‘Riverdale’: Who Is The Milkman Murderer?

After approximately one-half an episode of normalcy, Riverdale is back on its bullsh*t in the final season of The CW series, despite the setting being transferred to the more innocent 1950s. As revealed in the opening moments of this week’s episode, “Chapter One Hundred Twenty: Sex Education”, Ethel Muggs (Shannon Purser) didn’t just stumble into the school’s sock hop with random blood all over her dress… It was her parent’s blood. And not only that: she claims the milkman did it.

Or rather, a milkman did it, as Sheriff Keller (Martin Cummins) is quick to clear the adorable, 70-year-old town milkman who is so blameless he’s allowed to get a good night’s sleep before being questioned in a double homicide. Over the course of this week’s episode, as the teens of the town are reaching dangerous levels of horny thanks to a group sex dream and a makeout party, Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) tries desperately to clear Ethel’s name — or at least try to stave off whatever is coming to her as suspect number one.

…You know how mysteries work, right? Yes, Ethel was the last person seen with her parents before their deaths. Yes, Ethel seems to have pulled the story of a Milkman Murderer directly from a popular horror comic book. And yes, she drew a picture of herself chopping up her parents and putting them through a meat grinder. But who among us has not drawn the murder of our parents before they were graphically murdered in a similar fashion? Let he who is without sin be the first to crank that meat grinder, I always say!

The point being, with everything, er, pointing to Ethel it is possible Riverdale could go the obvious route. But chances are, with plenty of episodes to go in the season, the Milkman Murders are just beginning — and we’ve got a few likely suspects right here.

1. Hal Cooper

   Hal Cooper (Lochlyn Munro) seems like the most likely suspect for the Milkman Murderer. First clue? In the “present” Hal Cooper was revealed as The Black Hood, Season 2’s serial killer villain. If part of the point of this season is that even with the cast transported back to the 1950s we’re still who we are, deep down, it would make sense that Hal would still be on the murder beat.

   There are other clues, though, the biggest that Hal seems panicked when Alice Cooper (Mädchen Amick) allows Ethel to stay with them while Sherrif Keller figures out if she killed her own parents. On the surface, letting a murder suspect stay with you seems like a reason to be nervous. But it’s more likely that Hal could be freaking out that Alice let the child of the people he slaughtered live with them.

   Adding fuel to that theory? Alice shout-whispers at Hal that everything she does is for the Cooper family, later in the episode. A weird thing to bring up when you’re talking about the Muggs family, in this context. A less weird thing to bring up if, like in the present day, Alice is aware that Hal is a murderer and is helping him cover it up.

   But what if instead, it’s…

3. Alice Cooper

   Hear me out: we all love Alice. Or at least: we all love Mädchen Amick. But over the course of the previous six seasons, Alice has repeatedly killed people. And while she is only a carrier for the show’s favorite MacGuffin, the Serial Killer Gene, it’s entirely possible that repressed ’50s housewife Alice has snapped and started slaughtering townspeople.

   Adding fuel to that fire, she had an ominous conversation in Episode 2 with Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) about how getting pinned by Hal back in high school helped quell certain “urges.” The obvious conclusion in that scene was that Alice was either talking about sex (Betty wants to get more physical with Kevin), or homosexuality (Kevin is closeted and gay). But it’s also distinctly possible the urges Alice was referencing were of the murdering kind.

   If we expect the murderer to be Hal based on the previous seasons of the series, but it’s actually Alice, that would be a twist.

   There’s another possibility, though…

4. Hal & Alice

   There are a number of clues in this week’s episode that the killer isn’t Hal or Alice… It’s Hal AND Alice, a pair of married serial killers. The most obvious one is that after that earlier scene of Hal panicking and Alice trying to calm him down, we cut back to the WRIV anchors relaxing silently while reading the paper and doing needlepoint respectively. In the background, a song is playing on the radio. That song? “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet” by Ella Mae Morse.

   To paraphrase Avril Lavigne: could they make it any more obvious? Add in that Alice wasn’t specifically talking about her urges or his urges in the previous episode so much as that getting pinned seemed to quell a need they both were feeling, and we might have two killers on our hands.

   This doesn’t necessarily answer the question of why they killed the Muggs parents in particular — if they did, indeed, do it — or if they’ve killed before. But like with the “Alice did it!” reveal, this could be a swerve from expecting Hal to be once again the culprit. It also would tie into a lot of the themes of this season so far, which initially presented the ’50s Riverdale as a more innocent place before immediately diving into the more complicated subjects that were bubbling below the surface.

   Not only that, but a lot of what the seeming reset of this season has been doing has been playing on the tension of what we know about these characters in previous seasons, and when those moments will pop up in the new season, despite the characters not having memories of their previous lives. Knowing this information about Hal and Alice creates tension between the audience and the characters on screen: when and how will they discover the information we already suspect; or perhaps know?

   Are there other suspects? Sure. It could be Dr. Werthers (Malcolm Stewart), who was also a killer in previous seasons and is all about ’50s-style repression. It could also be Ethel, the kindly old milkman, or any number of other characters. But for now, Hal and Alice are suspects number one and two.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW