In the ‘Riverdale’ recap, the mystery behind Jason Blossom’s killer is finally revealed…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The penultimate episode in the first season of ‘Riverdale’ promised a lot of answers, a few shocking moments and most importantly the biggest revelation of all.
Jason Blossom’s killer would be unveiled.
Of course suspicion abounded regarding Jason’s killer and the motives behind his murder, but some of those questions still remain going into the finale.
What we know for certain is that Clifford Blossom — patriarch to the Blossom family empire — put a bullet in his own son’s head before he ordered the Southside Serpents to dump the body days after a search was called off.
The secrets about the Blossom’s go even deeper than a father killing his own son as this family also just so happens to dabble in drugs and even incest as it turns out.
How did we arrive at those revelations not to mention F.P. Jones making a confession that lands him in jail and the fallout once Clifford Blossom is finally exposed.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘Riverdal’ titled ‘Chapter Twelve: Anatomy of a Murder’…
Confessional
Archie and Veronica are ready to help F.P. prove his innocence because after breaking into his trailer the previous night, they know that there was no murder weapon hidden in the back of his closet despite the cops finding one just hours after they left his home. Unfortunately the Scooby Gang can’t find Jughead, who has disappeared to the local train station in an attempt to escape Riverdale and all the ghosts that will haunt him there for years to come.
Sadly, Jughead’s destination of choice is Toledo where his mother and sister currently reside, but he’s quickly rejected when suggesting he go there to stay with the other half of his broken family. By now, Jughead feels completely alone and abandoned but he perks up when Archie and Veronica share the news with him about his father.
Unfortunately when the group tells all of their parents this news, nobody seems all that excited to explain this development to the police. Archie’s mother — who happens to be an attorney — reminds him that any evidence or testimony would be inadmissible because he broke into the trailer without permission. Meanwhile, Hermoine Lodge tells her daughter that freeing F.P. might ultimately implicate Hiram Lodge, which could then tie back to all of her crimes including bribing the mayor to get the drive-in land not to mention paying the Southside Serpents to wreck the place to lower the purchase price.
Still, the kids want to tell the cops to try and do some good but it’s already too late.
At the police station, F.P. Jones cops to Jason’s murder and explains in graphic detail how it all went down.
He explains that a few months back, Jason showed up at the Whyte Wyrm — the bar where the Serpents hang out — and he was asking for help with a getaway car and some cash. F.P. says he gave Jason some money and the car in exchange for acting as a drug mule for the biker gang. It wasn’t until later when F.P. discovered that Jason was a Blossom, which meant he was worth a lot more to them as a hostage than as a drug mule.
So on the morning of July 4 when Jason staged his disappearance, F.P. caught him on the banks of the Sweetwater River and held him captive for ransom in the Whyte Wyrm basement. F.P. never got his chance to get a ransom from Clifford Blossom because Jason tried to escape, which led to the bullet between his eyes that killed him. F.P. stashed the body at the Wyrm for several days until the cops called off the search and then he dumped Jason in the river before he washed up on shore. F.P. then finished the job by torching the getaway card that Jason stashed, which destroyed the drugs inside that could have linked back to the Serpents.
It all fits with the coroner’s report and the time of death so Sheriff Keller has no reason to doubt F.P.’s confession — especially considering he’s speckled a lot of truth amidst a few lies. Amongst those mistruths included that he stole the files from the sheriff’s house, which we already knew was actually Hal Cooper, and obviously that he’s the one who pulled the trigger that killed Jason Blossom.
Still, F.P. is determined to go down for the murder, but why?
Family Ties
A depressed Jughead returns to school the next day despite the reaction he’s sure to receive from a knowing school body aware of the fact that his father confessed to Jason’s murder. After walking into the cafeteria, Jughead makes a beeline towards Cheryl where he issues an apology for what happened to her brother. Cheryl lashes out with a slap to the face and several punches before Jughead is pulled away to the principal’s office for more questioning.
Archie, Betty and Veronica are all upset that no one will believe what they didn’t find in F.P.’s trailer, not to mention how everyone is turning on Jughead because his father is allegedly a murderer.
Later that night, Betty and Alice hear a noise coming from their basement and when the go to investigate — with Ms. Grundy’s gun in hand — they run into Hal rummaging through some files. He confesses to stealing Sheriff Keller’s files, but not because he’s the one who killed Jason but instead due to the investigation that could have linked back to an awful family secret he’s been hiding for years.
Hal tells his family that the story he told them about his great grandfather being murdered by a Blossom was true, but there was more to it. It turns out, his great grandfather was a Blossom and it was his brother who shot him dead as they argued over the family’s growing maple syrup business.
The disgust and shame from the act forced one side of the family to change their last name to Cooper while splitting completely from the Blossoms. In other words, the Coopers are actually Blossoms!
That explains why Hal was so enraged when he found out that Polly was dating Jason because it’s incest and why he was so insistent on his daughter getting an abortion. He didn’t kill Jason but he had good reason to stop his daughter from dating him.
This revelation shocks Betty and Alice, but it also gives them a whole new reason to get Polly out of the Blossom home before anything else happens to her.
When they arrive, Clifford and Penelope already know the secret and don’t seem all that bothered by it. In fact, Penelope suggests that they love the twins on the way even more now because they are purely Blossom children (ewwww, by the way). Hal, Alice and Betty finally convince Polly to leave the Blossom compound and return home with them where she will stay as she awaits giving birth to her twins.
As for Archie and Jughead, they ask his mother Mary to get as much information about F.P.’s confession as possible to figure out just how bad things are going to get for him. Mary doesn’t have much good news but she does reveal that F.P. made one phone call from jail — to Joaquin, the junior Southside Serpent and boyfriend to Kevin Keller. She also suggests that Jughead visit his father because it won’t be long until they are permanently separated by a large piece of plexi-glass.
When Jughead goes to visit F.P., he makes no excuses about his role in Jason’s murder much less defending himself when his son accuses him of pretending to clean up his act only to cover for the crime he committed. F.P. finally lashes out at Jughead and tells him to get out and never come back because he’ll be better off without him in his life.
Jughead leaves but not with the desired effect his father wanted. He’s seen his father lie so many times during his life that he knows exactly when F.P. isn’t telling the truth. Jughead knows his father is hiding something from him and that only makes him want to know that much more.
Insurance Policy
The last avenue to travel down to save F.P. lands the gang at Joaquin’s doorstep to ask him about the phone call he received from jail.
That’s when Joaquin comes clean about his part in the cover up to Jason’s murder.
According to Joaquin, he got a call from F.P. back in July to come to the Wyrm and help them with a clean up job. Very few members were allowed into the basement where the clean up was required so Joaquin knew it was something serious. When he arrived, Joaquin saw Jason Blossom’s dead body on the floor before F.P. ordered him to help stash the body in the freezer before the cleaned up the room. Joaquin never found out for certain if F.P. actually murdered Jason or not but he wasn’t about to ask.
Joaquin tells them there was one more person in the basement that night — a Southside Serpent named Mustang, the same guy who Archie tangled with weeks ago when they showed up at the bar asking questions. When they arrive at Mustang’s hotel room, they find him dead in the bathtub of an apparent overdose. Of course it doesn’t seem like Mustang actually killed himself because the group calls the cops and the police then find a big bag of cash stuffed under the bed.
The bag has the initials ‘H.L.’ on it, which Veronica then blurts out must belong to her father Hiram Lodge, who hired the Southside Serpents to do some work for him a few months ago. Of course, Hermoine is freaking out that her daughter just implicated their entire family, but more importantly the cops still have no reason to suspect anybody but F.P. was involved in Jason’s murder.
Just before leaving town on a bus bound for San Junipero (nice ‘Black Mirror’ reference), Joaquin shares one last piece of information with Kevin. He tells him about the “insurance policy” that F.P. had him hide several weeks ago as a contingency plan if the cops got too close to them during the investigation. According to Joaquin, the phone call from F.P. in jail was instructing him not to do anything with that evidence, which obviously sounded strange considering that’s the whole reason he had it in the first place.
Archie and the gang find the bag stashed outside of town and that’s where they find Jason’s letterman’s jacket. Of course there don’t appear to be any answers with the jacket until Betty does some sleuthing and finds a mini-USB drive hidden inside the lining.
The group plugs in the USB and they all watch in stunned silence — mouths gaped open and eyes shedding tears — as they witness Jason’s murder in horrific detail. Betty closes the computer before saying she has to make a call to warn somebody about the murdered. When the phone on the other end rings, we find Cheryl Blossom picking up with a warning from Betty to get out of the house right now.
Murder Incorporated
Earlier in the episode after Cheryl discovered the truth about the incestuous affair between Jason and Polly, she confronted her mother about the strained relationship with her father and her brother. Remember, Clifford told Cheryl last week that perhaps he should have called on her to eventually run the family business rather than his failed attempts at grooming Jason to be the heir apparent.
Penelope takes Cheryl to the barn outside where she shows her barrels upon barrels of maple syrup inside and says that’s why Jason and Clifford had a falling out.
It doesn’t make much sense until Cheryl gets the call from Betty warning her to get out of the house immediately. Instead of running, Cheryl goes downstairs and confronts her father over his crime.
“You did a bad thing, Daddy… and now everyone knows.”
At the same time this is happening, the Archie gang shows up at the police station to provide them with the evidence that Clifford Blossom murdered his own son. They watch the tape again — this time showing what happened — as Clifford showed up with his son tied to a chair in the basement of the Wyrm. He takes the engagement ring from Jason’s pocket — the family heirloom that was supposed to go to Polly — before pulling out a gun and shooting his son directly between the eyes.
The police rush to Thorn Hill to arrest Clifford Blossom for the murder, but when they arrive, a somber Cheryl and Penelope point to the barn. The cops go inside and find Clifford hanging by a noose in the middle of the room, dead of an apparent suicide. The barrels have also been tipped over but it’s not maple syrup that poured out.
It’s bags upon bags of heroin.
The Blossom family fortune was built on drug money rather than a maple syrup business and that would explain why Jason was so hesitant to get involved.
Clifford’s suicide leaves more questions than answers — most importantly what happened that led to him murdering his own son? And despite finding the real killer, the cops still aren’t going to release F.P. because even though he didn’t pull the trigger, he still helped to cover up the crime.
Finally, Archie tells his mother he’s not moving to Chicago with her as Mary Andrews exits, while Hermoine Lodge tells her daughter some good news for once — Hiram Lodge is being released and will be home soon.
It all leads to the season finale of ‘Riverdale’ next week where Betty warns that something wicked this way comes — maybe a hint about a witchy character named Sabrina joining the cast soon? And the writers have promised another dead body before this season is over — maybe that’s Clifford Blossom, but it could be someone else.
Perhaps a death that will set up the second season of ‘Riverdale’?
SOUNDTRACK
“Breakdown” by Bag Raiders
“You Can Run” by Adam Jones
Tune in for the season finale of ‘Riverdale’ next Thursday night at 9pm ET on the CW.
https://youtu.be/6csDj_hmpmU
