In the Riverdale recap, Hiram’s plans for Riverdale are finally revealed and a long lost Blossom returns to town to reclaim his heritage…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
For most of season 2 of Riverdale one of the biggest teases has been Hiram Lodge’s true intentions for the south side after he purchased several high profile pieces of land there since the series first started.
As Hiram has gotten closer to Archie week to week, it was only a matter of time before the revelation was made and that finally happened in the latest episode.
And truth be told it was a bit of a let down.
It turns out Hiram wants to build a for-profit prison in Riverdale, which may not make the towns people all that happy but it’s not quite the casino/brothel idea that seemed like a much shadier plan for a crime lord.
This week also kicked off the race for a new mayor in Riverdale with Mayor McCoy stepping down while Clifford Blossom’s final will and testament were finally read with a mystery family member arriving just in time for inheritance.
And finally, Chic Cooper stayed just as creepy as ever but now his sister Betty is figuring out that her newest sibling might be a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of Riverdale titled ‘Chapter Twenty-Eight: There Will Be Blood’…
The Campaign
As Jughead continues to gather dirt on Hiram, the Lodge family patriarch is moving closer and closer to revealing his ultimate plans for Riverdale but first he needs to talk about the power structure in town. With Mayor McCoy out, Hiram now wants to install a new person who will serve the town and ultimately serve his needs as well.
That’s when Hiram comes up with the idea of nominating Fred Andrews to run for the position of Mayor of Riverdale. Little did anyone know, Fred dreamed of being mayor when he was younger and he even created a futuristic portrait of what Riverdale could become one day when he was running for class president back in high school.
Unfortunately, Archie doesn’t like the idea of his dad becoming mayor and then being stuck under the thumb of Hiram Lodge, especially after what happened to Mayor McCoy. To try and convince his father not to run, Archie betrays Hiram’s confidence and gives Jughead something to use for his story.
Archie reveals that Hiram actually owns Pops Chock-Lit-Shoppe after allegedly just offering an investment when Pop was in desperate need of an influx of cash after the Black Hood killer scared away all of his traffic by shooting someone in the front of the restaurant. Jughead follows up with Pop, who confirms the news but then begs him not to reveal that information publicly. Pop says that his mother would be ashamed and upset if she knew that he sold the business and Jughead promises to keep this information to himself.
Meanwhile, Hiram uses his daughter as an extra weapon to try and convince Fred to run as she prints up buttons and t-shirts to enthusiastically suggest that he become the next mayor. None of this sits very well with Archie, who then has Mayor McCoy give him a speech that will hopefully talk him back from the ledge before he accepts Hiram’s offer to put him in office.
Archie’s plan soon backfires when Fred declares he’s going to run and then Pop comes clean to Hiram, which lets him know that somebody betrayed the family by revealing that information to Jughead. Rather than let Archie take the fall, Veronica tells her father that she was the one who told Jughead as a way to take him off the trail of what’s really going on the south side. Hermoine backs her daughter’s play and Hiram comes around as well.
Veronica later confronts Archie and he lashes out about her trying to manipulate him into getting his dad to run for mayor when he doesn’t want his father any deeper in debt to Hiram Lodge. Veronica finally decides that if she’s going to stay in a relationship with Archie she can no longer be used by her family against him. Hermoine agrees and promises that Veronica will not have to manipulate Archie any further for the good of the family business.
Of course, Fred still doesn’t know what Hiram is actually up to but he’s going to find out soon enough…
Twin-Sanity
Penelope Blossom closes her legs long enough this week to meet with her family attorney who informs her and Cheryl that Clifford Blossom had a secret will and testament that will finally reveal who gets his estate. The attorney informs them that there will be a reading of the will along with a large group of people who are expected to be named as part of the inheritance.
Back at the Cooper house, Hal has arrived asking for a quickie divorce from his wife Alice as he’s finally fed up with her. He offers to give her half the profits from the sale of the Riverdale Register if she will sign the divorce papers immediately. Alice wants some time to decide, especially now that she’s distracted after Polly re-emerges with her twin babies to visit the family.
Polly’s return also leads into the will reading because remember all of the Cooper’s also have Lodge blood pumping through their veins.
The last will and testament of Clifford Blossom bequeathed his smaller house to his mother Nana Rose while the larger house Thornhill — the one that burned down — goes to Penelope. The rest of his estate, holdings and money will be split in half — one part goes to Cheryl and Jason (or basically Cheryl) and the other half will be split up amongst anybody with Blossom blood in them. That means Hal, Polly and Betty Cooper are all in for a piece of the pie.
Suddenly, Alice bursts into the room to yell at her soon to be ex-husband as he tried to manipulate her to sign a divorce agreement knowing that he’d soon be enjoying a huge windfall of cash from this inheritance. After that ruckus calms down, Cheryl decides to give a speech but she’s interrupted by a ghost from the past — a man walks into the room who looks just like her father Clifford.
It turns out this is Claudius Blossom — Clifford’s long lost twin brother, who left Riverdale decades ago. It seems Clifford warned his brother away from the family business — with a rifle pointed at him — while explaining the Blossom family curse that one twin always dies and it often times comes at the hand of the other twin brother or sister. At the time, Claudius was being groomed to run the family business but he decides to leave town and join the merchant marines while his brother stayed behind to take the reins for the Blossom’s.
Now with Clifford dead, Claudius has returned to reunite with his family and Penelope begrudgingly offers him a place to stay with them while he’s here.
Unfortunately it appears Claudius has something up his sleeve after Cheryl busts him in a clandestine meeting with her mother. Claudius mentions something about dealing with Nana Rose and then Cheryl — which obviously leads Cheryl to believe that another family member is gunning for her now that she’s in control of half the family fortune.
I’m a Creep
As for the creepy Cooper brother — Betty is convinced more than ever that there’s something off about Chic so she has Kevin begin chatting with him through his webcam service to see if he can fish out some information. Kevin finally gives up after feeling rather bad about lying to Chic over and over again when he seems like a pretty decent person.
Of course, Kevin doesn’t see Chic sitting at home cutting up family pictures so the only people left are Alice and Betty. Chic even manages to creep Polly out so bad that she decides a move across country to San Francisco might be in order as she raises her twin children.
Betty finally decides to take matters into her own hands when Chic suddenly decides that he doesn’t want anything to do with the Blossom family fortune despite the fact that as a Cooper — a direct descendant of the Blossom’s — he would be in line for some of that cash. The only requirement is a blood test.
Betty is convinced that Chic is hiding something so she steals some dental floss from his trashcan to have the DNA tested.
When the results come back, Betty finally confronts her “brother” and declares that this is proof that he’s not who he says he is.
It’s likely that Chic is Alice’s son but Hal Cooper is not his father. It always seemed odd that Hal wanted nothing to do with Chic and it probably stems from the fact that it’s not his kid in the first place. We’ll find out more on this next week.
Get Busy Living
As Jughead continues to dig into Hiram’s business after realizing that he can’t use Pop to expose him, he finally speaks to his father who offers up a suggestion. FP says that he will go on the record about how Hiram hired the Southside Serpents to trash the old drive-in theater so the property value would plummet and he could purchase the land at a huge discount.
Jughead is proud that his father is willing to stand up against Hiram, but he wants another plan of attack. That’s when Jughead gets a call from Smithers — the former Lodge family doorman, who was unceremoniously fired when Hiram returned from prison.
Smithers tells Jughead that he often arranged travel for Hiram to Shankshaw Prison, which is not where he was being held, and he also received several packages and calls from the Warden at that prison as well.
Jughead tries to contact the warden over Shankshaw, but he gets no response. Instead, Jughead pulls in FP to help him because a Serpent brother is currently locked away there and he has all the inside dirt on everything happening at the prison.
His name is War Baby — yes, you read that correct War Baby — and he finally divulges what Hiram Lodge has been planning all along. Jughead tries to quickly write an expose on Hiram Lodge, but Principal Weatherbee won’t allow it to be published.
When Hiram gets word of what’s happening, he decides it’s time to come clean.
He tells Fred and Archie about his plan to open a for-profit private prison on the south side of Riverdale and the housing project he’s been planning is so the guards and employees at the prison will have a nice place to live. Fred erupts that this information was kept from him and he wants to leave — but Archie refuses to go with him.
Archie backs up Hiram Lodge with his plan to open a prison — he believes it will help keep Riverdale safe, especially in the face of Jason Blossom’s murder last year and then the Black Hood killer just recently. Hiram ends up entering into a blood pact with Archie as he officially joins the inner circle of the family.
As for Fred, he’s obviously pissed off about what happened but it sure seems like he’s still interested in running for mayor. If he does, Fred will have some serious competition as it’s revealed that Hermoine Lodge has decided to run as well.
Hermoine gives a speech to announce her candidacy and Jughead has to admit that for today the Lodge family has won. He wasn’t able to expose Hiram before he got a jumpstart on revealing his plans for the south side and if Hermoine wins the election, then he will have unprecedented power over the town.
Riverdale returns with a brand new episode next Wednesday night at 8pm on the CW
https://youtu.be/6QT6vGAOdWM
