Riverdale boss on how the show chose its killer

This post discusses plot points from last night’s Riverdale.
Just as Cole Sprouse promised, last night on Riverdale we found out who killed Jason Blossom. A flash drive hidden in a letterman jacket contained footage that outed Jason’s own father, the wig-wearing Clifford Blossom, as the murderer. So, in order to learn more about how this came to be, we sent some questions over to showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. According Aguirre-Sacasa, Clifford was always in the running to be the perpetrator of this evil, but, if he didn’t, one of the town’s other dads would have. Indeed, almost by accident, Riverdale ended up a tale of fathers and sons. You can read our thoughts on the reveal here, and the rest of Aguirre-Sacasa’s answers—including his admission that Jughead will eat a “GINORMOUS burger” next week—below.
The A.V. Club: Did you always know you wanted to make Clifford the killer? What was your plan to misdirect the audience from that?
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: When we pitched the first season to Warner Bros. and The CW, we had three potential killers in mind: F.P. Jones, Hiram Lodge, and Clifford Blossom. And reasons for why each of them would’ve done it. At one point, they were going to all be working together, and it was going to be a little more like The Orient Express. And then, for a few episodes, it was maybe gonna be Hal Cooper. But as we got deeper into writing and filming the season, we discovered that our show was at its most vital when we were subverting the classic archetypes, tropes, and themes set out in the classic Archie comic books. So as we kept thinking about the most shocking, transgressive way in which Jason could have been killed—the ultimate subversion of the safe, wholesome universe presented in the comics—that’s when we started to lean towards Clifford. A father killing his own son in cold blood is nothing if not taboo, and we thought that if we could get Clifford to a place where he might conceivably do that to Jason, and really land the shock of it, that would be a pretty chilling way to wrap up the mystery we’ve been building all season.
AVC: There’s still one more episode left, but do you plan on continuing the Blossom mystery through the second season?