Everything You Need to Know Before Watching 'Riverdale' Season 4
Are you ready?
Warning: This post contains spoilers.
For those of you who have been keeping up with Riverdale, the third season’s finale ended with a huge cliffhanger leaving all of us at the edge of our seats. The “Survive the Night” episode finally revealed that the Gargoyle King has been Betty’s (Lili Reinhart) half-brother Chic (Hart Denton) all along. We also find out that Penelope (Nathalie Boltt) killed Betty’s father Hal (Lochlyn Munro), and Alice (Mädchen Amick) has actually been working undercover at the Farm for her long lost son and FBI agent Charles – Betty and Jughead’s (Cole Sprouse) half-brother.
However, the biggest revelation was the flash-forward scene with Archie (KJ Apa), Veronica (Camila Mendes) and Betty burning their clothes while covered in blood in the middle of the woods. They vow to never speak of “this” again and with Jughead nowhere in sight, the episode ends with Archie throwing his best friend’s iconic beanie into the fire.
Before season four premieres on October 9 on The CW and October 10 on Netflix, here’s everything you need to know before the new season of Riverdale airs.
Fred is dead.
Luke Perry, who played Archie’s dad Fred Andrews, passed away on March 4 of this year. The cast and crew were left devasted and had no choice but to remove Fred’s character from the show. Scriptwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told Comic Book:
“When Luke passed, we’d already more or less outlined the last two or three episodes, and we didn’t want to rush that or get it wrong. So we are 100 percent going to deal with it narratively at the beginning of season four, and we want that episode to really honor the character of Fred and honestly, to honor the actor Luke and our friend Luke.”
Season four’s first episode has been given the title “In Memoriam” and is “probably the most important episode of Riverdale,” according to Sacasa.
Archie’s mom will be more involved in the show.
Following the loss of his father, Archie’s mom (Molly Ringwald) will appear in more episodes this season as his main parental figure. KJ Apa told Entertainment Tonight: “We’re definitely gonna obviously have to address it at some point. Whether that’s Molly stepping in as more of an active parent for Archie—again, that depends on the availability of the actors around us. So we’ll do what we can.”
Jughead is going to prep school.
As seen on the latest trailer, Jughead will be attending Riverdale High’s rival school called Stonewall. The cast revealed at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con that he gets “whisked away on a [writing] scholarship” and that it is a very “Gossip Girl, Upper East Side, preppy, pretentious, Richie Rich, silver spoon” school.
The characters will finally get to focus on school.
One thing viewers wanted more of was for the characters to act more like students rather than detectives or speakeasy owners. Sacasa revealed during Comic-Con that this season will focus more on the kids completing their senior year.
There’s going to be a Halloween episode.
Fans have been asking for a Halloween episode ever since the series aired. This season, the writers have finally decided to incorporate one in the fourth episode. According to the cast during their Comic-Con panel, Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) and Toni (Vanessa Morgan) will have a central storyline in the episode and someone is going to die.
