Riverdale Season 2 Premiere Review

BY MARISSA CASTANOS

***MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS***

On May 11, we all sat at the edges of our chairs biting our nails as we watched the last episode of season 1 of Riverdale – or was that just me? It was revealed that Clifford Blossom was involved in a drug business and his beloved son Jason eventually found out and did not want to have any part in the scheme, which led his father to kill his own son in cold blood. F.P. Jughead was taken into police custody, as all the signs pointed to him as being the man who pulled the trigger that ended Jason’s life. Jughead and Betty do all they can to help F.P., and he is eventually cleared of all charges relating to the murder.

We could not imagine Betty or anyone’s life getting any worse, but then she comes to learn that her new love interest, Jughead, was being placed in a foster family and that he would have to transfer to – wait for it – Southside High. In the end, everything works out between the two, and Jughead is given a jacket by the notorious South Side Serpents, as they vow to always have his back.

Then, the episode takes a sharp turn and focuses on Cheryl Blossom, the red lipstick wearing cheerleader of this teen drama. Cheryl finds herself destroyed by the secrets and lies that her father kept about Jason’s murder, and sends a text to Veronica Lodge that she is going to be with Jason now. The group of friends thinks quickly about what this text means, then, the lightbulb goes off. Cheryl is going to Sweetwater River, the last place she saw Jason. As the group arrives, most likely expecting to find Cheryl dead, they look around, screaming out her name – then, they see her. Cheryl is in the middle of Sweetwater River, which has frozen over at the time. It looks as though she is going to come back to the group – when suddenly she falls through the ice.

Betty, Veronica, Jughead and Archie all run to her rescue, hoping that they can get there in time, but the only way to get Cheryl out? They have to break the ice – literally. Archie, star football player turned musician, starts punching at the ice with the most valuable thing he has – his guitar playing hands. Blood is smeared all over the ice when finally it cracks, and they pull Cheryl out of the water and resuscitate her cold body.

They take Cheryl back to her home, which she later burns down, much to Penelope’s dismay. The next morning, we see Archie Andrews and his father Fred sitting at Pop’s having a nice meal, when suddenly – a masked burglar comes in and demands Pop to give him all of his money. Archie walks out of the bathroom to see a gun pointed at Pop’s head when suddenly the gunman turns to Fred, Archie jumps out, and the camera cuts to an outside view of Pop’s right as the gun shoots. The gunman runs out of Pop’s, and the camera cuts back inside to show Archie holding his father, who we find was the victim of this horrific shooting.

The episode cuts out with the last words coming from dear old Jughead Jones, who says that “It was anything but random.” And then? The episode ends, the season ends, our hopes and dreams end as we now have to wait for the new season to come out.
Well, folks, the time is here. The first episode of season 2 aired on October 11, and I, along with 2.34 million viewers, sat watching as the drama already began to unfold on our screens.

The episode starts with an action scene of Archie desperately rushing his father to the hospital, hoping he can make it in time before his father takes his last breath. And of course Archie would not be anything without his – squad so to speak – so of course, they all rush to the hospital to be by his side during this horrific event. The parents also join in on the fun, and who does Alice Cooper automatically assume shot Fred? One of the South Side Serpents – no surprise there.

One thing I found interesting was that Fred’s wallet seemed to be a very important aspect, and Archie freaked out when the wallet was not found in his father’s things. I want to know something – what was in that wallet, and why was it so important?

Archie asks Betty and Jughead to go to Pop’s and see if they can find his father’s beloved wallet, where they find out a bit of interesting information from Pop, a key witness of Fred’s shooting. Pop let’s the two teenagers know that the shooter did not take any money from the register, which means that this was an actual hit and that Jughead was right all along – but isn’t he always? Jughead then reaches out to the South Side Serpents to investigate the shooting, but even the gang is not able to find anything out. Veronica, worried that her mother was behind this entire thing, accused Hermione Lodge of placing the hit on Fred, which she obviously denies.

And then, the moment we all were waiting for – Cheryl’s entrance. Cheryl happens to be my favorite character because even after everything she went through, she is still one of the craziest and powerful characters on the show. Cheryl is following a nurse pushing a hospital bed where her burned up mother lies, and Cheryl tells her friends that the wind blew a candle down, the curtains caught on fire, and her mother got third-degree burns while trying to save her daughter from the flames. Do they believe it? Yes. Do we believe it? Obviously not because we know that Cheryl started that fire.

Cheryl goes into her mother’s hospital room, where she intimidates her mother into keeping the lie that the fire was an accident. Cheryl threatens her mother that if she doesn’t keep the secret, that Cheryl will tell everyone about “what really happened in the barn” with her dad. I don’t know about you, but I am itching to find out what happened in the barn with Clifford Blossom.
One character that finally shows up is Hiram Lodge, Veronica’s criminal of a father. Sitting at a table with Hermione by his side, Veronica walks in and lets her parents know that Fred has survived the shooting, and if we’re honest – they look a bit distressed when finding out this information.

As the show comes to an end, we’re taken to a small town just across Sweetwater River, called Greendale. We see an attractive young man sitting at a piano rehearsing a piece when he looks up at his teacher for approval. His teacher? You guessed it – Ms. Grundy. Grundy walks her student to the door, gives him a kiss goodbye – cringe – and walks back into her room, where she sees a window open and sheet music on the ground. Then, the unthinkable happens – Fred’s shooter kills Ms. Grundy by asphyxiation in her own living room, and the episode comes to a close.

I was left thinking about a lot of things once the credits started rolling. The first and most obvious question, who is the killer? Why was Fred’s wallet so important? Why did Cheryl burn down the house? Was Clifford’s death really a suicide? And most importantly…who would want Fred and Ms. Grundy both dead – What do they know? That’s all I have for this week, stay tuned and leave comments if you think you know the answers to these questions that will keep me up at night.

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