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Luke Perry
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On March 4, actor Luke Perry suddenly passed away after suffering a stroke the week before. At the time, he had just finished shooting the nineteenth episode of Riverdale‘s third season, which aired tonight on The CW. Though it isn’t the last time we’ll see Perry onscreen (he’ll appear in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), this is the final time we’ll see Perry on Riverdale as Archie’s dad Fred Andrews. Nobody could have predicted this would be the last time we would see the Andrews family patriarch, so it isn’t a proper goodbye; but it is a sweet, short and poignant reminder about what Perry brought to the show.
He actually appears earlier in the hour in a scene supporting Archie (KJ Apa) as Arch waits to find out the fate of a boxer he may or may not have accidentally killed in the ring on the previous episode. The second (and final) scene Perry appears in takes place about four minutes into the episode, and picks up where the other one left off.
“Son,” Fred says as Archie enters the Andrews family kitchen. “From everything you’ve said, it’s clear that Randy died of those drugs. An autopsy will support that. You’re innocent.”
“I’m not, Dad!” Archie yells back. “I knew! I knew Randy was juicing. I could have stopped the fight, but I didn’t want to forfeit.”
A quick side-bar here… “Randy” is the boxer, and “juicing” refers to taking a candy drug called Fizzle Rocks that has been tainted and is now called “G” and diluting it in water so it becomes some sort of Kool-Aid/Gatorade type thing that turns people into super-strong, rabid rage monsters. Anyway.
“If I had…” Archie continues. “I’m never stepping into that ring ever again. I can’t.”
Fred looks sadly downwards as Archie exits, then up and off as if something has just occurred to him… And that’s it, that’s the whole thing.
The roughest part about watching this scene is that it’s clear there was something more planned there, and Fred was an important part of at least one of the season’s ongoing mysteries. As is, it looks like Molly Ringwald, who plays Fred’s separated wife Mary Andrews, will be joining the last few episodes to take the place Fred would have in the plot.
That last glance though, that thought, whatever it was, will never be continued.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
