Riverdale Went Full High School Musical For Final Musical Episode, But Archie Andrews Is No Troy Bolton

Spoilers ahead for Episode 14 of Riverdale Season 7, called “Archie the Musical.”

The weeks are counting down before Riverdale comes to an end on The CW in the 2023 TV schedule, but there was time for one final musical episode. This time, Kevin decided to write his own musical based on his high school classmates rather than just do Oklahoma like every other ‘50s-era high school. Archie was at the center of his original vision for the show, and I was getting major High School Musical vibes… until it became very clear that Riverdale wasn’t giving Archie Andrews a storyline worthy of HSM's Troy Bolton.

Sure, there were major surface similarities between Archie in “Archie the Musical” and Troy in all three HSM films – particularly High School Musical 3: Senior Year – with Zac Efron’s character trying to choose between musical theater and basketball. In the Riverdale episode, Archie felt that he had to choose between focusing on basketball and his poetry. He also was torn between Betty and Veronica, which is similar to Troy in High School Musical 2 if you squint at what Gabriella represented vs. what Sharpay represented.

Throw in how “Archie the Musical” was a combination of songs written for a student-run musical and fantasy sequences, and this really could have been a fun homage to the High School Musical movies. It certainly had me flashing back to my days of loving HSM, and I’m an adult now! Instead, we got an episode with a musical about Archie that made Archie seem more like the comic relief than the protagonist.

Part of this is due to the fact that Archie’s problems seemed kind of trivial compared to what Kevin, Clay, Cheryl, and Toni were facing with hiding their sexualities in the wake of Riverdale High's red scare, and the stakes felt lower than what Betty and Veronica were going through with each other. I even felt a few pangs of secondhand embarrassment when he announced to his two traditional love interests that he’s going to try not to kiss anyone for a while, then exited with “Later, gators!”

I’m not sure if it’s because KJ Apa seems to be camping it up in Season 7 more than others in the cast or just because Riverdale was going strong on a Betty/Archie love reconnection for much of the season before a hard swerve, but it just made me want to check back in with Kevin and see what he was up to. It also feels like Riverdale has played out the Betty/Archie/Veronica love triangle enough with only a handful of episodes left and no choice made. Honestly, it especially seems off after Archie and Betty were settled on each other in Season 6. Troy Bolton would never!

In all seriousness, I can admit that it may be a little unfair of me to hold the characters to their adult decisions in Season 6 now that they’ve been de-aged to teenagers, but I wanted Archie to make up his mind more in this musical and feel more like a protagonist than there for the laughs. Even though the final musical number was solid for all the characters, I would say that the best songs belonged to others in the cast, and it could have been a better episode if it was “Kevin the Musical.”

Am I projecting because this episode was the first to air after the news that Riverdale is never leaving the ‘50s to return to the timeline of the end of Season 6? Maybe, but I just wish that there was more of a logical progression between episodes this season… and I wish that if Riverdale planned to explore Betty/Veronica, it had happened sooner than the back half of the show’s final season.

For now, you can keep tuning in to The CW on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET for the remaining episodes of Riverdale, and find the first six seasons streaming via a Netflix subscription. If you want to revisit how Troy Bolton handled his musical conundrums, you can find all three High School Musical movies and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series with a Disney+ subscription!