Riverdale (4×19) Killing Mr. Honey Review

Dylan PhillipsMay 7, 202090/100n/a7 min
Overall Score
Rating Summary
Killing Mr. Honey manages to be an incredible makeshift season finale that brings the best of Riverdale's teenage angst and pairs it with a killer cliffhanger.

For our review of last episode, click here.

Jughead, Betty and Charles watch the Blossom murder films side-by-side to see the comparisons. The auteur has started to escalate his creepy videos and they are unsure where they may strike next. Betty can’t help though, she’s busy with yearbook. Well that is until Mr. Honey tells her she is a few days late and cancels the yearbook entirely. Does anyone even like him? Apparently not given the title name. Here’s what happened in “Killing Mr. Honey.”

While this episode wasn’t meant to be the season finale it certainly has the gravitas to be one. It not only manages to have the dark, absurd themes of Riverdale, but place them in the context of an actual school setting: prom! And who has the power to stop students from having their prom? Well of course the principal who to be honest hasn’t been making a lot of friends since his arrival.

With yearbook and prom threatened by their latest nemesis, the usual suspects decide to plan out the kidnapping of Mr. Honey. (Betty originally suggests killing him and Jughead soon starts writing their revenge fantasy as his latest university submission piece). Someone needs to check on Betty and make sure she’s okay. As Jughead continues to write the story, the visuals of this are shown with each character having their moment alone with their monster of a principal.

Then things get interesting. The crew brings together all of their parents to storm Honey’s castle and try to convince him to reinstate prom. They bring threats to ruin his reputation and this causes him to finally give in. This calls for a toast at Pop’s where all the parents chime in on how proud they are of their kids. The next day, Jughead and Betty are called into Mr. Honey’s office where he is with Charles looking over the latest tape. It depicts every piece of the school showing a potential threat to the students.

Mr. Honey decides to put the school on high alert meaning he gets to cancel prom a second time! But it is revealed that Honey created the tape to get his way and he is promptly fired. The students believe him to be even worse than they originally thought, but Miss Bell, the school’s secretary, comes and explains how he has been the best principal for the school in the past 50 years. She hands Jughead a glowing recommendation letter that Mr. Honey wrote for the program he was accepted to. He even decides to take the recently vacant headmaster position at Stonewall Prep!

Jughead decides it is best to change the ending of his Killing Mr. Honey story given the new information he has regarding their former principal. They don’t kill him, but become fearful of landing in Shankshaw prison (another Riverdale homage). He reveals this new ending to Betty and she seems so offput by the new ending as if she took pleasure in the fantasy murder. (Again someone needs to check on her)

However, they receive a new tape of an oddly familiar cabin. Jughead realizes it is Hermione and Sheriff Minetta’s affair cabin and decide to investigate. The place looks lived in with empty food containers and drinks everywhere. They stumble upon another old TV and VCR which has the latest tape. A group of six masked figures wearing each of their faces surrounded a bound Mr. Honey and stab him to death then stare back into the camera menacingly. THE SUSPENSE.

What did you think of “Killing Mr. Honey”? Was it a decent finale to this shortened season? Let me know in the comments below!


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