It’s official, Riverdale Season 4 is over. As fans know, the show was forced to shut down production on the fourth season due to the current coronavirus pandemic, so the season’s 19th episode — which aired on Wednesday, May 6 — acted as a makeshift finale until production for Season 5 can start.
Although viewers didn’t find out who’s sending seriously creepy videotapes to Riverdale residents, we did finally say goodbye to Mr. Honey. But don’t worry, guys, the kids didn’t murder him! The hated principal decided to move on to bigger and better things — teaching at Stonewall Prep. Now that the episode has finally aired and the major cliffhanger fans were promised has been served up, showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has a lot to say about Season 4’s final episode, and even teased what we can expect to see in Season 5.
As it turned out, the cast and crew had actually filmed “about half or two-thirds of Episode 20” before they stopped production. So, why didn’t, what he called “our senior prom episode,” act as the finale? Well, Roberto explained that there was still a lot of important aspects missing.
“There were so many scenes between Betty and Jughead, and Archie and Veronica, which we hadn’t shot, that it felt like, ‘Let’s let that episode be.’ And then I saw the cut of Episode 19, which I loved,” he explained during an interview with TVLine. “The fun thing about [Episode] 19 is all of the kids are in the story together, which is very rare for us. It had a really fun conceit that made it feel special, which is the story that Jughead is writing. And it had a really shocking, gruesome cliffhanger, which really took the videotape mystery to the next level. So I thought, ‘You know what? Since we are cutting the season short, maybe the best thing to do is end with [Episode] 19, which is a really strong, fun episode, and then come back and have prom as our season premiere next season.’ So we made that decision, and I’m feeling good about it.”
Naturally, fans have wondered if they’ll ever get to see the missing Season 4 episodes. According to the showrunner himself, the answer is yes!
“Since we have such big events like prom and graduation, and we’d already written [Episodes] 21 and 22… they’re big, emotional episodes, and there’s a lot of stuff with the characters that we’re still playing out, so it felt like maybe what we’ll do is start with the last three episodes,” he shared. “After being with the kids at the high school for four years, you kind of don’t want to take graduation away from them. So what we’re doing is picking up right where we left off for the first three episodes.”
Because of this, Skeet Ulrich and Marisol Nichols — who have announced they won’t be returning for the fifth season of the CW show — will appear briefly in Season 5, so their characters can get the sendoff they deserve.
“I reached out to Marisol and Skeet and said that we haven’t finished those stories, and we want to make sure that you guys have great sendoffs,” he added. “The truth of it is, and this isn’t a spoiler, but neither Hermione nor F.P. are being killed. So my hope is that they are a part of Riverdale in a real way as long as there’s a Riverdale.”
Finally, Roberto touched on the question that’s on everyone’s mind — is #Barchie done for good?
“The answer is no. We’ve definitely not seen the last of that story,” he teased. “We haven’t seen the end of that story by a long shot.”
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