[Feature] You Were Bigger Than the Whole Sky: Saying Farewell to Riverdale, One of TV's Weirdest and Most Joyous Shows

Ah, Riverdale. The only show where you can say “remember when the nuns who ran the Sisters of Quiet Mercy dosed teenagers with Fizzle Rocks so they’d hallucinate the Gargoyle King?” and people who don’t watch it won’t be able to tell if you’re lying. Even if you haven’t seen Riverdale, you’re peripherally aware of it. We've all seen the zany out-of-context screencaps of its unexpected twists and turns because goddamn, this show keeps you on your toes. As you watch, you can’t help but yell, equal parts gleeful and baffled, “Wait, how is this happening? What does this mean?!” 

To be clear, I mean this in the best way possible. Despite what the naysayers insist, Riverdale didn’t slip and fall into what it is. It isn’t without purpose or direction. Every mind-boggling out-of-context snippet makes sense within the lawless universe of the show. The campy, self-aware intentions are very clear, and they match the result! We’ve all heard the phrase “committing to the bit,” and I don’t know if there’s ever been a show in the history of television that understands this better than Riverdale. 

In an era where many mainstream TV shows have a fraught relationship with their own intentions and identity (I’m looking at you, Ryan Murphy), it’s refreshing to see one that goes all in on its whimsy and camp, having pure fun with it the whole way through. People throw around the word “camp” carelessly these days, hardly aware of its definition any more than the clueless celebs walking into the Met Ball in a sequined mini dress and Prada heels, but Riverdale is legit. It earns the moniker and goes hard as it keeps winning the title back, year after year, wacky musical episode after wacky musical episode, homage that goes so deep, it’s sometimes almost shot-for-shot (that Zodiac tribute scene, anyone?) 

And like all true products of camp, it looks incredible. The devil works hard, but the costuming and production design teams of Riverdale work harder. I could spend all day talking about my favorite sets, but the interior of Pop’s and the 1950s version of the Coopers’ kitchen are two beautiful examples:

Riverdale gave me a smile that refused to fade throughout all seven seasons, and it distracted me from The Horrors more than anything else I’ve watched. I mean, it’s hard to think about our gradual, dystopian slide into global collapse when Jughead is doing Rod Serling-style narration as he walks you through Riverdale’s parallel universe Rivervale, which is under siege by the Devil himself. Now that this beloved show has come to an end, I’d like to reflect on a few of my favorite moments, not only the reasons it was a blast, but also why it wasn’t just a bizarre romp. 

Like, I could tell you about the time Betty’s fake half brother and real half brother broke out of prison and stopped by the Cooper house to get married in the living room or the time Veronica was a human dialysis machine, but… there have been many lists like that. I just want to talk about why this show makes me giddy in a childlike way I didn’t know was possible anymore. Because Riverdale was more than the sum of its outlandish parts; it made us care deeply about its characters, making it hard to say goodbye when the curtain finally closed. 

The first season is a fairly straightforward murder mystery, a Twin Peaks-esque unveiling of the town’s secrets and seedy underbelly as we find out who killed Jason Blossom, but as anyone who knows the evolution of this show will tell you, Riverdale quickly pivoted into increasingly weirder territory. And while that disappointed some, those of us who were along for the ride gobbled it up like a Pop’s milkshake. There were early hints of things to come (Dark Betty in her wig, digging her nails into her palms), and I think the moment when I really became a devotee of this show was the Zodiac homage.

One of my favorite things about Riverdale is how its references are pop culture nerd catnip that casts a wide net of inspiration; it becomes adjacent to those masterful 90s cartoons stuffed with jokes that sail over children’s heads and keep the parents entertained. The main season two antagonist is the Black Hood, a killer who seeks to punish the corrupt, immoral residents of the town. He leaves manifestos and ciphers just like the Zodiac Killer, and if you’ve seen David Fincher’s Zodiac film, you may remember that supremely creepy scene of two teenagers parked on lover’s lane at night, the Zodiac Killer pulling up behind them, calmly walking up to their car, and shooting them as Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” plays. 

In season two, Riverdale recreates this scene in the glorious, Douglas Sirk-inspired saturated color palette the earlier seasons employed so well, the teenagers backlit in red and blue as they are gunned down to a different Donovan song, “Season of the Witch.” I remember watching that for the first time and thinking “oh okay, this show is for weirdos and nerds. This show is for me.” Little did I know how much further Riverdale would go with their references, always straddling the lines of homage and parody, paying their respects to so many of my favorite shows, movies, and books that I began to feel like they were reaching into my brain and pulling out my exact desires. 

For me, the peak of this was in season four, when Jughead gets into a prestigious boarding school called Stonewall Prep, and we embark on a storyline that is a full-on Donna Tartt/The Secret History homage (parody? Again, who can really say?) There is, I kid you not, a character named Bret Weston Wallis instead of Bret Easton Ellis, and a whip-smart, sinister lesbian-coded character named… Donna Sweett. Sweett! With two Ts! This storyline is replete with Secret History references, from the Ides of March party in the woods that’s clearly a nod to the book’s bacchanal to the secret society Quill and Skull to the handful of students in the society who attempt to murder a classmate. When season four aired, I don’t think many fifteen year olds watching knew the origin of this plotline, but there’s been a huge surge in interest in The Secret History among Tumblr teens. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is partly why!

Also, if anyone goes to a Donna Tartt Q & A and wants to ask her if she’s aware of Riverdale and the fact that they did this, I will definitely buy you a pizza. Please take a picture of her reaction for me.

Circling back to the Twin Peaks vibe of season one, the Lynchian influence is stamped all over this show: Jason Blossom's murder, the Badalamenti-esque theme song, the lovely Madchen Amick playing Alice Cooper, Betty’s mother. But near the end of season four, someone is sending the Cooper family tapes of people who are wearing masks of the Riverdale main characters, someone in a Betty mask bludgeoning a fake Jughead to death. As Jughead tries to solve this mystery, he ends up questioning the owner of Blue Velvet Video who is wearing a nametag that literally says “David” and is doing the most spot-on imitation of Daddy David Lynch’s (I’ll call him that if I want) specific speech patterns. Oh, and there’s a backroom in this video store called The Scarlet Suite (a nod to the Red Room, naturally) that houses many contraband videotapes similar to the ones that have been mysteriously delivered to the Coopers’ doorstep. And it looks like this: 

Again, they just do what they want in this show, and I envy that creative freedom. If it sounds like they’re art school kids passing a joint around the campfire and using all their stoned ideas, no matter how nonsensical or obvious they are… to quote Ariana Grande, “and what about it?” In a way, it feels like the original work environment that’s closest to the full throttle freedom of fanfiction. It’s very no-holds barred, and I lost count of the times I pointed at the screen like Leo in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, feeling like all these choices were tailor-made for my maximum amusement.

Returning to the idea of “the intentions match the result,” some people slam the dialogue of this show, but Riverdale’s off-beat, quippy lines are always a delight, continuing the tradition of beloved shows like Buffy or Gilmore Girls that also possessed their own unique vernacular. Every actor commits to it one-hundred percent. One need only watch Cheryl Blossom (played by the wonderful Madelaine Petsch) effortlessly delivering lines like “Time to catch this septuagenarian saboteur crimson-handed” and “Riddle me this, hair models of the damned, why is Veronica’s mother having a clandestine tete-a-tete with a Southside Serpent behind a dumpster at Pop’s?” as though they’re Shakespearean gems to know we’re in the presence of greatness. Real life products, companies, and people have fake names in Riverdale too, and the more you watch, you start catching them all like little Easter eggs or should I say Glamergé eggs (if you know, you know).

The Grindr app is Grind'em, Dean & Deluca is Bean & Beluga, Ray Bradbury is Brad Rayberry, the list goes on and on. But, inexplicably, some things from real life keep their actual names. Quentin Tarantino comes up as does Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Holden Caulfield. Why? What’s the logic here? There is none or haven’t you been paying attention? You either sign the dotted line on the waiver for this incredible, one-of-a-kind ride or you don’t. Irony-pilled viewers need not apply! You can feel the levity and passion for playfulness coming through the screen, and that’s a joyful, rare experience if you’re willing to set your logic hat on the shelf and strap in. 

But honestly, this show is also smarter than people give it credit for. Beneath all the “anything goes” comic book energy of the supernatural plotlines and twisty mysteries where they throw the spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, there is a dissection of the underbelly of smalltown America that often hits the nail on the head. As a wonderful poet and Twitter pal once said, “...it’s an intelligent deconstruction of what I call Americanana, the obsession with and exaltation of Americana.” While this was done in many ways over the course of the show—Betty’s father being the Black Hood serial killer, the Blossom family’s gothic mansion filled with secrets and lies, the Gryphons & Gargoyles plotline referencing the Satanic Panic of the 80s—the final season, set in 1955, really took this to task on a lot of levels, my favorite being the way they tackled sexual desire/sexual orientation under a time of oppression. 

Right now, we’re smack dab in the middle of a rise in puritanical talking points. Book bannings sweeping the nation, young queer folks want to ban kink and leather at Pride, condemning taboo fiction, especially queer fiction dealing with dark themes, as “harmful,” while favoring “wholesome” depictions of queerness instead. Riverdale decided to depict this in a few different ways. Jughead was dealing with McCarthyism, writing for Pep Comics (a stand-in for EC Comics) and fighting the content bans and control from the powers that be, eventually circulating comics underground when all else failed. Betty was exploring her sexuality through reading “Kingsley's Guide to Human Sexuality” (meant to be a play on Alfred Kinsey’s work, of course. Fake Riverdale names forever.) and becoming a teenage advice columnist who gives voice to the repressed desires of young women.

Kevin gets a new boyfriend named Clay, and through the underground clubs and private spaces the teens cultivate over the course of the season, Cheryl, Kevin, Toni and Clay all find ways to be who they really are when the world is against them, the latter two not only as queer people but as Black teenagers trying to survive in a tumultuous time. Riverdale started off with a few beloved queer characters (namely Kevin and Cheryl), but season seven played with pairing up all kinds of characters until the configurations looked like your local lesbian hookup chart with yarn and pushpins on a bedroom wall. Reggie and Archie had a threesome with Twyla Twist and exchanged “I love you”s as they watched the sunrise together! It was definitely the queerest season of them all, and that was such a fantastic surprise. 

When I realized every queer character would have to be closeted on account of the season taking place in the 50s, I was worried. But this final season focuses not only on the oppressive forces affecting them, but how they create their own spaces, languages and freedom of expression within that space, which are stories that deserve to be told. It was a celebration of living your truth when everyone around you is trying to squash it, of how marginalized people find each other in times of strife, building not just romantic relationships but lasting friendships.

There’s a really beautiful episode where Cheryl and Toni take private pinup photos together, a lovely nod to the queer tradition of using home videos and photos to secretly document your life when it isn’t allowed to be out in the open. At a time when far too many people would rather ignore the rampant domino effect of book banning, censorship, and anti LGBT+ legislation, it was refreshing that Riverdale was unafraid to show how important it is, to remind us that time is cyclical in this way; the battles of yesterday are the battles of today. It wasn’t shy about it either. The queerness wasn’t delivered in cheeky little hints and cutaways. It was bold, brash, undeniable. These characters were horny for each other and eager to live their authentic lives. And they got happy endings! Long, full, gay as hell lives!

Which brings me to the finale. How does one end a show with multiverses and timeline crossovers, a show where canon is a chaotic river with too many tributaries to count? With one final perfect homage, of course. For most of this last season, the characters were not aware of their previous timelines and messy, complicated past, but in the second to last episode, their memories were returned to them. (If I get into the convoluted how and why of this, we’ll be here all day, but trust that it was some classically weird, delightful Riverdale-ness! Frankly, I don’t think any other show or film born from comic books captures the “anything can happen” imagination of comics the way this show did.) 

In the finale, we meet up with an eighty-six year old Betty who wishes to see Riverdale one last time. She’s the last of the gang to still be alive, and a sort of angel/ghost Jughead returns her to her teenage self, letting her live through a memorable high school day, catching up with all of her friends one last time. As she encounters each of them, Jughead tells her how everyone’s future plays out, showing flash-forwards of their lives and also letting us know how they die. That’s right: Riverdale did its own twist on the Six Feet Under finale, and it somehow incorporated everything that was special about the show. 

We had unexpected surprises (Jughead/Veronica/Archie/Betty polycule for the win!), impeccable sets and costumes, we tipped into the supernatural, and we got to say goodbye to all the characters we loved in a way that was far from ridiculous or laughable. It was real and sincere, and that’s the magic of Riverdale: seamlessly weaving the sincere alongside the absurd, making us all fall in love with not only its unique, mystical atmosphere, but with the beautiful, very human characters within it. Yes, the show’s zaniness worked because it was self-aware and put all the chips on the table, but you have to love the characters to buy into the world. And we really, really did, didn’t we? 

The weaving of multiple timelines might defy all logic, but isn’t it also a reminder of how every choice shapes your entire future, how just one pivot makes an entirely different reality, and wouldn't it be great if you could live in and remember them all? Riverdale at its core was a celebration of youth and possibility, the endless capacity for imagination and the boundless nature of storytelling, the limitless potential to do anything and everything. Seeing elderly Betty die and enter Pop’s in the afterlife, her youth returned to her for all eternity, her friends waiting for her with her favorite milkshake ready to sip, was a poignant reminder that we are somehow both infinite and extremely finite, and isn't that beautiful? Shouldn't you treasure it all for that very reason? And maybe if the afterlife exists, it's all of the people you love gathered in the warmest, safest place you can think of. 

Honestly, the way this series finale dealt with mortality was every bit as cathartic as Six Feet Under. I was a weepy mess, but I felt anything but bereft. I was sated and reverent.

To quote part of the finale that made my tears gush:

"I don't want to say goodbye." 

"That's life, Betty. You say hello, you walk alongside someone for a while, and then you say goodbye. That's the arc of a life, isn't it?"

Goodbye, Riverdale. I’ll choose to remember you not only as a strange, winding journey that was never dull and never predictable, but as an ode to youth and life, all of its mess and all of its glory. Thanks for the memories.