How are we feeling, Barchie Nation?

I will be honest though: I had been HYPED UP to watch this episode for the past TWO WEEKS because of what went down last episode (check out my piece on that right here), and yet my first thought after watching it on Wednesday was about how disappointed I was with what we got, specifically how very little Barchie we saw when compared to the strictly Barchie-centric promo.

However, when I was scrolling through Twitter of all the Barchie-related tweets – pretty much a repeat of my social media stroll right after the musical ep – I then realized that it made sense, not to mention I found that it felt so… familiar.

*Quick note: MAJOR spoilers for season 4, episode 18 of Riverdale, especially in terms of the Betty and Archie (Barchie) ship, so please watch the ep before continuing on. (Trust me, die-hard Barchie fans: you'll be glad you did!)

So anyway, while we got so little Barchie even though we were – I felt – low-key promised a full-on sit-down discussion between Betty and Archie in the bunker about their feelings, based on not just the promo but also the shots released leading up to the ep's premiere, including the two in the bunker when Archie plays his song to Betty and the two of them as little kids in the flashbacks (which were all so adorable), what we did in fact get was very important in how things are going to play out for them in the future…

(Also, speaking of Archie's song for Betty, please check it out – the WHOLE THING – if you haven't already here and prepare have your heart broken even more once you actually look up the meaning of the song's title…)

I'm not going to full-on explain every little thing in this article, but I will more than gladly direct you to a very enlightening thread I found on Twitter, analyzing all the little details we got in the ep and explaining exactly what they all mean for Barchie's fate, especially after the promised five-year time-jump we're gonna be getting at the start of season five…

And in case you wanted the TL;DR version of the thread or even the Barchie-related plot of the ep in general…

It may be a long wait for us, especially since production has been halted due to the Coronavirus, which is why we're getting only 19 episodes this season instead of the previously confirmed 22, but several fans of the ship aren't so quick to give up hope, and I have to agree: while I may not have always been a true Barchie fan through and through, even I can see where the writers are going with this after watching the same thing happen with one or two other slow-burn ships.

On that note, is it just me, or is Barchie turning out to be a bit like Starco, Maevis, and Stydia? And possibly even like Alex and Rosie, as many of the fans strongly feel their story is headed? If you're not familiar with any of these ships, please consider checking out Disney's fantasy animated series Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Netflix's raunchy teen comedy series Sex Education, MTV's teen drama series Teen Wolf, and the rom-com movie Love, Rosie, respectively!

To end off this article, I'll just say that it's such a shame that Barchie is not gonna have the full(ish) closure that the show-writers initially expected to give them – all because of Covid-19! But I guess we'll get something hinting at that direction next week in the pseudo-finale of the fourth season. You know, depending on when the virus clears up and the crew starts production again, we might just get a 2/3-hour Riverdale movie just before the season five time-jump…