Riverdale Season 7: Does the basketball team get beheaded?

Lucy-Jo Finnighan
Riverdale season 7 episode 5 still

Riverdale goes pretty dark this epiosde, but what deadly thing happens to the basketball team? Let us explain.

Riverdale partakes in some Halloween-esque horror this week – despite it being Spring – with a Tales From the Crypt style episode.

Season 7 Episode 5, AKA Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two: Tales in a Jugular Vein has Jughead creating an anthology of scary stories, each feature gore and horror happening to the residents of Riverdale.

But one story in particular has fans of the show reeling, so what basketball based violence happens in this episode? We’ll explain all.

What happens to the basketball team in Riverdale Season 7?

The basketball team meets a pretty rough fate, as Dilton Doily beheads them, and then plays basketball with their decapitated heads.

This section of the episode – which has four stories overall – is a classic take of bullies getting their taste of Karma.

Dilton, who is seen as a nerd in the Archie universe, is getting berated by the basketball team. Julian, who continues being a jerk this season, says to him “You gotta get your head in the game.” And when Dilton asks him how to do that, instead of breaking into song ala High School Musical style, Julian stuffs him into a locker.

The lockers in Riverdale High are honestly so small already that it’s a miracle Dilton didn’t suffocate and die. Instead, its the basketball team who suffers that fate.

Dilton gets his revenge, and the team, in a hilariously dark twist of fate, get their own heads in the game. Dilton playing basketball with the severed heads of his teammates is delightfully macabre, and the poor special effects of the decapitated bodies only add to the camp.

And this is only the first story of the episode. We also see Betty have a Black Widow infested beehive, and Archie get cut in half with a saw due to the show’s main love triangle hitting its peak.

Jughead’s framing also helps deliver just how judgemental he can be, and this actually has an effect on his budding relationship with Veronica, which you can read about here.

Riverdale Seasons 1-6 are currently available to stream on Netflix. Find out more about Season 7 here.

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About The Author

Lucy-Jo is a Movies and TV Writer at Dexerto, and has previously written for Screen Rant and Girls on Tops. After earning a Master's Degree in Film and Literature, Lucy-Jo now loves covering films, TV shows, and anime, especially if it's something by Mike Flanagan, or anything drenched in camp. You can contact her at lucyjo.finnighan@dexerto.com