Riverdale: How will Season One End? What’s in Store for Season Two?

Riverdale revealed the identity of the killer behind its season-long murder mystery in the penultimate episode of Season One. With one last episode in the season remaining, there are more mysteries and secrets left to unravel. Where are the writers going with all of this? We speculate on the season finale of Riverdale and where the series goes in Season 2.

Let’s Speculate Riverdale

Photo: Art Streiber/The CW — © 2017 The CW Network. All Rights Reserved

Archie’s Pal Jughead: This poor kid can’t seem to catch a break. Judging by the events of episode 12, Jughead is seemingly homeless (again) and without a guardian. Fred doesn’t want him to stay with them anymore, though that may change considering recent events, his father is in jail, and his mother is in Toledo. Several things can happen here, Jughead stays with Fred and Archie, FP is released, or Jughead goes to Toledo/Mother Jones comes home. I would rather they write FP out of trouble than ever look at Jughead’s mother.

Much like Mary Andrews, while it was nice to see her and establish that she exists, she isn’t necessary to the narrative. I was already over Jughead’s mother when we realized that she left FP and took her daughter, but left her son behind. Now we could always retcon that to she asked Jughead to come with her and he didn’t want to go, in the same way Archie chose to stay with Fred when Mary left. But, this week when Jughead wants to come stay with her, she tells him no. One can argue she is unaware of the circumstances at the time and perhaps once she learns about the arrest and everything, she changes her mind, but it was still very telling that she didn’t want him to come visit and I have decided she’s awful and can stay gone.

Crime and Punishment: The nitty gritty details of what exactly FP did or did not do in terms of Jason is a bit foggy. We know he confessed, but that confession is tainted with lies so who’s to say the whole thing isn’t a lie? What we know definitively is FP cleaned up the murder, moved the body, set the getaway car on fire, took Jason’s jacket, hid the flash drive, and confessed to protect Jughead. Per the murder video, Mustang is the one who tortured Jason. According to Joaquin, FP called him to help with the murder clean up and body stashing. Anything else FP told Sheriff Keller is up for debate. The writers have a carte blanche to write him out of this, if in fact they want to keep this character around, which I assume they do. FP was sort of the break out adult on this show; people were so focused on Fred, Hermione, and Alice that FP, at first, seemed like an insignificant character, until we were treated to the excellent chemistry between Skeet and Cole and how well they play off each other in scenes. You can’t just toss that connection aside, so you must write your way around it.

Anyone who’s ever watched a soap opera laughed out loud at Keller’s list o’ crimes committed by FP and his assertion that jail time was still a possibility. Those are petty infractions sir, let’s just call this one a day. We know that the Serpents are doing business with Hiram; easy fix is to say Mustang was working on the side with Clifford, once he hears that FP was helping Jason leave town, he tells Clifford. Clifford has Mustang abduct Jason and FP doesn’t even know about it until he finds the dead body in the basement. At which point, Mustang and/or Clifford tells him, you better get rid of this body or we’re pinning it on you, killing your family, blah blah blah (this could also be used to explain Mrs. Jones and Jellybean’s abrupt move to Toledo since we don’t have a definitive time on when that happened). So now all he’s done really is tamper with evidence and move a dead body… oh and give a kid some weed to sell. A good lawyer can argue he was under duress and he’s out the next day. To move us into season 2, Hiram Lodge could be the one who sends said lawyer in to free FP and now he can blackmail FP into helping him with his nefarious activities for Season 2 narrative.

The Outsiders: Who, what, when, where, and how Hiram is involved in any of this can go a million different places. We know that the Blossoms were sending monthly payments to the Lodges for years and then they abruptly stopped before Jason’s death. We know that the Southside Serpents were working for Hiram, we also know that the Blossom’s wanted to buy the Drive-In land and Hiram/Hermione bribed the Mayor to give it to them.

Let’s break this down:

• The weed the Serpents gave Jason is not the same drugs lying on the floor in the Maple Syrup barn at the end of episode 12. I will go ahead and assume that was heroin, which is what it looks like Mustang overdosed on.
• Let’s go ahead and say that the payments made to Hiram Lodge by the Blossom’s are for the drugs in the Maple Syrup barrels. The Serpent involvement is a bit tricky, are they pushing drugs for Clifford? Or are they pushing different drugs for Hiram? And is Hiram playing them against each other? It would appear that way.
• If Hiram paid the Serpents to trash the Drive-In, then it would stand to reason they work for him, not for Clifford. It would also stand to reason that Hiram has decided to completely cut the Blossom’s out of this drug cartel operation and that is what sends Clifford into the downward spiral of preserving the Blossom legacy, which leads us to…