Riverdale Review: Chapter Thirteen: The Sweet Hereafter (Season 1 Episode 13)
“Chapter Twelve: Anatomy of a Murder” had all of the elements of a great season finale, which meant that Riverdale Season 1 Episode 13, “Chapter Thirteen: The Sweet Hereafter,” had some pretty high expectations to live up to.
The season finale certainly goes all out, giving us plenty of tantalizing new material for Season 2, but there’s so much going on, and the episode ends up feeling a little too stuffed compared to Episode 12, which kept its focus on the Jason Blossom murder mystery.
The biggest lingering question from that episode was why Cliff Blossom murdered his own son, and viewers get the answer in Episode 13: the Blossom family maple syrup business was trafficking heroin. Jason found out. Cliff killed him so he wouldn’t expose their secret.
All of this information is breezed through in the episode’s opening narration, split between Jughead and Alice, so that leaves the rest of the entire episode to focus on other matters.
And there are a whoooole lot of “other matters” happening here:
- Betty and Polly have a secret brother, who Alice gave up for adoption when she was in high school
- Jughead has to go live with a foster family and transfer to South Side High School
- Cheryl tries to commit suicide, but is rescued by Archie and the gang
- Archie and Veronica have sex, even though Archie appears to be having some second thoughts about how he feels about Betty
- Betty and Jughead exchange “I love yous”
- Jughead might be joining the South Side Serpents
- Cheryl burns down her house
- Fred Andrews gets shot
And those are just the biggest of the bombshells.
Like I said, the episode feels just a little overstuffed. Some of the threads in “Chapter Thirteen: The Sweet Hereafter” are clearly just meant to be small teases to whet viewers’ appetites, like the revelation about the secret Cooper son or the Serpents approaching Jughead, but a few of the storylines that needed a little more immediate attention in the finale get lost in the shuffle.
Cheryl’s attempted suicide, in particular, feels pretty glossed over. There’s some build-up to it; she has one or two rough conversations with her unsympathetic mother, and she gives away some of her possessions, hinting that she’s about to do something drastic. But after it happens, there’s no real follow-up.
The sequence itself is tense and very well done, but afterwards, Veronica lets Cheryl warm up at her house and then almost immediately leaves to go to the town’s 75th anniversary jubilee. We don’t see anybody try to comfort Cheryl or talk to her about what she tried to do.
Cheryl isn’t exactly part of the core group, but she’s still had some nice bonding moments with Veronica and even Betty and Polly at different points. With the murder mystery solved, you would think she would maybe open up to one of them, but instead, Veronica leaves her alone and the next time we see Cheryl, she’s burning down her family’s mansion.
Jughead’s new foster home and school transfer also seems like a storyline that could’ve easily been the A-plot of an entire episode. Instead, it’s discussed a little bit, but the transfer happens pretty abruptly and is quickly shoved aside as the gang rushes to help Cheryl.
Surely a Season 2 episode will follow up on what the finale started, but it would have been nice to see Jughead’s first meeting with his foster family or see more of his first day at South Side High.
What the episode dedicates more time to, instead, is that town jubilee, where Archie performs a song he wrote (backed up by Josie and the Pussycats) and Betty gives a speech urging everyone in the town to be better, to rise above everything that’s happened in the past few months.
It’s a great moment for Betty and one that shows how far she’s come since the beginning of the season, when she longed to shed the “girl-next-door” stereotype.
But at the same time, the entire jubilee storyline feels like something that could have happened in any old Riverdale episode. This is what the writers chose to spend a fair amount of time on in the season finale, so you would think it would be bigger than the other big town events from earlier Season 1 episodes.
And then, of course, there’s that cliffhanger with Fred Andrews bleeding on the floor of Pop’s Diner.
It seems highly unlikely Fred will die, but it does seem probable that some part of next season will involve Archie trying to figure out who shot his father.
Unfortunate as it is for Fred, this twist will probably add some much needed oomph to Archie, giving him something that puts his problems more on the same level as his friends’ problems.
Overall, the episode doesn’t exactly feel like the best conclusion for Season 1, but it is a hell of a prelude for Season 2, which means the show’s sophomore season should be able to hit the ground running.
What did you think of the season finale? Share with us in the comments below!
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Riverdale Season 1 will be available to stream on Netflix on May 18. A premiere date for Season 2 has not yet been announced.
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Katie Houlis
Katie is a recent college graduate who spent most of her free time at school binge-watching shows like Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fringe, and Hannibal. She has watched every single episode of Lost at least ten times each (yes, even “Stranger In A Strange Land”). Current favorites include a bunch of comedies, lots of superhero shows, and a few shows with quite a bit of murder in them.