‘Riverdale’ Season 4 Stars Molly Ringwald, Skeet Ulrich Tease Intense Family Drama

“Riverdale” is the rare teen drama that gives the parents plenty to do. The veteran actors who play the parents of the core four attended New York Comic Con over the weekend to tease what’s coming up for their parents and their kids in Season 4, which premieres Wednesday on The CW.

Molly Ringwald, of course, is going to have a sad storyline. The Season 4 premiere will show Archie (KJ Apa) and Ringwald’s Mary dealing with the death of Fred (Luke Perry). Mary is also trying to step up and be the supportive parent that Archie needs right now.

“I think she’s really filling that sort of nurturing presence because that’s really what Luke has been and those are really hard shoes to fill,” Ringwald told International Business Times and a small group of reporters at NYCC.

Archie may have a new father figure, though. FP actor Skeet Ulrich revealed that his character will have a lot of time to devote to Archie now that Jughead (Cole Sprouse) is heading to prep school.

“It really pushes him towards Archie and towards making sure he’s OK,” Ulrich told IBT. “It’s a little bit of an empty nest syndrome.”

Of course, he still has another kid around. Jellybean (Trinity Likins) is still at home, but it sounds like she is becoming a troublemaker. “We realize she’s cut from the same cloth. She’s definitely a child of Gladys and FP. She’s starting to get into trouble,” he hinted. “But I think there’s something missing [without Jughead] that I don’t think [FP] ever thought he would feel.”

The Jones house will be particularly full after Alice (Mädchen Amick) moves in. That’ll create a new dynamic for the Jones and Cooper families, but therapy will also play a big role in Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Alice’s relationship in new episodes of “Riverdale.”

“They kind of fall back into some old [habits] with each other, kind of the tit-for-tat mother/daughter, and then we just filmed [Season 4, episode 8] where it’s a big episode where there’s a counselor that comes to town and gives everybody some extra counseling,” Amick revealed. “And through that, a lot of the younger storylines and older storylines, a lot of the parents and kids get through a lot of their issues, so there’s a really great Betty-Alice confrontation and they have to work through a lot of stuff.”

It’s safe to say the Lodge family might have a lot to discuss during therapy. Mark Consuelos shared that Season 4 reveals Hiram has another daughter from a previous relationship. Veronica’s (Camila Mendes) older sister is running his clubs in Miami and is closer to her father than Veronica. “She’s very loyal to him,” he teased.

Marisol Nichols’ character, Hermione, loathes Hiram’s elder daughter. “I think that this other daughter is a constant reminder that she doesn’t, and never really did, have Hiram at all and him bringing her around is just like a slap in the face. It’s really annoying, but she can’t do anything about it,” she said.

Though Hermione is at odds with Hiram’s other daughter, she starts out “Riverdale” Season 4 on good terms with Veronica—but their relationship never stays quiet for long.

“It starts out fantastic. I think that they both recognize Hiram’s horrific. [He] had them both manipulated like crazy. [They] can’t trust him,” Nichols told IBT. “They’re more like their Season 1 relationship, which I loved, which I really wanted to get back to because I loved that. It was important to me.”

Don’t expect it to stay that way throughout Season 4. “Unfortunately, Hermione flip flops a lot and we’ll see that again and we’ll see that relationship strained again,” she teased.

That’s just the beginning of this year’s complicated parent-child relationships. “Riverdale” is sure to bring even more drama throughout Season 4, which premieres Wednesday on The CW.