It’s over! Riverdale officially aired its final episode and a lot of fan questions were answered as viewers said goodbye to Archie Andrews (KJ Apa) and the gang.
Ahead of the final season’s premiere, fans geared up for some major nostalgia. Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa initially teased that the last episodes were “most associated with Archie Comics,” while chatting with Deadline in March 2023. Considering the final season was mainly set in the 1950s, there was a lot to think about when it came to the major plot lines.
“It would have been disingenuous to erase the real struggles and the real hardships that a lot of people in the 1950s faced, especially for our queer characters and our characters of color,” Roberto explained, noting that “the big bad would be the 1950s and society itself — how conformist it was, how repressive it was, how homophobic it was, how racist it was, how sexist it was.”
Wanting to lean into the nostalgia, the cast and crew wanted a fresh new way to bring the characters back to high school. And time traveling back a few decades was the best way to do that!
“It felt that would allow us to go back to high school in a fresh way and get back to the original thesis of the show, which is that the Archie Comics present in a wholesome, innocent, all American kind of way, but that there might be some darker themes and darker issues and more primal desires and impulses roiling underneath the surface,” Roberto explained. “The ‘50s is a great decade to explore that.”
When it comes to the show’s stars, they’ve all spoken candidly about Riverdale coming to an end and moving on from the roles they’ve held for years.
“I would like it to end with the whole gang together. Not separated. It’d be really beautiful if we’re just like all together,” Vanessa Morgan told J-14 exclusively in August 2022 about her character, Toni Topaz’s ending. “I don’t know what that looks like. I would love to meet more of my family. So far, we’ve only met a grandmother and a grandfather. Do I have siblings? We’ve never touched on that. Where’s my mom? Where’s my dad? I would love to touch more on that.”
Scroll through our gallery for a breakdown of all the biggest bombshells and spoilers from Riverdale season 7.
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