Donna Sweett's True Identity On 'Riverdale' Was Not What Anyone Expected
After a major cliffhanger, Riverdale finally revealed the truth about Donna Sweett in its new episode... but really, the revelation was not exactly as epic as fans were expecting it to be. The entire March 11 episode was devoted to explaining the complicated events that went down at Stonewall Prep in the past few months, and it was not until the final moments that Betty revealed the truth about Donna, which Veronica's half-sister Hermosa dug up. Fans had already come up with so many theories about Donna Sweett's true identity on Riverdale, but it seems like nobody actually predicted correctly.
Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers from Riverdale Season 4, Episode 16, "The Locked Room." The previous episode built up a shocking revelation about Donna, with Jughead calling it the "final piece of the puzzle" after Veronica showed him the findings her sister Hermosa had uncovered. The cliffhanger ending had fans making a ton of guesses about Donna's real name: Could she be Donna Evernever, or Donna Svenson, or Donna DuPont... or even Donna Jones? Basically, all of the big theories tied into other storylines in shocking ways, but the character Donna was actually related to was not one fans had ever seen on the show.
First, some backstory into the whole Jughead murder thing: Apparently, getting a Baxter Brothers contract takes a lot more than just a good pitch; Mr. DuPont set up a tradition in which potential authors had to actually commit — not just, you know, write — a perfect murder before they were awarded a contract. That's why Donna, Bret, Jonathan, and Joan were trying to kill Jug.
The big reveal about Donna, though, was that she is the granddaughter of Jane Dallas Brown, one of DuPont's former classmates. Donna had found out that DuPont stole the Baxter Brothers character of Tracy True from her grandmother and then killed her, so she enrolled in Stonewall Prep and got close to him in order to get her revenge.
In the end, Donna got her wish, as Mr. DuPont jumped out of a window and killed himself after being exposed for his murderous ways by Jughead, Betty, and Forsythe Jones I, but she since she also tried to kill Jughead, Betty blackmailed her out of accepting a publishing deal to reboot the Baxter Brothers franchise with a Tracy True series.
TBH, the reveal doesn't really make much sense. If Donna's sole mission was to get revenge on Mr. DuPont, then why would she pretty much ignore him this whole time and go after Jughead at every turn? It didn't seem like she even had a plan to take out DuPont. Maybe she wanted to win the Baxter Brothers contract to reclaim her grandmother's stolen character before trying to kill DuPont, but it still seems bizarre for her to be so chummy with her grandma's killer for so long. As with most things Riverdale, it's probably best not to overthink these things, so fans might as well just look forward to the Season 4 finale and whatever is going to happen at graduation.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.
