In an interview with Deadline, Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin) discusses what to expect from its final season, which debuted on Wednesday. This article may contain spoilers for the season seven premiere of Riverdale.
The season six finale was a shock to fans — it essentially rebooted the entire world and took the characters back in time to the 1950s, saving them from a deadly comet. The characters, however, find themselves back in high school. Season seven picks up immediately after the events of the finale.
Aguirre-Sacasa says of the storyline: “We had come up with some scenarios, but I think it resonated with us that this was our last season, and every season we explored a different genre or had a big conceit. It felt like the worst thing we wanted to do was have our last season be running on fumes. In a different conversation, Mark Pedowitz had mentioned to John Goldwater, who’s one of the executive producers of Riverdale, how he was sort of nostalgic for when the kids were in high school. And KJ Apa, who plays Archie, had called me and said, ‘Man, remember when I was on the football team, and I was a bulldog and there were cheerleaders?’ And we were all feeling kind of nostalgic for when the characters were in high school. The problem with going back to high school is we’ve done high school. We did four seasons of them in high school.”
“As divisive as Riverdale can be, one thing that everyone delights in is every time we do a dream sequence or a fantasy sequence or flashback and we see the kids in their iconic Archie Comics 1950s outfits. For whatever reason, the 1950s is the decade most associated with Archie Comics. I remember saying that in the room, ‘What if we do go back to high school, but what if it is the 1950s?’ We started talking about that, and we started getting really, really excited. It felt that would allow us to go back to high school in a fresh way and get back to the original thesis of the show, which is that the Archie Comics present in a wholesome, innocent, all American kind of way, but that there might be some darker themes and darker issues and more primal desires and impulses roiling underneath the surface. The ‘50s is a great decade to explore that.”
He also acknowledges that the era is not as happy as it may seem: “It would have been disingenuous to erase the real struggles and the real hardships that a lot of people in the 1950s faced, especially for our queer characters and our characters of color… [In season seven] the big bad would be the 1950s and society itself — how conformist it was, how repressive it was, how homophobic it was, how racist it was, how sexist it was.”
His words prove to be true as the premiere focuses on the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Tabitha, played by Erinn Westbrook (The Resident, 10 Days), and Toni, played by Vanessa Morgan (The Latest Buzz, My Babysitter’s A Vampire), return to Riverdale after witnessing a trial in Mississippi where Till’s murderers were acquitted. While the news makes no waves at the high school, the protagonists are determined to bring awareness to the issue, and they start by reading esteemed poet Langston Hughes’ Mississippi — 1955 during the school’s announcements.
Aguirre-Sacasa adds: “Originally we were going to pick up with the death of James Dean and we do a little bit. But around the same time that James Dean died, there was the trial of Emmett Till’s murderers, where they got acquitted. They were within weeks of each other. Two very, very different stories, one of which was completely covered in the mainstream press, and one of which was not covered in the mainstream press. One everyone wanted to talk about and one people didn’t want to talk about unless it was in the Black press. It felt like if we were saying that Riverdale High had recently been integrated, there’s no way that our characters of color, Toni and Tabitha especially, who are so socially conscious and so outspoken, wouldn’t be talking about what happened with Emmett Till’s murderers at that trial. So it felt like that was a way to get into the season and start exploring those issues and thematics head on.”
It is also revealed that Jughead, portrayed by Cole Sprouse (Five Feet Apart, Big Daddy), is the only one who remembers what happened before everyone was sent to the ‘50s. His memory is soon erased, however, after a version of Tabitha warns him that he must save the town. He manages to write himself a message before the memory wipe — “Bend toward justice.”
“Regarding Jughead, we felt like because Jughead was the character most associated with the multiverse and with Tabitha, in Season 6, it felt like if anyone was would retain their memory, at least for a while, it would be Jughead,” says Aguirre-Sacasa of the decision to give Jughead the task.
The producer was rather vague about what comes next in the season: “[The characters will] all be pushing against these monoliths that are generational, that are societal, that are cultural, that are political. They’re all, in their own storylines and separately and together, pushing against that. Not just for each other but for their friends. In Episode 1, the idealized 1950s comes face-to-face with some really, really dark, disturbing truths about the 1950s. That starts all of our characters having a conversation. I think as Jughead says in his monologue, [a conversation] that many people weren’t having. That conversation will hopefully blossom into actions and then turn into either a quiet or a not-so-quiet revolution.”
Riverdale airs every Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST on The CW.