A Blossom Family Secret Is Revealed In Archie #19 -- Will Riverdale Follow Suit?

04/19/2017 04:00 pm EDT

Today's issue of Archie reveals a shocking secret about one of Riverdale's families -- and one that might play into the greater mystery at play on TV's Riverdale.

In the final page of today's issue, after they pepper him with questions about the financial situation, Jason and Cheryl Blossom accidentally confuse their father into admitting that he's not, actually, their father.

The reveal comes in the final panel, and doesn't allow much room for speculation as to just what it might mean for the characters, the series, and the backstory as presented previously.

In "New Riverdale," the Blossoms are a fabulously wealthy family whose beautiful daughter met up with Veronica Lodge at a boarding school to which they had both been sent. More recently, both of them came to Riverdale -- Veronica returning, and the Blossoms moving there and taking on a more ordinary, less opulent lifestyle as their father started hiding their financial assets.

It's that lifestyle downgrade, and the accompanying secrecy, that had Jason and Cheryl asking questions -- but they certainly didn't expect that they found.

With an "if your father was here..." declaration, Mr. Blossom shook Jason and Cheryl's world -- but did he also set the stage for the show's TV counterpart to have a similar reveal?

There are certainly key differences between Riverdale and the Archie Comics. Historically they couldn't be more different in many ways, and while the New Riverdale comics heavily influenced the show, there are certainly elements of the newer books that didn't make the show, too.

(The most commonly-cited example is Chip Zdarsky's decision to depict Jughead as an asexual character, which some fans feel say flies in the face of his current relationship with Betty on Riverdale.)

That said, it's interesting that in the trailer for next week's episode, fans got to see what looked like a room at the Blossom mansion full of wigs.

Upon seeing that, one of the hosts of Archie Digest: A Riverdale Podcast remarked that maybe Clifford Blossom, the family's patriarch, wasn't really a Blossom at all, and the wigs were to hide the fact that he didn't have red hair.

That might line up with a theory ComicBook.com posited back at the beginning of March, when we suggested that Clifford might be the one who murdered Jason Blossom on Riverdale, in part because Jason wasn't his real son. We speculated then that it might turn out to be F.P. Jones, who had at that point just turned up in possession of Jason's letterman jacket, but the core of it -- that Clifford isn't Jason (and by extension Cheryl)'s father -- is something that could work even if it were Clifford, rather than Jason and Cheryl, around whom the secrets swirled.

Comic book fans won't have long to process this latest twist, as there's another mystery coming, and one with even higher stakes: In the upcoming "On the Edge" storyline, starting in next month's Archie #20 and wrapping up in July's #22, a beloved Riverdale resident will die.

You can get Archie #19 at your local comic shop, or order a digital copy.

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