When the CW first announced that it would be remaking the classic Archie comics as a gritty teen drama, a lot of people were confused as to what that would look like. But the first season of Riverdale delivered a deliciously twisted murder mystery, transforming the lovable sweethearts of the comic books into dark, broody teen detectives. And with Season 2, it looks like the show is going even further into the murder-y direction. The season premiere revealed the new mystery that will plague Riverdale fans, and it's darker than ever. If you thought the first season didn't have enough death, then get ready for Season 2, because it looks like Riverdale is going all Game of Thrones this year.
Spoiler alert: This post is going to talk about details from the Season 2 premiere episode of Riverdale. While the first season centered on one main murder, it appears Season 2 will give fans a whole string of murdered main characters... or at least, seriously harmed ones. The second season fins both Fred Andrews and Penelope Blossom recovering in the hospital — Penelope after being caught in the fire her daughter Cheryl set to burn up their family mansion after finding out her father killed her brother, and Fred after a hooded gunman burst into Pop's Diner and shot him in the Season 1 finale. It appears that both parents will survive their brushes with death, but before the episode can end, we get yet another murder attempt.
The mysterious man in the black hood who shot Archie's dad returned right at the end of Wednesday night's premiere to strike again, this time attacking Archie's former lover Miss Grundy (whose name is actually Jennifer Gibson). In the last scene of the episode, the man sneaks up behind Grundy and strangles her with the cello bow that Archie actually gifted to her when she agreed to leave Riverdale, leaving the former music teacher presumably dead.
So basically, now we've got a serial killer on the loose in Riverdale who has no problem just bursting into diners to shoot people or sneaking into houses to strangle them in the span of a couple days. I think it's pretty safe to say we can expect this hooded man to strike again very soon, and more than just once. More unsettling is that he seems to be targeting the people that Archie cares for, since his two victims so far have been his dad and his former lover. Archie is clearly very shaken up by the unknown shooter, even experiencing a traumatic episode when attempting to identify the man during a police line-up. And now we see that he's planning on just staking out his front door with a baseball bat waiting for the shooter to come back.
There have been a bunch of theories about the killer, but the most prevalent (and the one that seems to make the most sense to me) is that Veronica's father Harim Lodge probably hired him. After all, he is the biggest new addition to the Riverdale cast this season, and we've already seen that he has a penchant for hiring brutes to carry out his evil schemes. Plus, we already know that he has a pretty good reason to want to kill Fred Andrews, since he did find out about his wife's affair with Fred last season (and hired some dudes to try to ruin his construction company in retaliation). But if Harim really is calling the shots, then why target Miss Grundy next? That question still doesn't have a clear answer to me. Maybe this serial killer really is acting alone...
