It’s time for Hiram Lodge to leave Riverdale for good

It was clear from the early days of Riverdale that Hiram Lodge was not a nice person. Veronica and Hermione uprooted their lives and moved away from New York after Hiram was arrested. His name was thrown around often as people judged Hiram and Veronica’s connection to him. However, he didn’t make an appearance until the second season.

It became obvious that Hiram was meant to be an antagonist from his first presentation on screen. He would come in and create mayhem amongst the Riverdale residents, adding an intriguing new element to the small town.

Except, that is not exactly what happened. Hiram was engaging enough in the beginning. He was not a good father, so Veronica’s constant struggle of siding with him or against him played a continuous role. He also created consistent drama in Archie’s daily life.

Hiram is not an enemy that was defeated in one season that made an exciting and threatening impression, leaving the series with a villain that the show needed to live up to. However, he also has not had strong or various enough reasons to stick around for as long as he has.

Over time, Hiram’s role has grown increasingly repetitive. It also became more and more noticeable that he is never actually the scariest, intimidating, or most threatening villain in any season he appears. There are always other characters that come off as a more prominent threat than he does.

As the seasons have gone on, it has become more an more clear that Hiram, whether he had a grand scheme or not, was only present on the canvas be an antagonist. He has no true motivation to create Riverdale’s chaos and even less reason to attack high school students as if they have brutally offended or harmed him.

Hiram seems to have continued to exist in Riverdale for the simple reason that the series needed a villain, and he just happened to be there. Even when the series attempted to create a storyline threatening Hiram’s life, it was never treated with any serious or substantial weight.

Riverdale had the chance to move past Hiram with the seven-year time jump. It would have been the perfect opportunity to remove the character from the show and allow Veronica and Archie to move beyond the shadow of her father and his schemes. Unfortunately, seven years later, Hiram is still in Riverdale.

There is no conceivable reason why this man remains in the small town. Veronica graduated and moved away, and Hermione left town as well, leaving Hiram without the two people who were the reason he had joined the canvas in the first place.

Instead of creating fresh storylines and a new exciting villain, Riverdale leans on the old tricks of the unexciting, boring, and frankly confusing Hiram Lodge. What is he still doing in Riverdale?

The time jump explains that Hiram wishes to destroy Riverdale for the sake of SoDale. He’s also bizarrely obsessed with the Riverdale High School football team, believing that a winning team will bring hope to the small-town residents.

Additionally, Veronica and Archie, who should be given a chance to explore storylines outside of their constant battle with Hiram, are drawn right back into the same games, needing to fight against him again.

It’s finally time to remove Hiram Lodge from the equation, especially if he is only meant to be a constant villain without even a possibility of a redemption arc, not that there’s enough emotional investment in his character for anyone to really care or believe in it.

Hiram Lodge has done nothing to help Riverdale – neither the show or the town within it – and instead has had a hand in preventing both from growing into something new and different.