Gone But Not Forgotten (Or Were They?): Ranking Riverdale's Biggest Deaths by Shock and Story Worth
Death in Riverdale is a complicated business. Sometimes a character dies and it reshapes the entire show. Sometimes a character dies and is back within two episodes because the writers changed their minds. And sometimes a character dies in a way so spectacularly unhinged that the only appropriate response is to screenshot it, caption it, and post it immediately.
This is a ranking of the deaths that actually mattered — either because they genuinely shocked us, because the story needed them, or because they achieved a kind of legendary meme status that transcends the show itself. We're judging each one on three criteria: Shock Value (how unexpected was it on a scale of 1–10), Plot Necessity (did the story actually require this sacrifice), and Fan Fallout (how hard did the internet react). Let's get into it.
Jason Blossom — The Death That Started Everything
Shock Value: 6/10 | Plot Necessity: 10/10 | Fan Fallout: High
Technically, Jason was already dead before the show began — his body in Sweetwater River is the inciting incident of the entire series. But the revelation of his murder, and who pulled the trigger, hit with genuine force. Clifford Blossom killing his own son over a drug empire secret was exactly the kind of small-town horror Riverdale was built to deliver.
Jason's death scores a perfect 10 on plot necessity because without it, there is no show. It's the engine. The shock value is slightly diminished because we knew from frame one that he was dead — the mystery was always the how, not the if. Still, when the truth landed, it landed hard. No memes, really. Just a lot of fans sitting quietly in the dark reconsidering their relationship with their own fathers.
Fred Andrews — A Real-Life Farewell That Hit Differently
Shock Value: 8/10 | Plot Necessity: 7/10 | Fan Fallout: Enormous
When Luke Perry passed away in 2019, Riverdale faced an impossible task: writing out Fred Andrews in a way that honored both the character and the actor. The Season 4 premiere handled it with more grace than anyone had a right to expect. Fred died offscreen in a hit-and-run, and the episode became a tribute to Perry as much as to the character he played.
The shock value here is complicated — audiences knew a death was coming given the real-world circumstances, but the way the show handled it, with Archie driving his dad's truck home and the entire town of Riverdale showing up to say goodbye, was genuinely moving. It's one of the rare Riverdale moments that earned its emotion honestly. Fan fallout was massive and overwhelmingly respectful. The internet, for once, just felt sad.
Jughead Jones (Briefly) — The Death That Fooled Nobody and Everybody
Shock Value: 9/10 | Plot Necessity: 3/10 | Fan Fallout: Chaotic
Season 4 spent a significant stretch of episodes convincing viewers that Jughead was dead. It was a bold swing. The show leaned into it hard — funeral, grieving Betty, the works. And then, of course, he wasn't dead. It was a plot to expose a group of privileged Stonewall Prep students, because Riverdale.
The initial shock value was genuinely high. Cole Sprouse is the show's co-lead and killing him would have been a seismic creative decision. The problem is that the payoff — the reveal that it was staged — retroactively deflated all that tension. It gets a 3 on plot necessity because the same story could have been told without the fake-out, and the fake-out trained audiences to stop trusting the show's emotional stakes. Fan fallout was chaotic in the best and worst sense: incredible memes during the fake-death period, followed by mild collective exhaustion when the truth emerged.
Midge Klump — The Murder That Delivered the Most Disturbing Image
Shock Value: 9/10 | Plot Necessity: 6/10 | Fan Fallout: Genuinely Disturbed
Midge's death at the hands of the Black Hood during the school musical — pinned to the stage backdrop like something out of a slasher film — is one of the most visually striking moments in the show's entire run. It was brutal, it was theatrical, and it arrived in the middle of a Carrie musical performance, which is either inspired or deeply irresponsible depending on your perspective.
Plot necessity is moderate here. Midge's death served primarily to raise the stakes of the Black Hood storyline and give Kevin Keller some actual screen time and grief to work with. It didn't fundamentally change the show's direction. But as a pure shock moment, it's elite Riverdale — the kind of scene that made people stop scrolling and actually pay attention. The internet screenshot that stage image approximately ten thousand times.
Cheryl Blossom's Ongoing Relationship With Death
Shock Value: 7/10 (first time) / 2/10 (subsequent times) | Plot Necessity: Variable | Fan Fallout: Devoted
Cheryl has technically died, nearly died, or been spiritually compromised so many times that her mortality has become its own running joke among fans. Her Season 1 near-drowning under the Sweetwater River ice was genuinely tense. Everything after that got progressively more theatrical.
What's interesting about Cheryl's relationship with death is that it mirrors her character arc: she keeps going under and keeps coming back, usually more powerful and more unhinged than before. Whether that's intentional symbolism or just the writers not wanting to lose Madelaine Petsch is a question only the writers' room can answer. Fan devotion to Cheryl is so intense that her actual death would probably break the internet in a way the show was never willing to risk.
Hiram Lodge — The Villain Who Overstayed His Welcome and Then Died For It
Shock Value: 4/10 | Plot Necessity: 9/10 | Fan Fallout: Relieved
By the time Hiram Lodge finally exited the show, a significant portion of the fanbase was ready to throw a party. Mark Consuelos played the character with committed menace, but the writers had stretched Hiram's villainy so thin over so many seasons that his death felt less like a dramatic moment and more like a long-overdue resolution.
It scores high on plot necessity precisely because the show needed to close that chapter definitively. The shock value is low — when a villain has been the big bad for multiple seasons, their eventual death stops being a surprise and starts being an inevitability. Fan reaction was largely relief, with a side of appreciation for Consuelos's commitment to a role that asked him to do increasingly ridiculous things with a straight face.
The Verdict: What Riverdale's Death Toll Actually Tells Us
Look at these deaths together and a pattern emerges. Riverdale's most effective mortality moments — Jason, Fred, Midge — are the ones rooted in something emotionally or narratively concrete. The weakest ones are the fake-outs and the long-telegraphed villain exits that ask for emotional investment the show hasn't earned.
The show's complicated relationship with death reflects its complicated relationship with stakes in general. When Riverdale commits to a loss, it can be genuinely affecting. When it hedges — keeping characters in limbo, walking back deaths, resurrecting plot threads — it erodes the very tension that makes mortality meaningful as a storytelling device.
Death in Riverdale is a mirror. It shows you exactly how seriously the show is taking itself in any given moment. And that, more than any individual death, is what makes the body count worth counting.