Fans of hit CW series Riverdale settled down to discover exactly who pulled the trigger and killed Jason Blossom in last night’s episode of the series, as more shocking turns and twists smacked viewers right in the gut. Despite a confession from Jughead’s father, Archie and co. realised that there was more to the tale than he was willing to admit.
KJ Apa as Archie in Riverdale
In the end, the group got their hands on a USB stick which had been left in Jason’s varsity jacket, showing Jason’s father, Clifford Blossom as the perpetrator of the crime and the man who had brought his own son’s life to an end.
The friends discovered that JP had confessed to the crime because Clifford had visited him beforehand, threatening the same fate would befall Jughead if he didn’t take falsely admit to the crime. Entangled in the South Side Serpents drama, shady deals and dodgy goings-on all led to Jason being shot clean in the head by a man he thought he could trust.
Speaking to THR about the killer twist, showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa explained: “What we did was I went in with three likely suspects and three reasons why. One was FP Jones, one was Hiram Lodge and one was Clifford Blossom. As we were working on the season, Hal Cooper also became a possible suspect. But then sort of around halfway through the season, when we were thinking about the show and what the show was – and the show is on some level a deconstruction of the Archie myth that everything is safe, that everyone is good, that parents protect their children, that fundamentally the world is a good place – it felt like the ultimate subversion to that, the darkest, most taboo thing we could do, is a parent killing a child.”
He also spoke about how many viewers had believed Cheryl and Jason to be involved with incest, and the decision to flip that on its head and actually have Jason and Polly be the blood relatives, romantically involved.
“It’s such a gothic trope, incest,” he continued. “It’s like Flowers in the Attic or The Fall of the House of Usher, which is really another influence for the Blossoms.”
Looking ahead to the finale, he concluded: “To me, there’s some mysteries still to be solved and unpacked. On some level, certain things the gang will be able to speculate about, surmise and suspect. Ultimately though, what happened in that barn will be knowable. But rather than have Clifford alive and just tell everything, it allows us to play the mystery and add some new mysteries as well.”
So what’s next for the Blossoms? “Cheryl has a shocking story in the finale, probably even darker than Clifford killing Jason,” the showrunner teased. “She’s at her worst place emotionally that she’s ever been. And by the way, she’s already been in a fraught, frayed place. It gets even worse now.”
Riverdale season 1 concludes next Thursday at 9pm on The CW in the US and comes to Netflix in the UK on Friday.
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