Riverdale EP Teases a Different Kind of Mystery in Season 4

Riverdale fans were met with a pretty big shocker at the end of the Season 3 finale, when a cliffhanger ending seemed to hint at a dire ending for Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse). There's no telling at this point exactly what the truth of that cliffhanger will be, it sounds like the show will provide clues in an interesting way. In a recent interview with TVLine, Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa teased that Jughead's fate will be dealt with in a new way, compared to how the series' previous whodunnits were resolved.

"Throughout the season, we'll be tracking how we get to that night in the woods," Aguirre-Sacasa explained. "It's a different kind of mystery than we've done [before]."

As fans will remember, the finale ended with Archie Andrews (KJ Apa), Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart), and Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) standing in their underwear in the woods. In front of them is a burning pile of clothes, which they add Jughead's iconic beanie to. As it turns out, the behind-the-scenes circumstances of that scene came about in an interesting way.

"They gave [the scene] to us right before we shot it, which is kind of normal." Sprouse told ComicBook.com at San Diego Comic-Con earlier this summer. "You don't want people to know the ending until it's the end of the filming schedule, because it reduces the potential for spoilers. But I think it's interesting, and I think the idea of him burning his beanie is visually stimulating, and a good little hook. I'm excited. I think that they had had that plan for a little bit, and I'm hard-pressed to think that they would ever change the entire narrative of the storyline because someone's cold."

Either way, it sounds like this season's new mystery will allow for more of a focus on Riverdale High's exploits.

"I can't say anything specifically to that," Aguirre-Sacasa said of Jughead's fate shortly after the Season 3 finale. "All I can say is, I guess things look very dire for Jughead in that scene, for sure."

"Next season is the kids' senior year. It's their last year in high school, and we really want to locate their stories in the high school world," Aguirre-Sacasa explained. "We started talking about what the big mystery could be, and we said it would be great if we kind of kept it in the high school kind of world. The other thing that we wanted to do is, this year Archie and Veronica weren't that involved in the Gargoyle King mystery — it was more Betty and Jughead. We loved the core four together in the finale. We wanted to do something that tied them all together for the core mystery and for a big secret, and it felt like having them all around that bonfire, minus Jughead, would be a way to tie them all together so that when we get to the central mystery of what happened that night and what led to the events of burning their clothes, it would be all of our foursome and not the kids split off again."

Riverdale's fourth season will begin Wednesday, October 9th, at 8/7c on The CW.