So far on Riverdale, there’s been a lot of information about the fallout from what happened on July 4th weekend, but not a lot of insight into what the town of Riverdale used to be before it all went downhill.
During a recent interview, series star Cole Sprouse, who plays Jughead, said that his character was “obsessed” with old Riverdale, implying (as does the show’s opening narration) that, at least on the surface, the Riverdale that ws there when Betty left town was markedly more similar to the one fans know from the traditional Archie Comics.
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One thing that’s worth noting, although it’s not going to make the list, is the fact that these stories were clearly drawn before everyone involved had access to the Riverdale pilot. The resemblances are all over the map, which isn’t entirely unexpected for a book of this sort anyway, but little things like Grundy’s car (still a VW bug, but here a newer model rather than vintage) or Polly’s room (very, very different from what you see in the show) are way off.
Maybe the most obvious one is Pop Tate, who looks markedly different in the Archie story versus the Jughead one. Neither one looks much like the guy on TV, but that’s less jarring than the fact that they don’t look anything like one another, and they’re in the same comic.
Well, let’s take a dive into the Riverdale one-shot, and see what the biggest takeaways were.
More Riverdale: Ashleigh Murray on performing in the classic Josie costume | Riverdale teases Afterlife With Archie | Camila Mendes: Veronica wants to trust her parents, but can’t | Lili Reinhart shoots down a popular fan theory
Riverdale airs Thursday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
ARCHIE CALLS BETTY HIS “SWEETHEART”
In the pilot for Riverdale, Archie Andrews seems genuinely blindsided when he’s told the thing everyone around him already knows: that Betty Cooper has a crush on him.
It would be one thing if Archie, still swirling with emotions surrounding his relationship with his music teacher Miss Grundy, were to just tell Betty that he couldn’t emotionally be there, or that he couldn’t give her what she needs — things that he ultimately says — but the absolute bafflement at the idea that Betty would see him that way runs counter not only to decades of their comic book mythology (which, okay, isn’t actually canon on Riverdale), but also to Archie’s own words in the one-shot, where he refers to Betty as “my longtime sweetheart,” in talking about how his biggest relationships were forever changed over the summer.
That’s, uhh, a little bit of a disconnect there buddy.
CORPORATE DETERMINES THE COMICS
In the TV series, the comics with posters on Archie’s walls — and most of the comics he owns in general — are DC titles, with a tendency toward the recent Rebirth books.
In the comics…not so much.
If you look behind Archie in the image above, you’ll notice he’s a big fan fo Dean Haspiel’s The Fox, done for Archie Comics. There are other ARchie Comics sprinkled throughout the issue in the background of some of Archie’s scenes.
We’re hoping that in a prospective second season, Archie will actually make some reference to being a comic book fan.
JULY 4th WAS HARD ON EVERYONE
In Riverdale, Jason Blossom disappeared on July 4 and the whole town changed.
Elsewhere, though, it wasn’t much better: the FBI stormed Hiram Lodge’s Independence Day soiree and took him away in handcuffs while a terrified Veronica was whisked away to another room to avoid her having to see everything.
For Betty, it was far less dramatic, but the charmed existence of her summer internship at Hello Giggles fell apart when, on July 4, she was having a mostly-platonic date with a guy she was kinda/sorta/not really into, and he made a bold move, stealing a kiss. It as awkward from that point forward, and got even more awkward once Betty started to hear bits of news about Jason and Polly, and the rest of her summer became worrying about what was going on back in Riverdale.
HIRAM LODGE: REVEALED!
Something we haven’t seen yet on the TV show — and won’t this season, according to members of the cast ComicBook.com spoke to during our recent set visit — is Hiram Lodge.
Veronica’s father looms large in a number of the show’s storylines, but the fact that we haven’t actually seen him (and he hasn’t, as far as anyone knows, been cast yet) is the kind of thing that is an interesting creative choice by the writers of the comic (who are also writers on the show).
There isn’t a lot here to go on, other than the fact that what we see so far certainly suggests he’s trying to protect Veronica from the consequences of his arrest, even while there seems to be no likely resolution for him anytime soon.
ARCHIE & JUGHEAD
Why did Archie and Jughead stop being the best pals in town?
Well, as you might expect, it’s about a girl.
Yes, as hinted, Archie bailed on Jughead to spend July 4 with Miss Grundy. But what the TV show didn’t get across was how savage Archie was about it, failing to call Jughead or even respond to his numerous texts on the day of. Jughead covered for him when people were wondering where Archie went, but he already wasn’t having a great summer, so getting literally forgotten about by Archie was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
