Riverdale‘s second season has taken fans on a wild ride thus far – and there’s a chance that could involve something pretty magical.
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Last week’s episode, “Tales From The Darkside”, saw some of Riverdale‘s ensemble dealing with various bizarre and creepy situations. The first third of the episode was devoted to Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) and Archie Andrews (KJ Apa), who were tasked with delivering a mysterious crate for Penny Peabody (Brit Morgan).
As some eagle-eyed fans have noticed, there’s something pretty unusual printed on the side of the crate: “Miskatonic University, via H.P. Lovecraft. Polar Expedition Jan. 13, 1923.”
For the uninitiated, Miskatonic University is a fictional Arkham, Massachusetts school in H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional universe. The school appears throughout Lovecraft’s short stories, and is often linked to the mythos of Cthulhu. The mention of a “Polar Expedition” also links to another Lovecraft story as well.
This has made some begin to speculate – does Riverdale exist in Lovecraft’s fictional universe?
There is, oddly enough, a bit of comic precedent for this, with Cthulu appearing in an issue of the post-apocalyptic Archie Comics series Afterlife With Archie. In the process, this technically linked the world of Afterlife (which is written by Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa) into Lovecraftian lore.
In a way, the label on this crate could mean nothing, and just be some sort of extravagant code that Penny Peabody uses to hide her crate. After all, Riverdale certainly isn’t one to shy away from extravagant monikers, from gang members having names like Fangs Fogarty, Sweet Pea, and Tall Boy, to the regularly-mentioned street drug Jingle Jangle.
But there is a small chance that this could symbolize something else altogether – the introduction of supernatural elements. After all, there is the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina spinoff on the way, which recently got picked up by Netflix.
Fans have known that Sabrina – and the various mystical elements that come with her – was on the way for a while, and have wondered how the show’s universe would adjust for that. After all, we speculated about just that earlier this year, with regards to the (dearly-departed) Sugarman.
But now, we could have gotten our first inkling of the supernatural coming into Riverdale – or at very least, a pretty cool Easter egg.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
