Warning: this story contains major spoilers from Thursday’s episode of Riverdale, “Chapter Twelve: Anatomy of a Murder.” If you haven’t watched the episode, turn back now! You have been sufficiently warned …
All season long we’ve been wondering about who killed Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines) on Riverdale. Well, the killer’s identity has been revealed and it’s none other than his own father!
That’s right. The wig-wearing, creepy fake ginger Clifford Blossom (Barclay Hope) killed his own son. After Jughead’s (Cole Sprouse) father FP (Skeet Ulrich) was arrested for the murder (and he even made a fake confession), Betty (Lili Reinhart) refused to accept her boyfriend’s father was the killer. When Archie (KJ Apa) and the gang ended up finding a USB drive in Jason’s varsity jacket pocket, they discovered that it contained a recording of Clifford shooting and killing his own son in the basement of a Serpent bar.
The kids immediately warned Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) to get out of her house, but she confronted her father instead. When the cops arrived to arrest Clifford, they found him hanging in the barn, dead of an apparent suicide. But did he really kill himself, or did Cheryl and her mother Penelope (Nathalie Boltt) take justice into their own hands and kill the man who destroyed their family? I’m actually kind of rooting for the latter (never underestimate a Blossom). Is that weird? I don’t even care, I’m all for the Blossom women getting their revenge.
But why would a father kill his own son? One theory that the Coopers uncovered in the game-changing episode is that Clifford was trying to hide an incestuous secret from ruining his family’s reputation. But we’re not talking about twin-cest between Cheryl and Jason. Oh no, it turns out that the Coopers are actually Blossoms! Twist! Apparently after Great Grandpa Blossom murdered Great Grandpa Cooper (who was actually a Blossom at the time), the Cooper side changed their name to distance themselves from the rest of the Blossoms.
So if you’re keeping score at home, that means Polly (Tiera Skovye) is a Blossom, making her related to her fiancé Jason Blossom (as in, third cousins). Which then means that their unborn baby is a product of accidental incest. Whoa! Hal confessed the ugly truth to Betty and Alice after they caught him trying to destroy official evidence. If he would go that far to obstruct a murder investigation to hide Polly’s incest, then how far would the Blossoms go to protect their and Jason’s reputation?
Well, it turns out Clifford would go all the way to murdering his own son. But was that all his motive was, or was something even darker going on between the Blossom men? The crazy thing is, we might not even find out, because both are dead now. We did get a clue, though. The police, upon finding Clifford’s body swinging from the rafters of his maple syrup barn, found some barrels of syrup spilled onto the ground, revealing a ton of drugs hidden inside. Another twist! The Blossoms’ maple syrup “dynasty” is actually just a drug front. Out of all the twists revealed in the penultimate episode, I honestly did not see that one coming.
Did Jason discover this dark secret about the family business and get so disgusted he tried to run away? Maybe that’s the real reason he wanted to leave town with Polly, to get away from his drug-dealing family. Or did he want to take things one step further and go to the police, exposing his father’s illegal secrets?
However, just because Clifford has been revealed as the actual killer, that doesn’t mean FP gets to walk free. Turns out he still did some pretty illegal things like kidnapping Jason in order to try and ransom him for money once he found out the kid who was running drugs for him for cash was a Blossom and had rich parents. He kept Jason tied up in a basement (but didn’t shoot him!). He did, however, clean up the dead body, stored him in a freezer for a week and dumped him in Sweetwater river. FP may not be a killer, but unfortunately for Jughead, he’s not leaving jail anytime soon.
As much as I hate seeing Jughead suffer any more (how heartbreaking was it to see his face as his own mother told him not to come stay with her?!), Sprouse can handle the dark, emotionally devastating work of being abandoned by his mother and father. Sure, FP only did all that to protect Jughead from Clifford (apparently Clifford threatened Jughead’s life), but essentially losing both his parents is going to make for an even richer Jughead storyline moving forward.
No matter if you saw the killer reveal coming or not, the way that Riverdale tied up at least that particular dangling thread was the right call. Showing the murder play out on actual video footage gives a definitive answer as to who killed Jason. You can’t argue with proof. That footage didn’t answer every question (it only answered the who, not the why of it all) but it gave satisfying payoff to the series’ big mystery while opening the door to a new mystery.
Plus, getting to watch all the kids react to seeing the murder play out in front of their own eyes was a brilliant move, showing how that revelation would affect each and every one of them. I had to watch that scene multiple times to get the full effect of each character’s reaction, and every single actor played the multitude of emotions masterfully. What I’m most interested in seeing moving forward, however, is Cheryl’s reaction. All we’ve seen so far is her in shock, coldly accusing her father and pointing the police to his dead body. When the weight and the reality of the situation finally hits her, there’s no telling what the already fragile girl will do.
What did you think of Riverdale‘s killer reveal? Did you see that coming, or was your prediction totally off? And where do you think this leaves us going into the season one finale? How many more secrets can Archie and the gang uncover in the formerly quiet town now known for murder, drug dealing and suicide? Tweet me your thoughts, reactions and predictions at @SydneyBucksbaum!
Images: The CW
