‘Riverdale’: Is Jason Blossom Actually Still Alive?

Spoilers for Riverdale “Chapter Fifty-Three: Jawbreaker” past this point.

Here’s a wild Riverdale theory for you: is Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines) still alive? His murder kicked off the events of the show, and set everything into motion… But a short moment on last night’s (April 17) episode may (or may not) indicate the reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated.

All season long, the Town With Pep has been dealing with a cult called The Farm which seems to be somehow reuniting cult members with their deceased loved ones. Alice Cooper (Mädchen Amick) claims to be able to see her deceased son Charles (who has never appeared on the show), and Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) says she’s seen her brother, Jason.

The latter was a major point of contention in the episode, as Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) gave a copy of the footage she got back in Season 1 of Jason being shot and killed by his own father, Cliff Blossom (Barclay Hope), to Cheryl’s girlfriend Toni Topaz (Vanessa Morgan). Toni showed the footage to Cheryl, who promptly noted that it’s easy to fake footage these days. Toni asked Cheryl if she’s hugged the Jason she claims to have seen, and the redhead paused, then ran out of the room.

Later, when confronting Farm leader Edgar Evernever (Chad Michael Murray), Betty got him to say that seeing these “dead” people is what his Farm devotees need to see, essentially a form of cult therapy. Never does Evernever say out loud they’re not real, but that’s certainly the implication; though there’s no explanation of how he’s getting Alice to see Charles, or Cheryl to see Jason.

There’s a pretty elaborate fan theory online about how all of these folks are Chic (Hart Denton), the guy who pretended to be Charles in Season 2, wearing a holographic rig that’s a lot of fun. But what I want to focus on is that exchange between Cheryl and Toni about how footage can be faked. The thing that gets left unsaid there is that beyond the footage of Jason, everyone saw Jason’s dead body in the series premiere, “Chapter One: The River’s Edge.”

Kevin (Casey Cott) and Moose (Cody Kearsley) found Jason’s body while having a tryst in the woods, waterlogged and shot in the head. The next morning the whole town — including Cheryl — was gathered to watch the body be taken out of the river by the cops. And by the end of Season 1, Cliff had confessed to his crimes: he shot Jason, and FP Jones (Skeet Ulrich) and Joaquin DeSantos (Rob Raco) disposed of the body in the river.

That’s a ton of people who not only killed Jason, but saw his deceased corpse in the literal flesh.

…Or at least, that’s what we’ve been told, right? Follow me here for a moment, but what if the footage was, in fact, faked? Essentially we get a double blind from the writers — implying that of course the footage isn’t faked, when it is? What if the bloated body wasn’t Jason, but a lookalike? What if Jason is, in fact, alive? We know he was heading off to The Farm, to be with Betty’s sister Polly (Tiera Skovbye). We know The Farm believes in radical honesty, so would have known he was in danger from his father. Could they have faked his death, replaced his body with another, nearly identical body that was obscured through water damage and a head wound?

The writers of the show have been teasing a shocking finale you won’t see coming; and what would be more shocking than Jason turning up alive?

The counterpoint is that this is a huge stretch based on identical twin bodies — though the show has already pulled a surprise twin thing with another member of the Blossom family — and faked dead bodies — though the show has “killed” people offscreen before, only to bring them back episodes later. It also might upend everything Riverdale is based on: if Jason Blossom isn’t dead, does that erase that turning point for the town? Does it invalidate everything on the show?

Probably not at this point, because we’re far removed from the pristine Americana of Archie Comics. The darkness didn’t start in Riverdale on July 4, 2016; it’s been firmly established at this point that it was always waiting in the background. So bringing Jason back would be a classic soap opera trope, and wouldn’t change the purpose of the show, if that is a route they want to go.

But it’s still a stretch.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW

Where to stream Riverdale