Riverdale Season 5 finale review: Sins of the Father
The moral case for not seeking justice for the wrongs committed in the past.
The sins of the father are visited upon the son.
Or at least that's the idea which was immortalized in a Biblical idea. What your parents do and how they live has an effect on you and your future. If your parents commit a crime or harm someone else, people who care about those you've harmed will be motivated to balance the scales in order to exact some kind of justice. To right the wrongs which your parents committed and to either make the wronged party feel better or find some sort of catharsis in the act. So people like to believe anyway.
They want to believe that their anger is justified and that after exacting this justice, they will feel better and become who they are supposed to be. The kind of person who isn't defined by that anger and sense of injustice. Unfortunately, what they often find is that once they achieve that justice, is that nothing in fact actually ends up feeling balanced. Things are still not the way they wanted it to be. Often because this lack doesn't have anything to do with the person involved or the injustice the one they care about has been living with.
People are motivated by purpose. If you take away that purpose, all you can do is feel empty in return. There's also the question of how long can you live with that injustice. If it wasn't committed against you, is it really up to you to exact that vengeance? Do you deserve justice? And if this injustice continues into future generations, to the grandchild or the great grandchild or any other future generation, do you still have a right to that justice? Will it actually achieve anything towards a great balance?
Much of Riverdale's story has been about this. When you look at the motivations behind many of the killers, serial or otherwise, it's often because of some injustice perpetrated against a previous generation. They've tried their best to right the wrongs of the past by enacting vengeance in the present. To balance the scales of what happened to them. Or to continue a pattern from their past because they see it as an act of justice.
With the end of season 5, it's clear that this will come to a head in some way next season. By going back to what looks to be the beginning of the town itself, there's clearly a desire in Cheryl to see this type of balance restored. Given the themes of the show however, it's likely that more will be revealed and the story will be a lot more complicated then a simple idea of righting the wrongs of the past. Those who see themselves as righteous in achieving vengeance, may find themselves having committed wrongs themselves.
Ones for which others will desire balance and perhaps seek to achieve it. The question is, how will it all pay out? Who will get what they want only to feel empty when they receive what they want? And who will actually be able to move forward, with or without achieving it?
These are all interesting questions and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Check out Riverdale on the CW App in the United States and Netflix elsewhere.
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