There's A New 'Riverdale' Theory That Cliff Blossom Is Alive & It Will Blow Your Mind

Riverdale fans are still reeling from the twist-filled new episode of the mystery drama on Wednesday night, and now a shocking new theory is making the rounds online. Although we all thought that he died at the end of Season 1, now fans think that Clifford Blossom may secretly be alive on Riverdale, and if that turns out to be true, then it could also open up a pretty convincing case that the crooked Blossom patriarch is also the Black Hood.

Spoiler alert: This post is going to discuss details from Riverdale Season 2 Episode 15 "There Will Be Blood," so don't continue reading if you haven't seen it yet. In Wednesday night's new episode, we met Uncle Claudius, who introduced himself as the secret twin brother that Cliff Blossom never told Cheryl about. Now, any surprise twin reveal is going to raise eyebrows, and viewers were immediately suspicious of Claudius... especially after it sounded like he and Penelope were plotting a way to get rid of Nana Rose and Cheryl at the end of the episode. But some fans think that the conspiracy surrounding Claudius is much more twisted than it appears: What if Claudius actually is Clifford? Could Clifford have faked his death and still be alive?

I mean, it's the first question you have to ask with any surprise twin reveal, right? Could this new guy who looks exactly like Cliff Blossom be lying about his identity? It actually could make a lot of sense. Before we unpack that, let's go over Claudius' story about why we had no idea he existed until now.

Claudius tells Cheryl that he was being groomed to take over the Blossom family business as a child, which made his twin brother Clifford incredibly jealous. On their 14th birthday, Clifford pointed a rifle at Claudius and explained the Blossom family curse to him: One Blossom twin always meets a violent end, usually at the hands of the other. Claudius says that Clifford spared his life but forced him to leave town, so he joined the Marines and has just been sailing around ever since. He returned to town once he heard that Clifford was dead.

Okay, so that's Claudius' story, but wouldn't it make a lot more sense if this was actually Clifford talking and he was making this whole backstory up? A new theory on Reddit is making the case that we actually saw Claudius die in the Season 1 finale, while Clifford used his fake death to escape town after everyone found out about his drug deals.

Obviously, killing his own brother in order to fake a suicide does not seem like it's too low for Clifford Blossom... after all, we saw him kill his own son. Other fans pointed out more reasons why this theory actually makes a lot of sense, saying that it makes that Blossom curse statement relevant and that it would not make sense for an estranged uncle to show up on the exact day of Clifford's will reading.

If this is indeed Clifford Blossom and he's been secretly alive this whole time, then that also opens up another huge theory: Could Clifford Blossom be the real Black Hood? Although the Black Hood was supposedly revealed to be Mr. Svenson in the midseason finale, pretty much every Riverdale fan is convinced that the real Black Hood has yet to be unmasked.

Cliff Blossom fulfills a ton of the criteria for being the Black Hood: he's an older man with green-ish looking eyes, and given his family's connection to the Coopers, he would also probably know a lot about Betty. And since everyone thought he has been dead throughout the whole Black Hood saga, he's been totally unaccounted for. Honestly, I'm pretty convinced by this now... let's see how it all unfolds in the next few episodes of the season.