Riverdale

Cast and characters

KJ Apa as Archie Andrews: A former high school football player who has a passion for music. After graduating, he fought as an Army sergeant and is now a JROTC instructor at his old high school. He is deeply involved in protecting his community from any danger. He is childhood best friends with his next door neighbor, Betty Cooper, and best friends with Jughead Jones. He once dated Veronica Lodge in high school, but they broke up. He later begins a relationship with Betty, to whom he proposes in the season six finale. He also becomes invulnerable after surviving a bomb explosion. In season seven in the 1950s, he discovers a passion for poetry he settles down in Modesto, as a construction worker and amateur writer, where he meets a girl and starts a family with her. When he dies, he is buried in Riverdale next to his father.

Lili Reinhart as Betty Cooper: A smart woman who is best friends with Archie, who she has a longtime crush on. She becomes friends with Veronica Lodge when she moves to town. In high school, she dates Jughead, with whom she runs the school paper. She breaks up with Jughead before going away to college. She becomes an FBI agent and operates from Riverdale. She gradually develops a relationship with Archie and becomes engaged to him in the season 6 finale. In the 1950s in season 7, after exploring her sexuality and finding her independence, she settles in New York, where she runs her own Women's magazine and adopts her daughter, Carla.

Camila Mendes as Veronica Lodge: A former "it girl" of Manhattan, she moves to Riverdale at the beginning of the series. She hopes to become a better person after reflecting on the turmoil in her life after her father is convicted and sent to prison. She is ambitious and wants to succeed, but also works to be humble and avoid trouble. She dates Archie and later Reggie in high school. In season five, she is revealed to have had an extremely successful career on Wall Street, which she had to give up because of a marriage to an abusive husband. Later she divorces and kills him. She briefly reunites with Archie but it ends quickly and she starts seeing Reggie again, though they eventually break up too. In season 6, she orders a hit on her father and later gains the power to generate poison. In the 1950s Veronica discovers a love for movies and after running the local theater, she moves to Hollywood, becomes a successful producer, and is even buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery after she dies.

Cole Sprouse as Jughead Jones: A philosophically inclined social outcast who is Archie's best friend and Betty's ex-boyfriend. He was the former leader of the Southside Serpents gang. He went on to become a published writer, English teacher, and an advisor at the Blue and Gold high school newspaper. He struggled with alcoholism but eventually got sober and started dating Tabitha Tate. In season 6, he developed the power to read minds and was key to defeating Percival Pickens. In the 1950s, he briefly dates Veronica while developing a passion for comic books, and goes on to create his company called Jughead's Mad House. Sprouse also portrays Narrator Jughead, who prevents the Riverdale and Rivervale timelines from merging.

Production

Development

Warner Bros. began development on an Archie feature film in 2013, after a pitch from writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and director Jason Moore that would have placed Archie's gang into a teen comedy feature film in the John Hughes tradition. The duo brought the project to Warner Bros., where a VP recommended a more high-concept direction involving time travel or interdimensional portals, suggesting Louis C. K. to portray an older Archie. Dan Lin and Roy Lee became producers on the project, which eventually stalled as priorities shifted at the studio towards larger tentpole films, and was reimagined as a television series. The series Riverdale was in development at Fox, with the network landing the project in 2014 with a script deal plus penalty. However, Fox did not go forward with the project. In 2015, the show's development was moved to the CW, which officially ordered a pilot on January 29, 2016. On March 7, 2017, The CW announced that the series had been renewed for a second season. On April 2, 2018, The CW renewed the series for a third season, which premiered October 10, 2018. On January 31, 2019, The CW renewed the series for a fourth season, that was planned to consist of 22 episodes. However, season four got shortened to 19 episodes instead because production was suspended on March 11, 2020, as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic. Only 19 of the 22 ordered episodes of the fourth season were completed before the coronavirus pandemic. The fourth season premiered on October 9, 2019.

"Chapter Forty-Nine: Fire Walk with Me" was the first to be dedicated to Luke Perry, who died two days before the episode aired.

On January 7, 2020, the series was renewed for a fifth season, which began a year later on January 20, 2021.

On February 3, 2021, the series was renewed for a sixth season which was split into two parts, and it premiered on November 16, 2021. On March 22, 2022, The CW renewed the series for a seventh season. On May 19, 2022, it was announced that the series will be concluding with its upcoming seventh season, which premiered on March 29, 2023. The series finale aired on August 23, 2023.

Casting

On February 9, 2016, Lili Reinhart and Cole Sprouse were cast as Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones, respectively. Lili Reinhart almost did not land the role after her video-based audition, but after moving to LA and attending in-person casting, she managed to get chosen to play Betty Cooper. On February 24, 2016, KJ Apa was cast as Archie Andrews after a four-month worldwide talent search. Apa was one of the last to audition and landed the role just days later. Also that day, Ashleigh Murray was cast as Josie McCoy, the lead singer for the popular band Josie and the Pussycats, and Luke Perry and Madelaine Petsch were also added as Fred Andrews, Archie's father, and Cheryl Blossom, respectively. Two days later, Camila Mendes was cast as Veronica Lodge marking her first acting role in a television show.

In March 2016, Marisol Nichols and Mädchen Amick joined the cast as Hermione Lodge and Alice Cooper, Veronica and Betty's mothers, respectively. A few days later, Ross Butler, Daniel Yang and Cody Kearsley were cast in the roles Reggie Mantle, Dilton Doiley and Moose Mason, respectively. The last actor to join the pilot was Casey Cott as Kevin Keller, the first openly gay character in Archie Comics history.

In April 2017, Mark Consuelos signed on for the second season to play Veronica Lodge's father, Hiram Lodge. The role was in second position to his existing role on Pitch, but the cancellation of that series was announced on May 1, 2017. The next month, Charles Melton was cast to take over the role of Reggie from Ross Butler in season 2, due to his status as a series regular on 13 Reasons Why. Casey Cott, who played Kevin Keller, was promoted to a series regular. In July 2017, True Blood star Brit Morgan was cast in the recurring role of Penny Peabody, an attorney the Southside Serpents call in case of any run-ins with the law. In August 2017, Graham Phillips had been cast to play Nick St. Clair, Veronica's ex-boyfriend from New York.

In March 2018, Andy Cohen appeared in the sixteenth episode of the second season as himself. In the series, he and Hermione are friends. He previously offered her a role as a cast member on The Real Housewives of New York City; however, Hermione turned down the offer to keep things private for the Lodge family. In May 2018, Charles Melton and Vanessa Morgan, who play Reggie Mantle and Toni Topaz, respectively, would both be promoted to series regulars in the third season. By the time of New York Comic Con 2018, Gina Gershon and Trinity Likins, respectively, had been cast as Gladys Jones and Jellybean "J. B." Jones for the third season.

Filming

Filming of the pilot began on March 14, 2016, and ended on March 31 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Production on the remaining 12 episodes of season one began on September 7, 2016, in Vancouver. Sets included Pop Tate's Chock'lit Shoppe, a copy of the functioning diner used in the pilot that is so realistic a truck driver parked his 18-wheeler there, believing that it was open. Season two was also filmed in Vancouver and the nearby Fraser Valley. The aerial view of Riverdale is actually drawn from stock footage used in the series Pretty Little Liars and Gilmore Girls, and the landmark settings are the same used in both of the aforementioned series as well as in Hart of Dixie. Filming for the second season started on June 22, 2017, and concluded on March 27, 2018. Filming for the third season started on July 6, 2018.

Filming for the fourth season began on July 8, 2019, and was originally expected to end on April 4, 2020. Production was suspended on March 11, 2020, as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic, after a person working on the show came in contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19. Only nineteen of the twenty-two ordered episodes of the fourth season were completed. Series writer Brian E. Paterson later confirmed that they would shoot the remaining two episodes of season four when it was safe to do so. The fourth season ultimately concluded with episode nineteen. The remaining three episodes intended for the season were used for the start of the fifth season, before the series underwent a five-year time jump. Despite a later premiere, season five was not expected to have a shortened episode count.

Filming for the fifth season began on September 14, 2020. The following month, however, filming was suspended for a week due to COVID-19 testing delays. Production on season five wrapped-up on June 1, 2021. The sixth season commenced production on August 30, 2021, and concluded on June 16, 2022. Filming for the seventh and final season began on October 17, 2022, and concluded on June 25, 2023.

Homages to other films and television shows

Several reviewers have noted that the series' episode titles are often taken directly or slightly altered from the titles of older films. For example, De Elizabeth of Teen Vogue points out that Riverdale's pilot episode was named "River's Edge" after the 1986 film of the same name, and the season finale takes its name from 1997's The Sweet Hereafter. Executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa notes that this is a deliberate choice, in order to hint at what will happen in that episode. References to the fictional setting of the Black Mirror episode "San Junipero" can be seen in season one as well as heard amongst dialogue in season two and three.

Music

Musical performances are featured throughout the series, a blend of cover versions and originals. Songs performed in episodes are released as digital singles after broadcast; WaterTower Music released a digital compilation for season 1 songs on May 12, 2017; season 2 on May 18, 2018; season 3 on May 17, 2019; season 4 on May 15, 2020; and season 5 on August 25, 2021.

An album of Blake Neely's scoring for season 1 was released on compact disc by La-La Land Records, and simultaneously on download by WaterTower, on July 18, 2017. The season 2 album with scores from Neely and Sherri Chung was released on CD by La-La Land on October 30, 2018 and on digital by WaterTower on November 16, 2018. A Halloween episode score soundtrack was released on digital on October 31, 2019. The scoring for seasons 3 and 4 were released on separate digital albums on January 22, 2021.

WaterTower released the songs performed in the musical episodes on separate digital albums. The Carrie: The Musical soundtrack was released on April 19, 2018, followed by a vinyl edition released at Urban Outfitters stores on July 13. The Heathers: The Musical soundtrack was released March 21, 2019; the Hedwig and the Angry Inch soundtrack was released on April 15, 2020. The Return of the Pussycats soundtrack, and the Next to Normal soundtrack, were both released on September 8 and 30, 2021, respectively. The American Psycho: The Musical soundtrack was released on June 12, 2022, and the Archie the Musical soundtrack was released on July 5, 2023, respectively.

Release

Home media

The first, second and seventh season in addition to the complete series were released on DVD by Warner Home Entertainment while Warner Archive Collection handled manufacture-on-demand DVD and or Blu-ray formats for several seasons.

Broadcast

Netflix acquired the exclusive international broadcast rights to Riverdale, making the series available as an original series to its platform less than a day after its original US broadcast.

Marketing

In July 2016, members of the cast and the executive producers attended San Diego Comic-Con to promote the upcoming series, where they premiered the first episode "Chapter One: The River's Edge". The first trailer for the series was released in late December 2016. The CW also sponsored multiple Tastemade videos, where they cooked several foods that are popular in the Archie universe.

Tie-in media

Along with heavily promoting the television series in their regular comics since January 2017, Archie Comics released a comic book adaptation of Riverdale, featuring auxiliary story arcs set within the television series' own continuity. The comic book adaptation is headed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa himself, along with other writers from the show. Alongside a one-shot pilot issue, illustrated by Alitha Martinez, released in March 2017, the first issue of the ongoing Riverdale comic book series was released starting April 2017.

In addition to the adaptation, Archie Comics are releasing a series of compilation graphic novels branded under the title Road to Riverdale. This series features early issues from the New Riverdale reboot line, introducing the audience of the TV series to the regular ongoing comic series that inspired it. Archie Comics plans to re-print the volumes of Road to Riverdale in subsequent months as digest magazines. The first volume was released in March 2017. Michol Ostow wrote a graphic novel The Ties That Bind, released in May 2021.

Several tie-in novels were also released in conjunction with the show, the first being The Day Before a prequel novel set a day before the events of the first episode. Get Out of Town is set between seasons 2 and 3, and was followed by The Maple Murders, Death of a Cheerleader, and The Poison Pen. The first four novels were written by Micol Ostow, with the fifth book penned by Caleb Roehrig.

Reception

Critical response

The first season of Riverdale received a generally positive response from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a fresh rating of 88% based on 62 reviews, with a weighted average of 7.22/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Riverdale offers an amusingly self-aware reimagining of its classic source material that proves eerie, odd, daring, and above all addictive." On Metacritic, the season has a score of 68 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Dave Nemetz of TVLine gave the series a "B+" saying that it turned out "to be an artfully crafted, instantly engaging teen soap with loads of potential."

Legacy

Over the course of its run, Riverdale received widespread attention from critics and on social media for its increasingly campy and outlandish storylines, as well as for subverting teen drama conventions and the expectations of the source material. Rebecca Atler of Vulture deemed the series "one of the weirdest teen soaps ever made," adding that it "took tropes from gothic horror, fantasy, telenovelas, soap operas, comic books, gay art-house films, dark high-school comedies, musicals, and mafia movies and smushed them together into a pop-culture polycule—while the ensemble held it all together, putting it on like some sort of weekly vaudeville act." Sam Bramesco of The Guardian called it "a sprawling soap opera with a liberated relationship to reality, the finest specimen of its genre in its era" and an "unending parade of camp [that] never once committed the cardinal sin of being boring." Emma Stefansky of The Ringer opined that while some fans and journalists criticized subsequent seasons for "relying less and less on coherent plotting to craft its mazelike narrative," such storylines "only enhanced an already heightened experience."

Critics have attributed the escalation to more absurd storytelling to the series' standard-length seasons of approximately 20 episodes, no longer the norm, especially for teen dramas, in the wake of the streaming boom. Kristen Baldwin of Entertainment Weekly opined that "the world where a network allows a lavish, sexy, teen genre drama to run off the rails for seven gloriously outlandish seasons no longer exists," and also noted that Riverdale amid the CW's programming shift toward unscripted, sports, and acquired content under its new ownership by Nexstar Media Group. Stefansky praised the CW for allowing a show such as Riverdale to run for seven seasons while a majority of shows are canceled prematurely in the current television landscape, while Monteil opined that "it feels like a miracle that a show as strange and eager for reinvention as Riverdale has existed for so long" in a reboot- and IP-driven market. Ahead of the series finale, Mary Kate Carr of The A.V. Club stated that Riverdale is the "dying gasp" of the teen drama of its era, as "streaming services have saturated the market so much that it's hard to imagine a new teen soap cultivating enough hype or strong enough fandom to command an entire hall at Comic-Con."

Many critics highlighted the show's deviation from its initial premise as a teen drama. In ranking the show's wildest storylines, Abby Monteil of Rolling Stone noted that the series' initial high school-based plot "soon mutated beyond its teen-drama trappings, transforming from a Twin Peaks-esque reimagining of the comics' squeaky-clean source material into a campy, Frankensteinian mash-up of genres, pop-culture references, and pie-in-the-sky melodrama that's frankly unlike anything that came before it." Stefansky noted that the series "never played by conventional teen television's rules; it poked fun at certain clichés while embracing others and mixed the strange with the familiar" and took "more inspiration from Stephen King and Twin Peaks than from John Hughes or Gossip Girl." Bramesco compared the series to Ryan Murphy's "similarly excessive, queer-inflected" American Horror Story, stating that while Murphy aims for prestige, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa "staunchly refuses to take his work seriously, venturing deeper into his insular funhouse with the express purpose of getting lost."

Controversy

The series changed the character Jughead Jones' sexual and romantic orientation from aromantic and asexual to heterosexual. This deviation from the source material was met with criticism describing it as a-spec erasure.

Popularity on Netflix

Riverdale has also been noted as being one of the most popular shows worldwide on the popular streaming platform Netflix. The large number of fans watching the series on the platform also gave the show a large bump in the ratings for its season two premiere. This was later referenced on multiple occasions by The CW's president, Mark Pedowitz, who noted that they would watch Netflix numbers more closely for new series after seeing how Riverdale did on the platform. Season four was posted onto the website in the US on May 15, 2020, and remained in the top ten titles on the platform for the following month. In the UK, it was also the most popular program on the streaming service in May.

Riverdale notably enjoyed widespread success in Australia during its original run. During its original broadcast, Riverdale was broadcast in the country as a Netflix Original Series hours after its US broadcast and during the late 2010s, was one of the most popular shows in the country regularly entering the national top 10 of the most viewed TV shows. During the last week of October 2018 Riverdale was the number 1 show in Australia.

Shared universe

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–2020)

In September 2017, it was reported that a live-action television series based on the comic series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was being developed for The CW by Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, with a planned release in the 2018–2019 television season. The series, featuring the Archie Comics character Sabrina Spellman, would be a companion series to Riverdale. Lee Toland Krieger directed the pilot, which was written by Aguirre-Sacasa. Both are executive producers along with Berlanti, Schechter, and Goldwater. In December 2017, it was reported that the project had moved to Netflix under a new title. In January 2018, CW president Mark Pedowitz noted that, "at the moment, there is no discussion about crossing over" with Riverdale. Aguirre-Sacasa added that no crossovers were planned so that each series could establish "their own identities and own set of rules". Filming for the first season began on March 19, 2018, just as filming of the second season of Riverdale concluded, which allowed the same crew members to work on both series.

Sabrina's town, Greendale, is introduced in the second season of Riverdale. Following that, several references to the two cities are made regularly in the two series, visually or with dialogue. In the first season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which premiered on October 26, 2018, Moses Thiessen reprises his role as Ben Button from Riverdale during an episode. In the episode "Chapter Sixty-Seven: Varsity Blues" from the fourth season of Riverdale, Ty Wood reprises his role as Billy Marlin from Sabrina. In the episode "Chapter Twenty-Three: Heavy Is the Crown" from the third part of Sabrina, the teenage witch and her cousin visit Riverdale in search for a crown that was owned by Benjamin Blossom, an ancestor of Cheryl. On their way, they pass the town sign. On its back, Jughead Jones spray painted the message "JJ Wuz Here", his signature. Three episodes later, a member of the Southside Serpents is attacked by Hilda Spellman.

Regarding a proper crossover, Aguirre-Sacasa said in October 2018 he would "hate for [a crossover] to never happen" between the two series, adding a potential idea for one could see the characters of Riverdale "hear[ing] about a haunted house in Greendale and try to break in and it's Sabrina's house". He also felt since each series was already established, a crossover could happen in a standalone film with both casts, potentially titled Afterlife with Archie, based on the Archie Horror comic of the same name.

Katy Keene (2020)

In August 2018, Aguirre-Sacasa revealed that another spin-off was in development at The CW. He said that the series would be "very different from Riverdale" and that it would be produced "in [the 2018–19] development cycle." By January 2019, The CW issued a pilot order for the series stating that the plot will: "[follow] the lives and loves of four iconic Archie Comics characters—including fashion legend-to-be Katy Keene (Lucy Hale)—as they chase their twenty-something dreams in New York City. This musical dramedy chronicles the origins and struggles of four aspiring artists trying to make it on Broadway, on the runway and in the recording studio." In February of the same year, it was announced that Ashleigh Murray, who portrays Josie McCoy in Riverdale, had been cast in a lead role for Katy Keene, leading to her exit from the former. By August 2019, Michael Grassi announced that there was a crossover between Riverdale and Katy Keene being developed. The crossover episode aired on February 5, 2020, one day before the premiere of Katy Keene on February 6, 2020.

In the episode "Chapter Six: Mama Said" from the first season of Katy Keene, Robin Givens reprises her role as Sierra McCoy from Riverdale. Four episodes later, Casey Cott reprises his role as Kevin Keller in "Chapter Ten: Gloria". In the last episode of the first season, Mark Consuelos reprises his role as Hiram Lodge.

On July 2, 2020, the series was canceled after one season. Despite the cancellation, characters from Katy Keene appear in Riverdale: Zane Holtz reprised his role as K.O. Kelly in the first episode of season five and in the tenth episode of season six, followed by Ryan Faucett as Bernardo in the seventh episode of the same season, while Lucy Hale reprised her role in a voice-over cameo in the eighth episode, and Camille Hyde reprised her role as Alexandra Cabot in the fifteenth episode. The character Chad Gekko, who appeared in two episodes of Katy Keene, also returned as a recurring character in season five, played by Chris Mason. Mason replaced Reid Prebenda, who portrayed the character in the spin-off.

Pretty Little Liars (2022–2024)

In 2022, Aguirre-Sacasa confirmed that Riverdale and Pretty Little Liars (2022), and by extension the original series, its two spin-offs, and web series, were set in the same universe. The series premiered on July 28, 2022, with the first season subtitled Original Sin. In the sixth episode of the first season, Eddie Lamb, a character from the original series, states that some of the more lucrative patients at the Radley Sanitarium were sent to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy in Riverdale before the Radley was converted to a hotel, effectively confirming that both series are part of a larger shared universe.

In the second and final season subtitled Summer School, recurring character Greg Mantzoukas reveals that he is the cousin of Kevin Keller in the sixth episode, further cementing the connection between both series.

Afterlife with Archie

In July 2026, a new television series, Afterlife with Archie, was confirmed to be in development with Disney+, based on the 2013 comic crossover series which united main characters from the individual series, such as Archie and Sabrina, and follows a story in which a spell of Sabrina's goes wildly wrong and causes Riverdale to become overrun with zombies. Much of the creative team behind earlier Archie Comics television series adaptations including Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina return, with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa serving as showrunner, adapting his and Francesco Francavilla's comic, and as executive producer along with Jimmy Gibbons (via Muckle Man Productions); Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Leigh London Redman of Berlanti Productions; and Jon Goldwater of Archie Comics Studios. The series is slated to release in the fourth quarter of 2027.

Abandoned projects

By September 2020, Aguirre-Sacasa was preparing another spin-off series based on an Archie Comics property. In August 2021, The CW announced Jake Chang, a noir teen mystery drama series spinoff of Riverdale focusing on the character of Jake Chang, a teen prodigy detective mystery solver. The network later ordered a pilot in May 2022. Aguirre-Sacasa as well various other crew members from the show's production team were to write and executive produce for the series. The CW officially passed on the series in May 2023.