real time. After he is poisoned by Ethel Muggs, she and Jughead devise a plan to save Riverdale by separating the two universes, which consists of Jughead and Veronica having to recreate the circumstances of Rivervale's birth by hooking up in Archie's room with a bomb under the bed.

Jughead saves Rivervale

Unfortunately, Veronica is killed by Archie before she and Jughead can enact their plan, the reason being that everyone comes back to life in Rivervale, which Archie is hopeful extends to his father, and it's for that reason that he can't allow for Jughead to separate the universes. Archie attempts to kill Jughead but is killed by Betty first. Shortly after, Narrator Jughead comes back to life and tells them of a way to save both Riverdale and Rivervale, by Jughead becoming a living battery and story generator that powers Rivervale by writing stories to fuel the universe so that it doesn't have to keep leeching off of Riverdale. In doing this, both universes are saved, and Jughead calls Betty in Riverdale to warn her of the bomb before it explodes under Archie's bed.

Bleeding into Riverdale

Jughead's call to Riverdale unknowingly caused a spillover effect. When Percival finally returned to Rivervale after 400 years away, he heard the bomb go off in Riverdale and suddenly found himself transported there. In addition, Rivervale's arcane energies also caused Archie, Betty, Jughead, Cheryl, Tabitha, and Veronica, many of whom were doppelgängers of the descendants of Percival's initial enemies, to develop powers. Furthermore, Riverdale's citizens found themselves feeling senses of déjà vu when events from Rivervale began unfolding similarly in Riverdale. Jughead developed telepathic powers, and after an encounter with Percival left his mind open to hear everyone's thoughts, he retreated to the bunker to find quiet, and began hearing echoes from Rivervale. Jughead began writing stories based off of these echoes, unaware that these were actual events that had transpired in Rivervale. His dreams and reality began to mix as the characters/people from Riverdale seemingly crossed over into the bunker in Rivervale, culminating with Jughead encountering his Rivervale counterpart before dying as a result of Percival enacting the finale plague: death of the firstborn. Rivervale-Jughead had wanted to look hat Riveradle-Jughead's stories for inspiration, only to discover that they were recycled stories from Rivervale.

Returning to his home dimension, Rivervale-Jughead was later visited by a resurrected Riverdale-Jughead and Tabitha, who were seeking information on Percival. Rivervale-Jughead explained how Riverdale and Rivervale are conjoined parallel universes that started to bleed into each other, and how they would've self-destructed if the explosion in Archie's bedroom hadn't separated the two. In regards to Percival, Rivervale-Jughead advised his visitors to look into the Blossom archives for answers, but warns them against going to the surface in fear they may disrupt the flow, and if someone sees them interacting with their counterparts, that it could precipitate another crisis. Tabitha insists they'll be careful in route to Thornhill, but before they do, Bunker Jughead informs them of how Nana Rose's consciousness went into Cheryl's body, which is actually Abigail's immortal body. Riverdale-Jughead and Tabitha eventually come across Narrator Jughead, whose Superteens comics eerily resemble the events in Riverdale. Narrator Jughead explains that he made a deal with Louis Cypher, and tells Riverdale-Jughead and Tabitha his current location. In the Babylonium, Cyhper and Raphael, an alternate versin of Tabitha's guardian angel who had warned her about Cypher, play in a chess match. After the game, which Cypher wins, Jughead and Tabitha confront him. They ask if he knows Percival, which he admits that he does, revealing that Percival was one of Rivervale's founding fathers, who sold his soul to the devil centuries ago. Jughead and Tabitha reveal that he is now in Riverdale, which surprises Cypher, though he can't get more directly involved, as those are the cosmic rules. Not that it matters, as he suspects they'll lose. Tabitha mentions how they stalled Percival by moving Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe, though according to Cypher, they played right into Percival's hand. After Jughead reads his mind, Cypher reveals that it's not the diner that's important to Percival, rather the land, as it's where he was left to die and it's where Cypher came upon him when they made their deal. It's also the site of a Hellmouth. In the old days, churches used to be build over Hellmouths to contain the dark forces underneath, which is what Pop's was intended for until they moved the diner. And with it gone, Percival's powers grow.

Jughead and Tabitha return to the bunker, where Ethel Muggs waits with Rivervale-Jughead. She explains that when Riverdale and Rivervale split, that it was supposed to be a clean break between the universes, but there's been a bleed. She suspects that something happened that corrupted the split and asks Jughead if Archie and Betty said anything beyond the explosion. Jughead recalls Betty saying she received a phone call, specifically a warning to get out of the bedroom, which Ethel realizes must've been Bunker Jughead. His interference has resulted in the rifts and seepage between universes. The phone call compromised everything. Ethel calls Jughead weak and suspects that he called her because he still loves her, even though it's over, but Bunker Jughead claims that he was just trying to save their lives, as they're his best friends. Jughead then opens a portal back home to Riverdale, for him and Tabitha to escape through.

Later, Tabitha realizes that their fight against Percival might have better odds in Rivervale due to its supernatural energies. She and Jughead briefly come back to the alternate dimension so she can scan alternate futures. Her theory proven correct, they return to Riverdale to enact their plan. Jughead uses the door of Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe to act as a portal between universes, and gathers the Rivervale versions of his friends to help fight Percival. Once Percival is lured into the diner, unaware of his transporation from Riverdale to Rivervale, Jughead battles him psychically while his Rivervale friends stab Percival's physical body. Tabitha then appears and takes Percival back in time to 1580, before he made his deal with the devil. Tabitha presents Percival to Mr. Cypher, but before he is taken away, Percival argues that if the deal hasn't been made yet, then he has not signed his soul over. Cypher instead reveals that the contract is valid across all realities, continuities, and timelines. Percival exclaims that if he can't have Riverdale then no one will, before muttering a spell as Mr. Cypher disappears in a cyclone of flames. This spell, unbeknownst to Tabitha at the time but later discovered by Heather, caused Bailey's Comet to now be on a collision course with Riverdale. Tabitha and her friends consider escaping to Rivervale, but Jughead reveals that Percival's spell also put up a shield around Riverdale, preventing anyone from leaving, even to another dimension.

People

Residents Archie Andrews Betty Cooper Veronica Lodge Jughead Jones Narrator Jughead Cheryl Blossom Toni Topaz Reggie Mantle Tabitha Tate Fangs Fogarty Kevin Keller Alice Smith Anthony Topaz Tom Keller Frank Andrews Rose Blossom Britta Beach Dr. Curdle Jr. Pop Tate Juniper and Dagwood Blossom Darla Dickenson Janet Weiss Waldo Weatherbee Diana Whitley Lucinda Villa Jason Blossom Hal Cooper Dilton Doiley Ethel Muggs Ben Button

Former Residents Abigail Blossom † Thomasina Topaz † Constable Keller † Martha Mallon † Poppy Blossom † Bitsy Smith † Velma † Jack † Kirk Keller † Tammy Tate † Elaina Alexis † Reggie Prime † Fen Fogarty † Clifford Blossom † Sam † Diane † Marty Mantle † Xandra † Daniel Dickenson † Percival Pickens

Visitors

• Louis Cypher
• Raphael
• Nick St. Clair †
• Sabrina Spellman
• Jughead Jones
• Tabitha Tate

Locations

Residences

• Thornhill
• Andrews house
• Cooper house
• Toni and Fangs' apartment
• Jughead and Tabitha's apartment
• The Pembrooke

Businesses

• Fred Andrews Community Center
• Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe
• Blossom Maple Farms
• Babylonium

Events

• Maple Harvest Festival

Appearances

Season 6

• "Chapter Ninety-Six: Welcome to Rivervale"
• "Chapter Ninety-Seven: Ghost Stories"
• "Chapter Ninety-Eight: Mr. Cypher"
• "Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Witching Hour(s)"
• "Chapter One Hundred: The Jughead Paradox"
• "Chapter One Hundred and Four: The Serpent Queen's Gambit" (archived footage)
• "Chapter One Hundred and Six: Angels in America" (archived footage)
• "Chapter One Hundred and Nine: Venomous" (archived footage)
• "Chapter One Hundred and Eleven: Blue Collar" (archived audio)
• "Chapter One Hundred and Twelve: American Psychos" (archived footage)
• "Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen: Biblical" (archived footage)
• "Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen: The Witches of Riverdale" (archived footage)
• "Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen: Return to Rivervale"
• "Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen: The Stand"
• "Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen: Night of the Comet" (indirectly mentioned)

Trivia

• Rivervale is a reference to Welcome to Night Vale, a twice-monthly podcast for the fictional town of Night Vale
• Each episode of the "eventized arc" in Rivervale has a themed slogan:
  • In "Chapter Ninety-Six: Welcome to Rivervale", "The Town With HEART!" references Archie's sacrifice.
  • In "Chapter Ninety-Seven: Ghost Stories", "Perfect for a RAINY stay..." references La Llorona.
  • In "Chapter Ninety-Eight: Mr. Cypher", "A HELLUVA town!" references Louis Cypher, aka The Devil.
  • In "Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Witching Hour(s)", "There be Witches Here" references Sabrina Spellman and the history of the Blossom women, Abigail, Poppy and Cheryl throught the years.
  • In "Chapter One Hundred: The Jughead Paradox", "There's no place like HOME" references Jughead's discovery of Rivervale and Riverdale's coexistence and how the episode ends back at "home" in Riverdale.
• The town welcome sign in "Chapter Ninety-Eight: Mr. Cypher" shows Mr. Inferno, the devil that Betty and Veronica met in Betty & Veronica #75.

Gallery