it's finally over.
for some reason, i watched all of riverdale. i caught up in season three and watched almost weekly for the entire rest of it. i dont think it's a "good" show. but it's usually a "fun" show. it's a spectacle. every week is like watching writers improvise an episode of television using only a two-sentence summary of the previous episode as their prompt. entire seasons of television will happen in single episode.
in this post im going to be spoiling things. i honestly don't think this matters. riverdale is an unspoilable show. it's impossible to spoil a show where any given event has no relationship to any of the events before it. if you already know who the black hood is (the big mystery of season two), does it matter? nope. the writers didn't know who it was at that point either. key facts they use to figure out The Mystery are simply untrue at the beginning of the season. nothing matters. it's about being along for the ride.
this post is mostly gonna be a summary of the show with my own thoughts mixed in and especially whining about season 7. i need to get this out of my system. i need you to understand that i am skipping a LOT of stuff in my summaries here. truly it is impossible for me to cover even a quarter of what happens in any given season.
i do want to say: if you watched riverdale but fell off at ANY point. please watch season 6 of the show. season 6 kicks an insane amount of ass. it begins with an alternate universe where magic and the devil is real. and then they go back to the regular universe where magic is still real and everyone has superpowers.
if you haven't seen any riverdale. just watch season 1 and then go straight to season 6 if you dont feel like watching the rest. it'll be awesome, trust me.
riverdale is a show that only goes up (well, ignoring season 7. ill get to that). but i dont really mean in the quality sense. more in the homestuck sense. the first season is Junior Twin Peaks about a murder that rocks a small town and whether or not archie will choose football or music. will betty confess her crush to archie?
season two is about a serial killer called the black hood that murders some random characters. he turns out to be betty's dad. a season or two later betty turns out to have "The Darkness" inside her because of her "Serial Killer Genes".
season three is about a cult that worships a seemingly-supernatural entity called the Gargoyle King. betty sees her mom and sister make babies float above a fire. there are more murders. the gargoyle turns out to not be magic and just a guy. they never acknowledge how the babies were floating. also there is a cult called The Farm that like 90% of the secondary cast joins for some reason that turns out to be harvesting their organs. honestly i completely forgot this was in the same season as the gargoyle king until i looked at wikipedia.
i had no memory of what the overall arc of season 4 is. there are more murders. jughead goes to a Pretentious Private School. betty's mom kills the guy leading the cult which is preceded by one of the best riverdale screenshots of all time:
in season 5 they timeskip so the character ages more or less line up with the actor ages. archie joins the army and goes to "War". "War" seems to mean he participated in world war 1. in uzbekistan. yup. betty joins the fbi and is haunted by a serial killer called the tbk (trash bag killer). they come back to riverdale to be teachers or whatever so they can continue using the pretense of "being at school" to keep them together. jughead investigates some alien abductions by "moth men". it turns out to not be aliens and just some guys in the woods. at the end of the season archie's house gets fucking blown up.
season 6 is truly something else. it opens with a 5 episode special called "Rivervale". Which is an alternate reality where magic and witches and THE LITERAL DEVIL is real. cheryl has her grandmother's soul transfered to her body. with the help of sabrina from the television series "the chilling adventures of sabrina" (who is a witch). jughead LITERALLY goes alan wake mode and starts writing the television show "riverdale" back into existence.
back in riverdale in episode 6. we learn that rivervale is BLEEDING INTO REALITY. the cast has superpowers. archie is denser and indestructible. betty can see...serial killer auras. jughead can read minds. veronica's bodily fluids are poisonous. cheryl is a pyromancer. tabitha is "chronokinetic" (she can time travel). at one point tabitha drinks a milkshake out of the honest-to-god for-real holy grail to make it back to the present day from the 40s. she becomes a literal angel. an agent of the devil is sowing chaos and attempting to build a train of the damned to hell using (and this is a huge plot point) NON UNION LABOR and ILLEGAL UNION BREAKING PRACTICES. Archie sings Bread and Roses to form labor solidarity. Sabrina shows up and puts her dead boyfriend from her own tv show into jugheads body so they can go on a date and make out a bit. they try to combine their superpowers to prevent a comet from obliterating riverdale and they fail.
this season rocks. it's riverdale getting to be everything it ever wanted. it always hinted at magic stuff but never went all the way and they finally committed. this is how it should've ended.
in season 7 it is the 1950s. and riverdale just...happens again. jughead is initially the only one that remembers the future but soon angel tabitha makes him forget too. theyre in high school again. kevin is gay and tries to reckon with that. betty is...too horny for the 50s sensibilities and that causes trouble. archie just doesnt know if he wants to write poetry or play basketball. cheryl is gay and tries to reckon with that. there is No Magic. there is Nothing New.
they just try to "do the show again but it's in the 50s". but they already DID THE SHOW!! i watched SIX SEASONS OF THE SHOW!!!!!! WE KNEW KEVIN WAS GAY IN THE LITERAL FIRST LINE THAT CAME OUT OF HIS MOUTH IN THE FIRST EPISODE WHY ARE WE REHASHING THIS!!! this season is boring. riverdale is never a good show but i cannot forgive it for being boring. the musical episode made me mad. the line "if only there was a pill that could let women enjoy sex without fear of getting pregnant" made me incandescent. they try to make the season about racism and sexism and homophobia but it falls flat because it's riverdale. bad. the season ends by them all watching the literal tv show riverdale (angel tabitha came back at the end) and "only remembering the good parts" together. we learn that archie/jughead/betty/veronica all ended up in a poly quad in senior year and then you learn how everyone died. you watch betty die of old age on screen. she goes to heaven, which is pop's diner with all of her friends in the 50s.
i'd personally consider that to be hell.
