Riverdale goes back to the '50s in first-look photos of the final season
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In season 5, when Riverdale implemented a seven-year time jump, there was talk of tearing down the series' high school sets. "It didn't feel right," showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa tells EW. Cut to season 7, and suddenly, those sets are back in play in a major way.
In the season 6 finale, Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) successfully destroyed the comet that was threatening Riverdale's very existence, but in doing so, Riverdale was somehow transported back to the 1950s. Not only are Archie (KJ Apa) and co. back in high school, but Jughead (Cole Sprouse) is the only one who remembers their previous lives. So yeah, it's a good thing they kept those sets. "I'm so grateful we didn't [tear them down]," Aguirre-Sacasa says. "This conceit for season 7 feels both very unexpected and yet completely inevitable."
Bettina Strauss/The CW Vanessa Morgan as Toni Topaz, Madelaine Petsch as Cheryl Blossom, Lili Reinhart as Betty Cooper and Camila Mendes as Veronica Lodge in 'Riverdale'
EW has the exclusive first look at the series' final season, which dives into everything the '50s has to offer. "Thank god the '50s were as crazy as they were, because it's been so fun to be in that world," Aguirre-Sacasa says. "Every season we explore the tropes of a specific genre, be it supernatural, be it pulp, be it crime. This year our genre is the 1950s, so we're in dialogue with the American myth of what the 1950s were versus the reality."
Although Aguirre-Sacasa says the "essence" of each character is the same, there will be some big differences. For starters, Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) is not a New Yorker. "In season 1, Veronica arrived from New York, and in the 1950s, she's arrived from Los Angeles," he says. "She grew up in 1950s Hollywood, so it's similar but different from season 1. She's still an outsider and a socialite, very different from everyone else."
Michael Courtney/The CW Camila Mendes in 'Riverdale'
And Archie isn't quite the same teenager who once went toe-to-toe with a bear. "Archie feels much more innocent than we've ever depicted him on Riverdale," Aguirre-Sacasa says. "When we meet Archie here, he is a clean cut, 1950s teen. We describe him a little bit as a Richie Cunningham-type from Happy Days and he's on his own journey. He's a more innocent, romantic kind of character."
Michael Courtney/The CW Madelaine Petsch and KJ Apa in 'Riverdale'
Speaking of romance, the show has managed to find a way to reset the many relationships it has built over the previous six seasons. "That's been really fun," Aguirre-Sacasa says. "There's not so much history and fraught baggage. There's a lightness to the show. It's been a great way to get back to basics, which is the kids in high school discovering themselves, the kids having their first times. We can discover these moments or revisit moments that we've explored in the past in a completely different context."
But no matter what time period Riverdale exists in, viewers can expect there to be music. And this time, Fangs (Drew Tanner) is the one on stage. "Fangs is sort of our greaser rocker. He's a little bit like a Ritchie Valens character in our universe," Aguirre-Sacasa says.
Bettina Strauss/The CW Drew Ray Tanner in 'Riverdale'
And then there's Jughead, the only character aware that something has gone very, very wrong. "The first episode is Jughead's story," Aguirre-Sacasa says. "It's him asking, 'What do I do with the fact that I'm the only one who remembers our lives before the comet hit?' And that gets resolved at the end of episode 1. But you get to see Cole playing the Jughead we've known, and then you get to see Cole putting on a 1950s persona."
And if Jughead didn't have enough on his plate with figuring out how they're all suddenly living in the past, Aguirre-Sacasa says there's another mystery coming. "Something very, very dark happens at the end of episode 2," he teases.
Bettina Strauss/The CW
And yet, the showrunner wouldn't say the final season has a villain, per se. "It's more about our characters finding their way in the constricting, dark realities of the 1950s, trying to discover themselves in a really repressive, conformist, homophobic, racist world," he says. "The biggest struggle is our characters trying to live authentic individualistic lives during a time period where that was really hard to do."
After six seasons of serial killers, cult leaders, witches, comets, and Hiram Lodge (Mark Consuelos), does that mean Riverdale's final season might be its most tame? Perhaps "tame" is the wrong word. "It's probably, weirdly, our most grounded season," Aguirre-Sacasa says.
Riverdale season 7 premieres in spring 2023 on the CW.
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