How many horrible things can happen in Riverdale? It turns out that the darkness touched the previous generation, too, and season 3 will explore that.
Riverdale already handled a musical episode last season, when most TV shows don’t dare try it until they’re several seasons in. So how will the show top itself in season 3?
In perfectly Riverdale fashion, the answer is that the actors who play the main characters will get an episode where they play the characters’ parents in their own high school days. TheWrap quoted Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa as saying that KJ Apa will play Fred Andrews, Camila Mendes will play Hermione Lodge, and Cole Sprouse will be FP Jones. Oddly enough, no mention of Lili Reinhart as a young Alice Cooper was made, but it seems pretty much inevitable, given the well-documented FP and Alice connection. A young Penelope Blossom as played by Madelaine Petsch also seems likely.
Aguirre-Sacasa also teased “a really, really dark secret in Riverdale that the parents have been keeping since they were in high school” coming to light in this episode, “The Midnight Club.” There are a few options here. The first is more on Alice’s time in the Serpents and her relationship with FP leading to some shenanigans. The second is that the young characters totally murdered somebody and have kept it quiet since then in some sort of nod to I Know What You Did Last Summer. The third is that Fred and Hermione might have had a child of their own pre-Hermione marrying Hiram.
As Riverdale goes, these three ideas could definitely line up with the teases we got from San Diego Comic-Con, which included lots of discussion about the town’s past.
But we’re also sure that paying attention to The Breakfast Club, which Aguirre-Sacasa named as a strong influence for this episode, might give some more hints. Fred, FP, Alice, and Hermione (with the possibility of Penelope in there as well) do come from pretty different backgrounds, and the main characters do end up getting in trouble to kick off the whole movie.
Aguirre-Sacasa said that this episode is the fourth next season. Here’s hoping the first three episodes shed some light on what sort of story to expect from “The Midnight Club.”