7 Questions "Riverdale" Still Needs to Answer
This post contains spoilers for the 5/4 episode of Riverdale.
Thursday's episode of Riverdale - the second-to-last of the first season - revealed that Clifford Blossom killed Jason. He shot him in the basement of the Whyte Wyrm, after F.P. attempted to use him for ransom. At the end of the episode, Clifford was dead too, but there are still a lot of outstanding questions that one hopes will be answered in the season finale. Start theorizing now!
1. Why did Clifford kill Jason? In Riverdale, anything could happen, twist-wise, but given that there's actual video proof that Cliff shot his son in the head, it seems unlikely that revealing Cliff as the killer was a fake-out. But why did he do it? He must have known that Jason and Polly were related, but that hardly seems like a good reason to kill Jason - why not kill the half of the couple who's not your child? If "light incest" wasn't the motivation, perhaps it had something to do with Jason's new hustle as a drug mule. Maybe Jason knew too much about where the Blossom family money was really coming from?
2. Did Clifford really kill himself? It certainly appears that Cliff killed himself, but don't discount the possibility that someone else killed him and staged the scene so it looked like a suicide. "Remember, we didn’t see Clifford hang himself," showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told Entertainment Tonight. "We just saw Clifford hanging there." Interesting.
3. If he didn’t, who did, and why? Signs point to Hiram Lodge, since that guy's obviously still operating his criminal empire from inside prison, though there are plenty of other candidates. It could have been a Southside Serpent, or - and this is my favorite theory - Penelope Blossom, trying to avoid the scandal of people knowing her husband killed their son.
4. Did Mustang really die of an overdose? Since I didn't even know who Mustang was until Thursday, I don't know him well enough to be too bummed he's dead, but I do think it's awfully suspicious that he overdosed just before the detecteens showed up to question him. Something is rotten in the Whyte Wyrm.
5. Where did all those drugs come from? One of the episode's other big reveals was that the Blossoms' stash of maple syrup is actually a stash of drugs. But where's Clifford getting his supply? Hiram Lodge? Was that even Clifford's stash at all? What if it belonged to Penelope, who's the real criminal mastermind here, and Cliff killed Jason because he thought it was his?
6. What does Hiram Lodge have to do with all this? Mustang had the bag of money from Hiram, who we know has had dealings with F.P. Now that Mark Consuelos has been cast as Hiram, it seems certain that he'll come into play even more in season two.
7. How exactly are Polly and Jason related? Hal Cooper dropped the bombshell that the Coopers are actually an estranged branch of the Blossom family - the great-grandfather Cooper who was killed by a Blossom was also a Blossom, and the rest of his family split off after the murder and changed their name to Cooper. You have to make a few leaps to figure it out (because we don't know how Greatgrandfather Cooper was related to the Blossom who killed him), but assuming those two were brothers, you can then infer that Polly and Jason would be third cousins. This means they have a blood relationship of 0.390625 percent, which I figured out using this website and a chart I made on a notepad.
So it wouldn't have been illegal for them to get married, just weird. What does remain unclear is whether or not Polly knew they were related. It kind of seems like she did? Maybe the finale will reveal all, or maybe not, but either way, bring Joaquin back because he was hot.
Follow Eliza on Twitter.
This post contains spoilers for the 5/4 episode of Riverdale.
Thursday's episode of Riverdale - the second-to-last of the first season - revealed that Clifford Blossom killed Jason. He shot him in the basement of the Whyte Wyrm, after F.P. attempted to use him for ransom. At the end of the episode, Clifford was dead too, but there are still a lot of outstanding questions that one hopes will be answered in the season finale. Start theorizing now!
1. Why did Clifford kill Jason? In Riverdale, anything could happen, twist-wise, but given that there's actual video proof that Cliff shot his son in the head, it seems unlikely that revealing Cliff as the killer was a fake-out. But why did he do it? He must have known that Jason and Polly were related, but that hardly seems like a good reason to kill Jason - why not kill the half of the couple who's not your child? If "light incest" wasn't the motivation, perhaps it had something to do with Jason's new hustle as a drug mule. Maybe Jason knew too much about where the Blossom family money was really coming from?
2. Did Clifford really kill himself? It certainly appears that Cliff killed himself, but don't discount the possibility that someone else killed him and staged the scene so it looked like a suicide. "Remember, we didn’t see Clifford hang himself," showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told Entertainment Tonight. "We just saw Clifford hanging there." Interesting.
3. If he didn’t, who did, and why? Signs point to Hiram Lodge, since that guy's obviously still operating his criminal empire from inside prison, though there are plenty of other candidates. It could have been a Southside Serpent, or - and this is my favorite theory - Penelope Blossom, trying to avoid the scandal of people knowing her husband killed their son.
4. Did Mustang really die of an overdose? Since I didn't even know who Mustang was until Thursday, I don't know him well enough to be too bummed he's dead, but I do think it's awfully suspicious that he overdosed just before the detecteens showed up to question him. Something is rotten in the Whyte Wyrm.
5. Where did all those drugs come from? One of the episode's other big reveals was that the Blossoms' stash of maple syrup is actually a stash of drugs. But where's Clifford getting his supply? Hiram Lodge? Was that even Clifford's stash at all? What if it belonged to Penelope, who's the real criminal mastermind here, and Cliff killed Jason because he thought it was his?
6. What does Hiram Lodge have to do with all this? Mustang had the bag of money from Hiram, who we know has had dealings with F.P. Now that Mark Consuelos has been cast as Hiram, it seems certain that he'll come into play even more in season two.
7. How exactly are Polly and Jason related? Hal Cooper dropped the bombshell that the Coopers are actually an estranged branch of the Blossom family - the great-grandfather Cooper who was killed by a Blossom was also a Blossom, and the rest of his family split off after the murder and changed their name to Cooper. You have to make a few leaps to figure it out (because we don't know how Greatgrandfather Cooper was related to the Blossom who killed him), but assuming those two were brothers, you can then infer that Polly and Jason would be third cousins. This means they have a blood relationship of 0.390625 percent, which I figured out using this website and a chart I made on a notepad.
So it wouldn't have been illegal for them to get married, just weird. What does remain unclear is whether or not Polly knew they were related. It kind of seems like she did? Maybe the finale will reveal all, or maybe not, but either way, bring Joaquin back because he was hot.
Follow Eliza on Twitter.
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