don’t understand how people can say riverdale is confusing like what’s so hard to understand. penelope blossom was the gargoyle king but she had chip (betty’s half brother that her mother had when she was a high school that turned out NOT to be her real brother, he just was dating her real brother who he claimed to have murdered, but her REAL brother is actually alive and an fbi agent but he’s dating the fake brother, and also he’s also jughead’s half brother, and betty and jughead are fine with dating despite this) dress up in the costume and also dyed his hair red and called him jason to cope with the loss of the real jason, her son who was murdered by his father. now the reason penelope was the gargoyle king was because she wanted to get back at the other riverparents for not caring when she told them she was a child bride when they got detention together in high school and formed a gryphons & gargoyles team. she murdered their principal that night because she really intended to kill one of them but they all swore to take it to the grave because everyone was high on fizzle rocks and so nobody would ever know the truth. however she also needed to get revenge because none of them gave her sympathy when jason died so she created an elaborate recreation of g&g to kill off all their children, that also involved working with hiram lodge but not really, and a cult of demon worshipping nuns who ran a psychiatric facility slash home for unwed teenage mothers slash conversion therapy. now the REASON that penelope started working with chip is because of betty’s serial killer father, hal, also known as the black hood. although hal initially intended to kill chip for the sins he committed he decided to spare his life when he realised they were kindred spirits and took him under his wing. now even though hal was jailed for his crimes shortly after gang warfare broke out between the serpents and the ghoulies and the northsiders, he got betty to transfer him to hiram’s prison, only to cause the bus to crash, killing everyone else on board and cutting off his hand so that everyone would think he also died. he gets away with it because fp, jughead’s dad, is the sheriff, and fp is kind of stupid. fp is the sheriff because tom keller was bullied into resigning after he failed to figure out that hal was the serial killer, because they all thought that the school janitor was the serial killer and tom shot him dead. and they thought it was the janitor because HIS family was murdered when he was young and everyone thought he wanted vengeance but it turns out that hal’s dad was actually the murderer. now, because penelope wanted to kill betty as vengeance, she bought her off chad michael murray, who ran an organ harvesting cult, right before he was about to perform a lobotomy on betty. betty was captured by gay kevin and fangs, who felt guilt over midge being murdered during carrie the musical, and got sucked into the cult by chad michael murray’s wife slash fake daughter during a production of heathers the musical, where she initiated them while they sang love is god. betty’s mother and sister were also part of the cult, but betty eventually found out that her mother was an undercover fbi agent trying to take the cult down from the inside. betty’s mom, alice, helped cheryl escape from the cult so that she could help save betty from penelope. cheryl was manipulated into joining the cult after they convinced her she was talking to her dead brother jason, only for cheryl to find out they had just stolen his mummified corpse from his grave. cheryl ended up stealing the corpse back and kept it downstairs in the family chapel, and would talk to him on a daily basis. however, a doll named julian soon appeared, and cheryl’s grandmother nana rose claimed that julian was cheryl’s would be triplet, only for her to absorb him in the womb. cheryl’s attempts to purge the spirit are all failures, and she begins to think she’s going insane. however, she undergoes a test to see if she did absorb julian, and it turns out she didn’t. cheryl gases her house to find out who’s been gaslighting her, only to find out that it was her mother, penelope, who had been hiding in the house ever since her failure to murder archie betty veronica and jughead. cheryl traps her in the sex bunker, which the teens stole from dilton doiley after he died, and used it to hide archie when he was on the run from the police after he was falsely jailed for a murder he didn’t commit and was forced to participate in an underground boxing ring. penelope is eventually allowed out of the bunker, and tends to the former brothel turned rum store that cheryl and veronica opened. penelope used to be the head mistress at the brothel, where she used it to murder more men under the guise of the red dahlia, but veronica and cheryl use it to their advantage, having created a rum to rival hiram’s. since hiram is mayor after being released from prison because he hired his secret daughter hermosa as a private eye, he uses this to shut down veronica’s speakeasy, hence why she needs the former brothel. and also jughead died but not really. see? simple.
