Jason Blossom's Death

Jason Blossom's Death is an event that took place prior to the start of Season 1, and it is the overarching theme of the season.

Season One
As the original story went, Just after dawn, on the 4th of July, Jason Blossom and his twin sister Cheryl drove out to Sweetwater River for an early morning boat ride. However, the trip ended disastrously, with Jason supposedly drowning as he attempted to retrieve Cheryl's glove that had fallen into the water. It wasn't until weeks later that Jason's body turned up on the shore of Sweetwater, with a gun shot in his head.

Following Jason's autopsy, the local corner discovered that he was subjected to animal scavenging, ligature marks, and signs of him being frozen. It was also revealed that despite popular belief, Jason died on July 11th, not July 4th.

Upon Cheryl's arrest, she admitted to lying about the events that transpired on July 4th. Jason wanted to leave Riverdale for good, so Cheryl helped him fake his own death to ensure that nobody would come looking for him. The part of the story that Cheryl told about Jason falling in the river, and drowning wasn't true. Jason never fell into the water, in fact, they both made it to the other side perfectly dry, but that was the last time Cheryl saw him, on the other side of Greendale, where they parted ways. He was suppose to contact her when he made it to a safe place, but he never did. Cheryl had no idea what happened to him after that, or how he ended up dead but she did hear a mysterious gunshot that day.

In effort to protect his family, Hal Cooper broke into Sheriff Keller's home, and stole all the evidence in the Jason Blossom murder case, ranging from the documented files, background checks, and the video and audio tapes of police interviews.

According to Polly Cooper, the reason or at least one of the reasons for Jason Blossom wanting to fake his own death was so that he could run away with her. They had planned to do so on July 4th, after learning that Polly was pregnant with his child. They were going to meet on the other side of Sweetwater River but that never happened. Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones discovered Jason's getaway car on a highway off route 40, inside the vehicle, they found Jason's belongings, such as his varsity jacket and copious amounts of drugs. However, by the time the police gothere, the vehicle had been set on fire.

Jughead Jones was taken into custody and interrogated down at the Sheriff Station by Sheriff Keller, who learned that Jughead had a long history of being bullied by the football team, which would've likely included Jason. Sheriff Keller suspected Jughead was angry after being picked on for such a long period of time by a privileged rich boy, while he was a poor kid from the wrong side of town with a dead beat dad. This would give Jughead motive to kill Jason. However, he was later released after Fred Andrews claimed that Jughead was working for him the day Jason was murdered. Notably, the police might have taken the wrong Jones into custody, as FP was in possession of Jason's varsity jacket, which was previously seen in Jason's car before it went up in flames.

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