‘Riverdale’: Who Shot Hiram Lodge?

Spoilers for Riverdale “Chapter Forty-Five: The Stranger” past this point.

As always on Riverdale, as one mystery ends, another begins. We finally found out the identity of The Gargoyle King, in the present, at least: he’s Gerald “Tall Boy” Petite (Scott McNeil), the averagely sized man thought killed at the end of Season 2. But just as Tall Boy is accidentally murdered by the South Side Serpents, his boss Hiram Lodge (Mark Consuelos) gets shot and left for dead.

He’s not dead, of course, you can’t keep a good crime boss down. But he is left at the end of the episode seemingly in a coma at the hospital, his assailant unknown.

So let’s break down the clues, shall we? Who shot Hiram Lodge?

Archie Andrews

Veronica (Camila Mendes) immediately accused Archie (KJ Apa) of shooting her father, which both time-wise and intentions-wise makes sense. Archie stalked out of the SATs, punched a mirror, and then Hiram got shot. He denies it, but Veronica remains unconvinced. What with the whole threatening to kill her father thing, his dreams of killing her father, and the fact that he ends the episode happy and drunk boxing in his room, Archie has every reason in the world to shoot Hiram.

Except, you know, he doesn’t have a gun. And he just returned to Riverdale after being cleared of one murder charge, he’s not about to rack up another one. He’s also the easiest suspect to point to, so you can safely scratch him off your list.

Hermione Lodge

Far more suspect is Hiram’s wife, Hermione (Marisol Nichols). Earlier in the episode Hiram proposed an absolute insane candidate for Riverdale’s new sheriff (who also later ended up dead) and not so subtly threatened Hermione not to defy him. Then he ends up shot, in the hospital, and Hermione pulls the trigger on her own insane candidate for sheriff, former murder suspect, ex-con and gang leader FP Jones (Skeet Ulrich). At least we know FP is good, but with one bullet Hermione’s fortunes seem to have turned around significantly.

She also seemed extremely put off by A) being left out of Hiram’s planning, and B) having to put the town under quarantine/accidentally inducing a seizure in their daughter in the midseason finale. I mean, I get it, those are all shootable offenses in most counties.

On the other hand… Actually, there is no other hand. Right now, Hermione is suspect number one.

Mrs. Mulwray

Suspect number two? That would be Mrs. Mulwray, a new character played by Consuelos’s real life wife Kelly Ripa. She’ll debut on next week’s episode, and given she’s playing Hiram’s mistress and only been seen in photos and footage holding a gun, seems like someone we could throw on a list of potential shooters. Also, it would be very Riverdale to introduce something that would usually be a season long mystery and then wrap it up with a character we’ve never met before the next episode.

Tall Boy

I know he was murdered this week and… I want to say… Chopped into tiny pieces and drunk by the Serpents? Because Jughead’s plan to cover up the murder was a party for some reason? But hey, he wasn’t even on my Gargoyle King suspect list, so why not throw him on here, too.

Where to stream Riverdale