Back in 2016, Riverdale was sold to audiences as a gritty Gossip Girl meets Pretty Little Liars – a dark and sexy mystery live-action series centered on a group of protagonist teenagers and a few shady adults. The head-scratcher: it was set in the notoriously wholesome universe of Archie Comics, known for its ongoing series where a popular teen redhead named Archie Andrews is in an on-and-off love triangle with his two best friends Betty and Veronica, and a guy named Jughead is just off to the side wearing a crown and eating hamburgers.
Though it was an odd concept to some, the first season of Riverdale worked, remaining faithful to the Archie world, incorporating characters like high school teacher Mrs. Grundy (though they changed her appearance and made her, uh, sexy) and Archie’s main rival Reggie Mantle. The show drew comparisons to Twin Peaks for its initial main storyline that featured a shocking unsolved murder occurring in a small town where the residents are convinced that nothing bad ever happens (the fact that Twin Peaks star Mädchen Amick plays Betty’s mom helps a little, too).
But even Twin Peaks went off the rails, leaving behind its gritty soap opera roots and delving into doppelgängers, tulpas, and alternate timelines. The thing is, when it comes to David Lynch's work, we expect chaos. With Riverdale, the descent from serious teen whodunnit drama into a balls-to-the-wall paranormal fantasy that brings people back from the dead, causes Catholic nuns to commit mass suicide, and gives every single main character their own superpowers, all while semi-frequently having them break out into song and dance, was, uh, unexpected.
But that‘s just it: Riverdale doesn’t want you to have expectations. It doesn’t care about articles that criticize its campy dialogue or the fact that its own actors can‘t seem to discuss their own characters’ story arcs without rolling their eyes in disgust.
The more critically panned Riverdale becomes, the more the show leans into chaos. Oh, you didn’t like that Archie ended up in a Fight Club-style trial-by-combat in the basement of a prison in season 2? That’s fine. How about Cheryl Blossom tying him to a wooden stake and carving out his still-beating heart in front of a crowd of cheering townspeople in some Ari Aster’s Midsommar-esque autumn festival? Also fine. Not into the kiddos doing a production of both Heathers and Carrie: The Musical where the episode features multiple performances of musical numbers and pretty much ignores everything else that they’ve been building up throughout the season? Okay, what if we age the cast about ten years and have the now thirty-something gals break out randomly into an original song about the importance of matching food with fashion? There is no "when they go low, we go high" in the 'Dark Archie' universe. When the critics go low, Riverdale goes to hell – literally.
In all fairness, the source material – those little checkout counter comic books that have Archie and co. on the front and some sort of crossword puzzle on the back – have always been camp. The weirdness dates back to a 1965 issue where Betty tries to murder Archie by chopping down a tree, for seemingly no reason at all. Then there was Archie’s Datebook in 1981, which was written with the intention of promoting Christianity to young readers, and involved Betty not only having direct communication with God but literally 'going steady' with Jesus. In 1990, Jughead’s Diner saw him running a restaurant inhabited by aliens and supernatural creatures. This eventually led to a spinoff comic called Jughead’s Time Police. And then there were the weird crossover spinoffs like Archie Meets The Punisher and Archie vs. Predator, both very real comics.
We can blame Riverdale’s eventual turn to weirdness on none other than Sabrina Spellman, everyone’s favorite half-witch half-mortal who lives in nearby Greendale with her two baby-eating aunts. The series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, developed by Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, hit Netflix in 2018 with the intention of being a companion series to Riverdale. Coincidentally, Sabrina started airing at the same time as Riverdale's third season, when things got a little darker in the premiere and revved up to 100 by episode three, and further since.
Fans and hate-watchers agree: season 3 was the turning point for Riverdale, the one that solidified its reputation as 'that' show – the one that’s weird and bad and poorly written but somehow still one of the most-watched Netflix shows of all time and saved The CW, making it a profitable network again after The Vampire Diaries came to an end.
Season 3 reintroduced us to The Farm, which quickly went from weird almost-cult to full-out Jonestown society where the nuns who run the Sisters of Mercy asylum get caught poisoning their patients with a drug called 'Fizzle Rocks'. It's also the season where the show started ‘experimenting’ with its format. Archie and friends start playing a tabletop role play fantasy game called Gryphons and Gargoyles, which they end up using as a self-referential plot device throughout the season and, by the end, the in-game villain The Gargoyle King becomes a real monster they must defeat. It should come as no surprise that the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Stranger Things, about a group of teens who deal with the supernatural, was setting Netflix viewing records around the same time.
After completely leaving behind the tabletop game, Riverdale took inspiration from Stranger Things once more in season 6 when the series introduced Rivervale, an ‘opposite version’ (read: upside down version) of Riverdale. Then the series introduced aliens called The Moth Men (not to be confused with West Virginia cryptid The Moth Man, but similar) and introduced the so-called 'Daredevil' arc, in which Jughead becomes deaf after an accident and suddenly gains the ability to read minds. Meanwhile, Betty can see auras, Cheryl is pyrokinetic, and good ol' Sabrina pops into town and turns the gals into witches on top of previously becoming X-Men style mutants.
Riverdale might just be the biggest, most beautiful mess on television right now. Who else is throwing everything – not anything, everything – at the wall and seeing what sticks? And even if it doesn’t stick, the writers tend to just kind of go with it anyway. Riverdale doesn’t care how many quotes make it to your top ten cringe list or if literally any single one of its storylines makes one single semblance of sense. The show is an agent of chaos, one that asks, "Are you not entertained?"
