'Rivedale' Solved The Mystery Of Who Shot Hiram Lodge, But It Wasn't Who Fans Expected

Riverdale really leaned into its crime noir influences on Wednesday night's new episode of the show, which seemed like a fitting genre tilt to investigate the mysterious shooter who tried to kill mob boss Hiram Lodge. After Jughead dove deep into the twisted plot to murder Hiram, the episode finally delivered an answer that most fans did not expect. Yes, we now know who shot Hiram Lodge on Riverdale, but with all those twists and turns that went into the murder plot, let's take some time to unravel what went down.

Spoiler alert: This post will discuss plot points from Riverdale Season 3 Episode 11, "The Red Dahlia." At the end of last week's episode, the question on every Riverdale fan's mind was who shot Hiram Lodge, and thankfully the show was quick to give us the answer. This week's new episode paid homage to noir classic Chinatown as Jughead took on the role of hard-boiled detective to try to track down Hiram's shooter. It turned out that his initial suspicions of Hermione Lodge were actually correct all along, but all though Hiram's wife was involved in his shooting, the actual shooter was none other than Jughead's father, F.P. Jones.

F.P. revealed that Hermione Lodge hired him to shoot her husband, and he was happy to oblige because of how much he resented Hiram over nearly killing Jughead by ordering the Ghoulies' attack on him towards the end of Season 2. His new position as the town's sheriff was actually Hermione's payment for F.P. pulling the trigger. Oh, and Hermione wanted Hiram dead for a couple reasons: she had plans to sell off his Fizzle Rocks factory and she resented him for causing Veronica's seizure.

Although it appeared that F.P. and Hermione were allies after last week's episode, this week revealed that things were never actually cool between them. Hiram wound up surviving F.P.'s gunshot, but Hermione hatched a plan to finish her husband off and frame F.P. for the murder. It turned out that former sheriff Minetta has actually been alive this whole time, and has been having an affair with Hermione. (Yes, this makes two episodes in a row where it's revealed a character faked his own death... and then died for real in the same episode). Anyway, Hermione told Minetta to finish Hiram off with F.P.'s gun, but Archie was there to stop him with a gun of his own. In the end, F.P. found out about the scheme and called in Alice Cooper to help pin the shooting on the already dead Tall Boy, and Hermione opted to shoot Minetta to tie up the loose ends connecting her to the crime.

Did you follow all that? Yeah... there were a lot of moving parts in this week's episode, but basically what it boiled down to is that Hermione Lodge seems to be the new mafia boss running things in Riverdale. Especially after Hiram woke up from his coma and made nice with Archie, it looks like Hermione will be taking the reigns as the antagonistic powerhouse moving forward.