Riverdale: Inside season 2's top-secret new mystery

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Fans of Riverdale know that Archie’s hometown isn’t exactly the safest place on Earth. Season 1 not only saw the murder of Jason Blossom, but also Cliff Blossom’s suicide and the shooting of Fred Andrews (Luke Perry). Needless to say, the crime rate in Riverdale is high — and it ain’t going down in season 2.

Now that Jason’s murder is solved, Riverdale‘s creative team has come up with an entirely new and top-secret mystery for the second season. “The one thing I was nervous about was doing another murder mystery,” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa tells EW, “because it felt like the Jason thing was done so well that I was nervous about doing one that felt like a pale imitation game of the first one. So we started talking about different genres. Horror is something that has come up, but it feels like it’s almost too big for our world.”

GALLERY: Exclusive Photos of the Riverdale Cast During the EW Cover Shoot

Instead viewers should expect a scary suspense story akin to Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer. Teases Aguirre-Sacasa, “One of my favorite movies is Shadow of a Doubt, which is an Alfred Hitchcock movie which has often been described as Our Town with a killer on the loose. I was always obsessed with that idea. This season is a little bit of an homage to that. The big theme is what happens when you’re living with fear day in and day out that something terrible might happen. And how your life changes when you’re walking home from school and you see someone and you cross to the other side of the street. Or when you go to bed, you triple-check your front door to make sure it’s locked.”

It’s a plot that puts Betty (Lili Reinhart) front and center too. “The entire mystery of season 2 is completely under wraps and we haven’t been able to talk about it at all,” says Reinhart. “What we can say is that Betty’s speech in the finale at the jubilee about how the town needs to do better has repercussions.”

And if you liked Dark Betty, you’re gonna loooooove Even Darker Betty! “I would say by episode 4 and 5, Betty is absolutely in the heart of darkness,” Aguirre-Sacasa says. “We’re putting her through the fires like never before. I can’t say too much because there’s a couple of big twists, but Betty is absolutely at the heart of the darkest story we’re telling this season.”

Riverdale returns Wednesday, Oct. 11 at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.