How Riverdale's Season 4 Premiere Honored Late Star Luke Perry

The last time we saw our favorite teenagers from the eerie town of Riverdale, they were fighting for their lives trying to beat what was left of the Gargoyle King legacy,. Bloody plot revelations and an unsuspecting cliffhanger left viewers craving more at the end of season 3.

Though CW series is known for its creepy twists, the start of season 4 addresses the absence of Fred Andrews (played by the late Luke Perry), who has been out of town since the actor’s final episode.

Perry — who shot to fame as a teen heartthrob on Beverly Hills, 90210 and was well-regarded in Hollywood for his down-to-earth, kind spirit — died suddenly in March at the age 52 after suffering a stroke.

The episode starts off with the lovebirds Archie (KJ Apa) and Veronica (Camila Mendes) and Jughead (Cole Sprouse) and Betty (Lili Reinhart) in the midst of summer, where it seems so much time has passed that hearsay of Gryphons and Gargoyles are no longer existent.

While the four friends sit in a booth at Pop’s as they normally do, Archie receives a phone call from his father’s number. He gets up to walk away from the table where he proceeds to drop his phone and fall to his knees.

Fred Andrews has died.

Molly Ringwald returns to reprise her role as Mary Andrews, Archie’s mom, to help out around the house and with funeral arrangements. Seeing that Fred died in Cherry Creek and with the national holiday around the corner, his body won’t be transported back to Riverdale until after the Fourth of July.

That night, Archie has a nightmare and wakes up with the sudden impulse to drive upstate and pick his father up as he cannot wait until after holiday. “I have to go get my dad, I have to bring him home,” he tells Veronica. He then asks her, Betty and Jughead to accompany him as well.

When they arrive in Cherry Creek, Archie is having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that his father is gone and wants to see his body to be sure it’s him. Though he changes his mind last minute and asks Betty and Veronica to go instead.

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The two girls confirm Fred’s identity, and the man in charge of the funeral home says it will take a few hours for him to prepare the body. Archie looks to Jughead to write his father’s obituary for The Riverdale Register.

As they gather Fred’s belongings, Archie looks for his dad’s car keys to find the vehicle, which is still parked on the street somewhere. The four teenagers drive to the truck, and Archie walks towards it, sits in the driver’s seat and looks through his father’s personal items longingly.

Then, a car pulls up behind the truck and a mystery woman (played by Perry’s real-life pal and 90210 costar, Shannen Doherty) comes out. Archie, his friends and the woman converse briefly before they pick up the body and head home, where they are met by F.P. Jones (Skeet Ulrich), who wants to honor Fred by giving him a police escort back to the house.

As the cars make their way down the main town road, Archie and Veronica look out and find that all of Riverdale, including unlikely suspects like Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) and the Serpents, have come out to pay tribute to Fred’s life with a parade of their own, with signs that say, “Welcome home, Fred,” and “We will never forget you, Fred.”

At the funeral, Archie delivers a tearful eulogy to a crowd of grieving family and friends. “My dad was here for every high and every low. He’s the greatest man I’ve ever known. It hurts me that I never got to say goodbye,” he says. “But his spirit and his memory lives on, in this town and in everyone he’s met. Fred Andrews will always be a part of Riverdale. I love you so much, Dad.”

When Veronica approaches the woman in charge of the funeral arrangements, she is taken aback to hear that the steep bill has already been taken care of by her own father, Hiram Lodge (Mark Consuelos), who is currently in jail along with Veronica’s mother Hermione (Marisol Nichols).

RELATED: Shannen Doherty ‘Deeply Honored’ to Be Cast in Riverdale’s ‘Beautiful’ Tribute to Luke Perry

As the tribute episode nears its end, Jughead is seen sitting in front of a blank document on his laptop titled “Frederick Arthur Andrews, In Memoria,” pondering fleetingly before he starts typing.

“How do you sum up the life of a man like Fred Andrews?” the aspiring writer starts, as a tear rolls down his face. “He was a good samaritan, our knight in flannel armor.”

As Archie’s best friend narrates, every character in Riverdale is seen picking up The Register and reading the obituary, which brings most of them to tears, including Hermione, with whom Fred had a short fling with earlier in the series.

“Fred left Riverdale better than when he found it. That’s his legacy.”

The last scene shows all the main characters gathering around Archie’s backyard and lighting fireworks for Fourth of July to commemorate the time Archie was a young boy and Fred bought enough fireworks to “burn a house down.”

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.