Riverdale's Finale Represents the End of a TV Era

After seven seasons of triumphs and defeats, of epic highs and lows, Riverdale is about to come to an end. The long-running The CW series will air its finale on Wednesday night, and it promises to be an emotional bout of Archie Comics-inspired drama. Regardless of however the finale shakes out, and what footing it leaves Archie Andrews (KJ Apa) and his gang, the impact of the show will be felt far beyond when those final credits role. An argument can be made that Riverdale drawing to a close is also the closing of a chapter for television history — in more ways than one.

When Riverdale premiered in January of 2017, after years of being in the works and a move to The CW, the media landscape probably didn't know what to expect. The show was the latest in a seemingly-endless string of soapy teen dramas, which had become a mainstay for The CW (and prior to that, The WB and UPN) since the mid-1990s. It was also, at the time, one of several shows on the network that were based on comic books, with nearly every night of programming marked by a DC-inspired Arrowverse show. It combined a recognizable franchise — the largely-cheery, slice-of-life Archie digests — with a tonal darkness filled with sex and violence, right before we culturally grew tired of that kind of "subversion." 

And yet, Riverdale not only played directly into its unlikely premise — it refused to be easily defined. The seven seasons of the show featured annual musical episodes, multiple cryptids, subplots about tickle fetishes and organ-harvesting cults, a fight to save the multiverse, a decades-spanning time jump, and countless more elements. It beautifully mourned the sudden passing of series star Luke Perry, and poignantly tackled social issues of sexuality, race, and gender. It paired off its ensemble cast into ships that set the Internet ablaze. It also, more often than not, was a fitting adaptation of Archie Comics lore, using its 13-to-22-episodes per season to capture the pacing of reading a comic book. Everything about Riverdale was maximalist, dramatic, and incredibly watchable — so much so that it became an easily-parodied cultural touchstone. But regardless of how you felt about the show itself, you can't deny that there was nothing exactly like it — and honestly, there might not be anything like it ever again.

Remember how I mentioned Riverdale's lineage in the world of network teen dramas and superhero shows? In a roundabout, weird way, Riverdale might end up being the last of its kind for either show. Under their new parent company of Nexstar, The CW seems to be heading in a different direction with its programming, stepping away from developing any new ongoing original series and towards less-expensive acquired and non-scripted shows. The few original scripted shows still left on the network — Superman & Lois, Walker, All-American, and All-American: Homecoming — have been renewed for shorter, more cost-effective seasons. While teen dramas will still be part of our TV diet, the when and how we experience them has already changed — the overwhelming majority of them exist exclusively on streaming services, with shorter seasons and the constant danger of being cancelled or deleted entirely from existence.

The few recent teen shows that have broken through the noise, like Prime Video's The Summer I Turned Pretty or Netflix's Outer Banks or Heartstopper, have multiple seasons under their belt, but have still barely scratched the surface of how quirky or episodic their premises can get. (Riverdale's ability to find success both as a weekly show and a binge-able show is also notable in the teen drama landscape — something that The Summer I Turned Pretty proved when it moved to a weekly release in Season 2 — but that's a whole separate conversation.) Either way, unless the entire model of television drastically changes at some point in the future, Riverdale will be the last teen show to air on a network and get 20+ episodes a season. 

The same can be said for Riverdale's role in the comic book television space — while it might not be lauded in the same breath as the ever-growing number of Marvel and DC superhero shows, it has been a consistent staple of the subgenre. Across the show's seven seasons, the entirety of the Arrowverse either ended, got cancelled, or (in the case of Superman & Lois) was thrown into its own corner. Beyond The CW, the entire landscape changed wildly as well — Marvel shows stopped airing on broadcast or cable networks, pivoting towards six-episode miniseries and the single continuity of the MCU; with other DC shows essentially following suit, culminating in James Gunn and Peter Safran's plans for Max-exclusive DC Universe shows. It's unclear at this point if and when we'll get a long-running comic book-inspired show on broadcast television, one that is given the space and lengthy episode count to get genuinely creative. 

In the landscape of television, that is already a sad thought, but in the realm of The CW/The WB/UPN and the decades of YA-centric hits that resulted from the trio of networks, it is a little heartbreaking. Smallville, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Gossip Girl, and the entire The Vampire Diaries universe have all become household names, and each used their multiple seasons and wild plot twists to reflect the weird and wonderful era they were made in. The longer-running landscape of network comic book TV has also done the same, stretching all the way back to Superman and Batman adaptations of the 1950s and 1960s. For the time being, Riverdale might be the last bastion of both of those types of shows — and that only makes the show more worthy of celebration.

Riverdale's series finale will air Wednesday, August 23rd at 9/8c on The CW.