Six and a half years ago, the CW filled a hole in its midyear programming schedule with a series that sounded like a parody of industry trends. “A gritty, supernaturally tinged, firmly PG-13 reimagining of the Archie Comics mythos” was the clearest way to describe Riverdale to those incredulous about its existence. The smiley-faced comic-book icons Betty, Veronica and Jughead had been turned into telegenic twentysomething teens with county-sized libidos in a show that was also a sprawling soap opera with a liberated relationship to reality, the finest specimen of its genre in its era.
Archie did much more than share a steamy car hookup with his teacher Miss Grundy in the pilot. Over the six-season broadcast run concluding with this Wednesday’s finale, members of the good-time gang went to war, escaped from a derelict mental asylum, traveled through time, hopped across multiple dimensions, braved the treacherous terrain of undergrad creative writing seminars, developed and kicked drug addiction, maneuvered through corporate espionage, staged multiple musicals, joined the FBI, made the acquaintance of Andy Cohen, and learned to appreciate the epic highs and lows of high-school football. The mission drift from the first season’s purview of classroom intrigue blossomed into an absurd running joke, with life-and-death, fate-of-the-planet stakes often contrasted against despair over unrequited crushes or stress about prom. Cheryl Blossom arrived on the scene as the one-liner-spitting queen bee at Riverdale high, spent a while as a Grey Gardens-style shut-in, pivoted to a sapphic demi-deity, and will soon end her arc as the leader of an all-girl squad of greasers circa 1955.
