This post contains spoilers for Riverdale.
Check out last week's review here.

Don’t you love the fresh smell of a new whodunit in the morning? A quick catch-up of stuff that will probably matter down the road but we’re not wasting time on in this review: Archie and Ronnie broke up, Penelope is still banging Hal (but signing in under Alice’s name), Archie’s clearly not dead, and Weatherby wants Archie to stay back a year in school. There’s a very clear trend to the above, but we will be having some conversations about Archie Andrews this week. Just not those!

The prodigal son returns to Riverdale, and the whole town’s aflutter. The thing is, the Archie that left isn’t the same one that came back. It’s possible that the change is temporary, but the more likely story is that the writers realized they could have written him off as he was before and it really wouldn’t have mattered one way or another. So, a new Archie had to be born. They could have gone with a cop-out, change overnight kind of situation, so respect to them for going with the gradual change.

Everyone in town wants to know why he’s not just a-ok Archiekins. Meanwhile, the dude’s over here with bear attack scars on his chest. That’s not even considering the serial killer situation, the Hiram situation, or the juvie. Kiddo’s been through the ringer, it’s just been tough to care up until now. The whole “killing his innocence” was a bit much, and his angst will undoubtedly get real old, real quick, but for now we’re here for this weird Taylor Swift “Look What You Made Me Do” angle.

But what’s the rest of Riverdale up to while Archie tries to rediscover his place? SAT prep, weirdly enough. It’s important to show off the real-life side of the town in a show like Riverdale, but it seemed like such a weird time for the big test. It might have been to tie in the urgency of Alice giving away Betty’s college fund, but that would have been pretty screwed up no matter what the timing.

Let’s take a moment to look at the Cooper parents. Hal’s a serial killer. He’s done endlessly unspeakable things, and deserves to be locked away forever. And yet, somehow, Alice is worse. Hal’s a monster, but he knows what he is and makes no excuses for it. Alice threw both of her daughters into a nun-prison that still practices conversion therapy. She signed away her daughter’s college fund to support her psycho cult. Things are so bad at home that Betty has to turn to Hal for someone to talk to. No one else could begin to understand Alice’s awfulness, but it is nice that said awfulness has given us a Hannibal Lecter/Clarice Starling relationship between Hal and his daughter. Weird but delightful should be Riverdale’s tagline.

Hal and Alice might be trash, but that’s why we have characters like FP Jones and Fred Andrews. The Hot Dads of Riverdale were down a man this week (where you at, Tom Keller?), but that didn’t take away from them barging into Hiram Lodge’s office to threaten his life. FP was so proud of his little buddy Fred, and overprotective father Fred Andrews will always be the best Fred Andrews. Here’s hoping we see more of these former best buds teaming up in the future.

Let’s shift over to the Serpents and their darling undercover agent: Fangs Fogerty. Our poor, sweet Fangs. Surprisingly, he doesn’t get killed while going undercover with the Gargoyle Gang. Instead, he successfully helps them unmask the king! The King is Tallboy. Why? Because Riverdale. I don’t really have a better answer for you at this time.

Tallboy confirms that he was the Gargoyle King during several of the season’s sightings of the creature. We could still be looking at two versions of the monster, but after this week we can be pretty sure it ain’t gonna be Tallboy anymore. Fangs has an itchy trigger finger, and Tallboy got twitchy. And this is why we don’t give people like Fangs guns.

That leaves us with the aforementioned whodunit. Gun shot wounds are a theme this week, because someone finally shot Hiram Lodge. Riverdale’s very own crime lord is fine, but he’s going to want some answers when he wakes up and the suspects are endless. He made the mistake of threatening his wife earlier on in the episode, so here’s hoping it’s either her or she hired someone to do it.

Let’s be clear: Hermione is complicit. She’s also implied that she’s either been abused or threatened with abuse in the past, and has been trying to protect her daughter. There was a long time running where she was the only good mom in town, so in this house we love and respect Hermione Lodge while acknowledging her many flaws. If you needed additional reasons to do so, please look no further than FP Jones in a Sheriff uniform.

You undoubtedly have a lot of questions. We all do. With the amount of information we were given in “The Stranger”, it seems impossible to know which way is up on Riverdale right now. Hopefully now you understand why there’s so much that we didn’t go over, that might matter later. With all that said, there’s still one final question: who killed Claudius Blossom?

There’s a lot of evidence to look through, and we still have a lot of season to go before we start getting anything close to real answers. Feel free to hash out your feelings and your theories in the comments below. We’ll be back next week with twenty more questions and possibly a new murder or two.