The season-long whodunit murder mystery is finally solved in this week’s episode of Riverdale but as many questions as it answered, it opened up a whole maple syrup keg’s worth of new ones. Many things added together to culminate in Jason’s death but this week we find out who pulled the trigger. The gang is determined to prove F.P. is being framed there is even more in play than they could have imagined. Betty and Cheryl discover a secret about their families’ pasts that shakes all of them to the core. “Chapter Twelve: Anatomy of a Murder” was written by Michael Grassi and directed by Rob Seidenglanz. Here’s what happened in the penultimate episode of the season.
THE BIG REVEAL | After F.P. (guest star Skeet Ulrich) is taken into custody, Jughead (Cole Sprouse) tries to leave town and stay with his mom and sister but for some reason she tells him not to. He plans to leave town anyway but luckily Veronica (Camila Mendes) figures out where he would hide to wait for the bus and she, Betty (Lili Reinhart), and Archie (K.J. Apa) go to him and tell him about the gun being planted there to frame his dad. They rush to bring that information to the Sheriff (guest star Martin Cummins) but he has just finished interrogating F. P. who confessed to the whole thing, including stealing the Sheriff’s evidence board which we as an audience know for a fact he didn’t do. Jughead tries to talk to his dad who maintains his story but Jughead knows when his father is lying and is confident he isn’t telling the whole story. They enlist Joaquin (guest star Rob Raco) who tells them that he helped F.P. clean up Jason’s dead body but he didn’t actually see F.P. pull the trigger. He points them to another serpent but when the gang gets there, the serpent has overdosed and is dead in a bathtub. The police arrive and find a bag of money with Hermione’s (Marisol Nichols) initials on it but Veronica convinces them they actually stand for Hiram Lodge not Hermione. Joaquin gives Kevin (Casey Cott) one last piece of information before leaving town and it leads them to Jason’s varsity jacket that F.P. had hidden. Hidden in the lining they find a flashdrive containing the security footage of the murder. It shows Jason being tied up in the basement and then Clifford Blossom (guest star Barclay Hope) walks in and shoots his son in the head. Betty immediately calls Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) to tell her to get out of the house and to safety and then they give the drive to Alice (Mädchen Amick) who brings it to the sheriff. Instead of leaving, Cheryl goes downstairs to confront her father directly, in front of her mother. When the police arrive, the Blossom women point them to the barn where they find Clifford having hung himself from the rafters with overturned maple syrup barrels filled with drugs at his feet.
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ACCIDENTAL INCEST | In the middle of all the accusations and case-building, Betty and Alice are awoken in the middle of the night to find Hal (Lochlyn Munro) breaking into the house. They confront him and he reveals that he was the one who stole Sheriff Keller’s evidence wall but it wasn’t because he was guilty. He was trying to keep any attention away from Polly (guest star Tiera Skovbye), not just because of her secret pregnancy, but because of a different family secret he had been trying to keep buried. The great feud between the Blossoms and the Coopers may have started with a murder, but it wasn’t between two families. It was brother killing brother leading to the murdered brother’s line taking on a new name. The Coopers and the Blossoms bloodlines are one and the same, making Jason and Polly blood relatives and their unborn twins the product of incest. Because that wasn’t creepy and skin-crawly enough, the Blossom parents are completely aware of this fact and don’t seem too perturbed about it. In fact, the more Blossom blood running through their veins, the better. The Coopers get Polly out of the Blossom house and back home where she tries to wrap her mind around the whole thing.
OTHER THOUGHTS:
• My entire body tried to curl up inside itself and simultaneous run far, far away when Mrs. Blossom said, “Nothing could be more purely Blossom than those babies.”
• To think, Betty occasionally losing her chapstick to the lining of her jacket lead to the solving of Jason’s murder.
• Sadly, Molly Ringwald must leave us as Mrs. Cooper returns to Chicago at the end of the episode.
So what did you think? Were your theories about who killed Jason correct? If so, what tipped you off? If not, who did you think it was going to be? What’s next for the Riverdale crew heading into the season finale? Let us know your theories in the comments below!
Riverdale airs Thursdays at 9pm on The CW.