Riverdale, Season 1 Episode 13 Review

I’m having a hard time figuring out things to say about last night’s Riverdale finale that won’t tread heavily into spoiler-ific territory. If you’re reading this and you haven’t watched the episode yet - what’s wrong witchu?! Go watch already, it was a great capper to an excellent season of uber-dramatic television.

Now that we know who killed Jason Blossom (the “why” was never terribly important), this episode served as both an ending and a new beginning. Dramatic threads from the season had to be sewn up, and patterns needed to be laid out for new stories to come. The great news on that front is that Riverdale got a full season 2 order from The CW for this coming fall.  This means we’ll finally get to meet Ronnie’s dad and see what all the fuss is about over Hiram Lodge. While indications seem to be the he’s going to be a formidable character, I hope they keep him from being a literal comic-book rich dude supervillain.

I’m also hoping for more of a presence from Kevin Keller. His dad is one of the more level-headed and not-awful parents in town, and they both deserve better storylines than to just be a cop and his sassy gay son who’s BFFs with Veronica Lodge. I know better that to expect the pure sunshine we got from Kevin’s original series written by Dan Parent, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask to make him a more integral part of the gang next season.

I was glad to see that there will still be mysteries to solve next season, and that neither FP Jones nor Jughead seems to be going anywhere anytime soon. I may have also squee’d like a wee little girl when Jug dropped the l-word on Betty. She’s a character who needs more love in her life for sure, what with the crazy family she’s got! 

We also watched Archie really come into his own as a big damn hero last night, in the way that he rushed to Cheryl’s rescue and how he stepped up for his dad. I really hope he doesn’t end up living to regret his actions at Pop’s, but I expect that to be a major part of the next season. I know they’re going to be working to get us all up in our feelings, I just hope it doesn’t come at too high a cost.

Skeet Ulrich and Cole Sprouse ripped my heart out again last night with emotional performances that almost felt like they could have been in a “serious” drama that isn’t quite aimed at teenagers. I would legit love to see what either one of them could do with meatier material of almost any kind. I’m also counting the days until Riverdale starts streaming on Netflix so I can binge the whole season in one go, and I’m dying to see what sorts of extras we might get on the Blu-Ray release. It’ll be the only thing holding me over (besides comics!) until the fall!