First Look at ‘Riverdale’ Teens Playing Their Parents in Flashback Episode

It looks like Riverdale‘s trip down memory lane is going to be just as wild as you would expect.

Entertainment Weekly recently shared several photos from “The Midnight Club”, the upcoming Riverdale episode that will see the teenage ensemble playing the younger versions of their parents during the early ’90s. The first shows the young versions of Penelope Blossom (Madelaine Petsch), Alice Cooper (Lili Reinhart), Sierra McCoy (Ashleigh Murray), and Hermione Lodge (Camila Mendes) congregating in the Riverdale High bathroom.

The second shows the four girls joined by Fred Andrews (KJ Apa) and FP Jones (Cole Sprouse), as they sit in a circle somewhere in the school.

These photos are pretty striking, in part because of how well the actors are able to emulate their onscreen parents. Seeing Apa with Luke Perry’s 90210 hair is certainly something, as is Reinhart’s transformation into Twin Peaks-era Madchen Amick.

“Young Alice is so different from the Alice that you see today,” Reinhart explained in the interview. “She’s not just this uptight, precocious, looks-down-upon-everyone teen — like she was a Serpent. So that gives her young personality a lot.”

And as fun as “The Midnight Club” is expected to be (especially with a cameo from Anthony Michael Hall), it sounds like the episode will have a pretty gnarly connection to the new mystery going on in the present day.

“One of the things that the kids discover pretty early on is that the murder victims in the present were playing a game called Gryphons & Gargoyles, which is of course the Riverdale version of Dungeons & Dragons,” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa explained in a recent interview. “And what our kids in the present discover is that their parents, when they were in high school, were also playing this game and there was a similar murder that happened in the past.”

“One of my favorite things recently was the first season of True Detective, and we’re sort of telling a similar ritualistic crime that happens in Riverdale,” Aguirre-Sacasa continued. “We jokingly call it teen detectives meets True Detective, because we find Betty and Jughead investigating this really disturbing crime that seems to speak to the very twisted history of Riverdale.”

What do you think of the first look at Riverdale‘s flashback episode? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

“The Midnight Club” is expected to air on November 7th at 8/7c on The CW.