Riverdale may only be six episodes into its first season, but it already has fans assessing the murder of golden boy Jason (Trevor Stines) from every possible angle. Did Betty (Lili Reinhart) kill Jason in a dissociative fit? Could Ms. Grundy's (Sarah Habel) abusive ex-husband have something to do with the football player's torture and eventual death? Could Fred (Luke Perry) not be the adoring dad that we've come to love and instead be harboring sociopathic tendencies? (Okay, so that last one is probably not a thing, but hey, it had to be said.) A good murder mystery keeps you on your toes, which is why we're not even close to finding out who really killed Riverdale's beloved Blossom boy. While we were all busy looking for reasons why someone might want Jason dead, a new theory from Reddit suggests that perhaps his death was just a means to an end — and that Veronica's (Camila Mendes) family might be to blame.
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Reddit user McSlever thinks that Riverdale is using classic misdirection in order to mislead us from the truth about what happened to Jason. McSlever notes that a fairly minor plot point — the secret selling of Jughead's (Cole Sprouse) workplace, the drive-in movie theater, to the Lodge's — could actually be a major clue about what's to come on Riverdale. The Redditor's theory? That Veronica's dad Hiram is borrowing a page out of Scooby-Doo, and it led to Jason's death.
Here's what McSlever wrote:
"The classic Scooby Doo set-up is to scare people away from an area, then capitalize on the cheap real-estate opportunities. In our situation, Hiram sets up a grand conspiracy to murder Jason Blossom which is carried out by Jughead’s dad and the Snakes. Jason's death creates order the opportunity to buy the drive-in theatre at a discounted price, following the town's tragedy and fear that a killer is amongst them. I strongly believe that Hiram wanted to be incarcerated so that he remains under the radar, and Hermione can finish his plan. They will use the drugs, or the Coopers as a cover his his death, until it is revealed in the finale that it was Hiram all along, devastating Cheryl and her new relationship with Veronica and setting us up to meet Hiram in season 2."
If this theory does come to fruition, there's already some evidence for it. Jughead has previously referred to the Riverdale gang as "the Scooby gang" — maybe he was referencing the literal Scooby-Doo, rather than making a reference to the Buffy, The Vampire Slayer squad. Scooby-Doo has also joined forces with Josie and the Pussycats in the cartoon series, so maybe McSlever is on the right track when they say Riverdale could be borrowing a trope from the classic cartoon.
If this theory is true, it means that the Lodge family — minus our lovely Ronnie, of course — are totally and completely evil. And not just evil in a "we stole a bunch of money from our rich friends" kind of way — "we murdered our neighbor's kid" sort of evil. Maybe Veronica can go live with Betty?