These days, savvy TV viewers know they have to approach any new show with their eyes wide open, searching for clues and trying to anticipate twists before they occur. What happened to Jason on Riverdale? It's just the newest in a long line of questions that stretches all the way back to "Who shot J.R.?" 2016 brought us plenty of compelling mysteries on shows like Mr. Robot, Westworld, and The OA. But The CW wasted no time bringing us our first TV mystery of 2017 that has already been prompting a wave of fan theories regarding who killed Jason Blossom after only one episode of the new series. Unfortunately, a lot of those theories will have to be revised, since this Thursday's second episode, "Chapter Two: A Touch Of Evil," threw a huge curveball into the case.
The twist at the end of the premiere was that, when Jason's body finally washed ashore on the banks of the river months after his disappearance, it turned out that he hadn't drowned after all like his twin Cheryl had said. Rather, he had been murdered; shot in the head. And if that twist wasn't twisty enough for you, this week we learned that he hadn't died on the Fourth of July like everyone believed. After the autopsy had been conducted, it was revealed that the popular quarterback had actually been killed one week later.
This revelation brings up all sorts of questions… the most obvious being, where had Jason been between the time he disappeared on the Fourth and when he was killed seven days later? Did Cheryl know the truth, or did she truly believe her twin was dead on the Fourth, and the fact that he lived for another week come as a shock to her? If Jason wasn't killed on the Fourth, then what was up with that gunshot that Archie and Miss Grundy heard during their festive picnic makeout sesh? And of course, who actually pulled the trigger?
The fact that Jason didn't die when we previously thought he did opens up the list of suspects to… pretty much everyone. Even people who were otherwise occupied on the Fourth could now be the killer, since that's not when Jason was actually murdered — like Miss Grundy (could she have been covering up an affair with another underage student?) or even Archie himself (that would be the ultimate twist).
We're only two episodes into the season and we have no idea how many more twists may be coming our way. But if I were a betting man, here's the scenario I would put my money on, given all the evidence we have at our disposal so far: I think that Jason wasn't the sociopathic heartbreaker we've been led to believe he was. I think he and Polly were genuinely in love, and that they decided to run away together — so Jason planned to fake his own death on the Fourth of July by falling into the river in full view of his sister. But when someone found out the truth, they actually killed Jason in a rage, this time for good. And that someone would be either Polly's unhinged mother Alice Cooper (who we already know harbors a grudge against the Blossom boy), or Cheryl herself (who killed her twin in the Afterlife With Archie comics created by Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa).
Of course, there are a lot of dangling plot threads that would need to be cleared up — like that pesky gunshot heard on the Fourth. (Maybe it's a red herring and Archie was right: it really was just a firecracker.) But even if this exact scenario doesn't pan out, it seems almost a given that Betty's conspicuously absent sister Polly is involved in some way. It's the rule of Chekhov's Gun: you don't introduce a mysterious and unseen sibling unless that sibling is going to come into play in a major way somewhere down the line.
I'm sure there are plenty more twists to come in the mystery of Jason Blossom's death. But hopefully Riverdale doesn't keep us waiting too long to give us some concrete answers.
