Riverdale: Who Killed Jason Blossom? (Updated after The Outsiders)

After taking a hiatus for a few weeks, Riverdale is finally back, and it brought a whole heap of new drama along with it.

The family drama surrounding Polly Cooper played a big role in tonight’s episode, as well as the business dealings of Fred Andrews’ construction company. While one might assume those plots to be unrelated, they both tie back to Jason’s murder in one way or another – meaning we have a slew of evidence to further implicate our most recent set of suspects.

Click through to the next slide as we examine the possible culprits of Jason Blossom’s murder. Did your theory make the list, or is there one we missed? Let us know in the comments.

Hal Cooper

Hal’s storyline took perhaps the darkest turn within tonight’s episode, catapulting him into possibly having an integral part in Jason’s murder.

There is, of course, the nature of the ‘appointment’ he apparently made for Polly. When confronted by Alice about him having asked Polly to have an abortion (something he apparently made Alice do as well earlier in their relationship, possibly while the pair were in high school), Hal seemed set in his beliefs that it was the right thing to do. According to him, the Blossom family has absolutely ruined the Cooper family’s lives, and he will not allow Polly’s baby to live in their household due to its Blossom DNA.

It’s very possible that he applied that philosophy to Jason upon learning of Polly’s pregnancy, wanting to kill the teen instead of allowing him to be welcomed into their family. Hal has certainly been outspoken about the Cooper/Blossom rivalry, and it appears to still motivate him deeply. While there are certainly other residents of Riverdale more intricately tied to the world of Jason’s murder, he’s definitely suspicious enough to still be keeping an eye on.

Alice Cooper

While Alice showed more of her vulnerable side in tonight’s episode, she still remains under suspicion for one major reason – her telling Hal that he knows what she’s capable of.

During this scene, Hal said that she would do something drastic if Hal didn’t leave their house. The extent of that is unclear, but it certainly sounds shady.

It seems that at the end of the day, Alice’s goal is to protect her daughters, and she won’t let anyone stand in the way of her doing so. This has been seen throughout the season, especially when Alice almost ruined Archie and Ms. Grundy’s lives over Archie hanging out with Betty. While that altercation never got violent, it wouldn’t be surprising if Alice’s motivations would lead her to that place. As we’ve seen already, she definitely isn’t fond of the Blossom family either, and could have possibly had a hand in Jason’s murder after realizing that Polly was pregnant with his baby.

Hiram Lodge

Tonight’s episode of Riverdale further illustrated what exactly Hiram is capable of – in more ways than one. Archie and the gang searched for the vandals who destroyed Fred’s construction equipment and injured Moose, they believed the vandals to be members of the Southside Serpents, with no luck.

Towards the end of the episode, FP revealed that the vandals weren’t actually members of the Serpents, but former convicts from Vancouver – a place that Hiram does business in. FP suggested that Hiram ordered the hit because he had heard about Fred and Hermione’s relationship and wanted to do something to stop it.

Does this indicate that he killed Jason? Not necessarily, but the pieces of suspicion towards Hiram are still very much at play. It seems like Hiram uses his money as leverage in as many situations as possible, and only resorted to a physical attack when the situation became more personal. If he did order Jason’s murder (presumably from jail), it had to have been because of some sort of intimate connection at play, as opposed to his general feud with the Blossom family.

Could there be an intimate connection that resorted to him killing Jason? Possibly, but he’s currently not involved with our main theory on the subject. Which brings us to…

Clifford Blossom

We suggested a rather outlandish theory a few weeks ago, just before Riverdale went on hiatus. If you’re unfamiliar, the short version is that Cheryl and Jason aren’t actually Clifford’s children, but the product of an affair between Penelope Blossom and FP Jones. While not a lot of ‘The Outsiders’ helped support this theory, nothing really denied it either.

The main relevance Clifford had in tonight’s episode was during his confrontation with Fred Andrews. He explained that he had hired the construction workers away from Fred’s company because the land they were building on originally belonged to the Blossom family, and he wanted to maintain the family’s legacy. If you apply that same philosophy to Jason’s murder, it fits surprisingly well.

If Jason was indeed not his child – meaning he would not carry on the Blossom bloodline and legacy – Clifford would’ve been much more motivated to end the teen’s life.

Clifford could have very easily killed Jason, because he was angry that Jason was going to make off with a Cooper girl and that a Cooper would eventually inherit most of his family money. This was apparent at the end of tonight’s episode, as Clifford frankly looked rather unhappy as he escorted Polly into the Blossom mansion.

On one hand, he could be rather unhappy that Polly will be enjoying his family’s riches. But on the other hand, Polly moving in with the Cooper family does leave the girl right under Clifford’s thumb, which could lead to a potentially hairy situation as the first season goes on.

FP Jones

FP, of course, is tied into our afformentioned Clifford theory, as he would be the real father of both Jason and Cheryl. Initially, we believed that FP was being set up as a sort of scapegoat for Clifford, which would explain Jason’s letterman jacket hanging in FP’s closet.

But given the events of tonight’s episode, it’s not unlikely that FP could be implicated in Jason’s murder in his own way – regardless of whether or not he’s really the teen’s father.

When directly asked about it by Jughead, FP laughed it off, and asked if his son thought he was really capable of committing murder. Which would pass as some version of an alibi, if not for the cryptic conversation he had soon after with Joaquin. FP showed Joaquin the location of his stash of money – presumably for the Serpents to use. And when Joaquin expressed hesitation about faking his relationship with Kevin Keller, FP pointed out that all of the Serpents “have a part to play.”

…In what? It’s not exactly clear, but perhaps the biggest assumption is that he’s referencing Jason’s murder, and the subsequent cover-up. This episode indicated that FP has a pretty high standing within the Serpents, meaning that he easily could have led the gang to kill Jason for a myriad of reasons.