Riverdale Queer Watch season 5 episode 4: Queen Toni reigns

Welcome to Riverdale Queer Watch, where we look out for the LGBTQ+ folks on The CW’s Riverdale each week. Whether it’s a snuff film or prom night, we’re watching.

This week’s episode gave us our first look at the new era of the teen series as Archie and friends went through a seven year time jump after graduation.

After waking up in an Army hospital and being assigned to revive Riverdale High’s ROTC program, Archie arrives at Pop’s and finds that Riverdale is hardly the place he remembers.

Thankfully, Toni Topaz and her band of loyal Serpents is there to guide him through all the changes. One of the first changes we see is La Bonne Nuit is the new home of the Whyte Wyrm where Toni, Fangs, and Sweet Pea perform as Toni showcases her new title as Serpent Queen.

Serpent Queen Toni

Riverdale is a show that doesn’t always know where it’s going, and therefore, it can be hard to trust the choices it makes. That’s why it’s good to see that the preceding three episodes with the meandering and random Choni breakup and sidelining of Toni were headed somewhere.

And that somewhere delivered us Toni as a central figurehead of Riverdale. In the closing moments of the episode, after she toured Archie around town to show him everything that had happened in his absence, the two met up with Veronica, Jughead, and Betty at Pop’s.

When Toni tried to “leave them to it,” Archie insisted Toni stay, officially turning the Core Four, into the Core Five. For longtime Toni fans, this was a huge fist-bump moment, and a massive fist-bump episode, the first of many likely to come.

Of course, there’s one other bump in the road for Toni. In a lovely move, especially in light of recent news, the Riverdale writers chose to incorporate Vanessa Morgan’s pregnancy, giving us a nice mystery: How and why did Toni come to be pregnant?

Kevin and Fangs as the Hot Gay Dads of Riverdale

Of course, Toni wasn’t our only queer character to appear in this week’s episode. Considering the lack of closure in the previous episode for Kevin and Fangs, it was nice to get more of them this week, as we learned that Kevin is the Riverdale High Drama Teacher and Fangs is a truck driver like many of the other Serpents.

Kevin and Fangs, shockingly, are the one surviving couple from Riverdale High, which in a way is kind of sweet, but also speaks to the lack of focus with these particular characters. However, it is a really sweet and lovely detail that they live in an apartment with Toni, presumably ready to be guncles at any moment.

After a rocky start with an admittedly difficult task, Riverdale has found its footing once again. Long may Queen Toni reign.

What did you think about the revelations in this week’s time jump? Tell us in the comments below!