The fourth season of Riverdale will begin with a tribute to Luke Perry, who played Fred Andrews on the show and tragically passed away following a stroke in March this year.
The showrunners couldn’t figure out a way to write in Fred’s death with everything that was happening during the third season, so decided to wait until they could give him the tribute he deserved.
Up until this point, Fred has simply been out of town and Archie’s mum, Mary Andrews, played by Molly Ringwald, came back to Riverdale be with Archie.
Now, showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has revealed the tribute episode will be the show’s “most important” ever.
Taking to Twitter, he shared that the first episode of season four will be called ‘In Memorium’ and will pay tribute to Perry.
Aguirre-Sacasa wrote, “Probably the most important episode of #Riverdale we’ll do this year, if not ever. A tribute to our fallen friend. Thankful for this opportunity to [honour] Luke & Fred.”
The episode will air on Wednesday October 9 in the US.
It’s pretty safe to say that Fred’s death will have a huge affect on Archie’s storyline in the next season.
The storylines for the major characters were teased at the end of season three, but Archie was given the least revealing ending.
Betty and Jughead find out they have a half-brother who works for the FBI and Veronica finds out her imprisoned father has somehow arranged for her mother to be arrested.
Archie, however, is deciding whether to turn his boxing gym into a community centre for homeless youth.
It’s unclear at this stage whether Mary Andrews will stick around and become a main character or whether she’ll continue as a recurring role.
However, Aguirre-Sacasa told TVLine that Molly is welcome whenever she wants to appear on the show.
“[We’ve told her], ‘You’re welcome back anytime, as often as you want and as much as you want.’”
“We actually already had her scheduled to come back to Riverdale to visit Archie and Fred. When the tragedy happened, she said, ‘If you need me to stay, I’ll stay.’ And I said, ‘We’d love you to stay.'”
“We’ve talked about Molly having a bigger presence next year to help her son.”
There’s only a few months until we find out, one thing we do know for sure is that ‘In Memorium’ is going to be a serious tearjerker of an episode!