Going into Wednesday night’s Riverdale fans of the popular The CW series were already expecting a crossover of sorts. Katy Keene (Lucy Hale) appeared in “Chapter Sixty-Nine: Men of Honor” when Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) made a trip to New York for a college interview. However, while that “crossover” was expected and eagerly-anticipated (especially with Katy Keene’s series premiere on Thursday night) there was another crossover that was snuck into the episode and it’s one that might have caught Marvel fans by surprise.
Spoilers for Riverdale‘s “Chapter Sixty-Nine: Men of Honor” below.
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While Veronica was off in New York and Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Jughead (Cole Sprouse) were both dealing with issues connected to Bret Weston Wallace (Sean Depner), Archie (KJ Apa) had his own problems. His Uncle Frank (Ryan Robbins) is visited by a man named Ted Bishop, a member of Frank’s old military unit, who comes to tell him about the death of one of their own. However, it soon becomes clear that Ted isn’t just bringing the news, he’s there to kill Frank as Frank was, at one point, a mercenary along with Ted. Archie manages to stop Ted from killing Frank and Ted is apprehended, but that doesn’t last long. Ted escapes and comes after Archie and attacks him in the bathroom at Riverdale High.
As the insane fight between Archie and Ted ensues and spills out of the bathroom into the high school’s halls, there’s a scene in which viewers can clearly see Ted’s shirt which has an eerie skull on it. Between the violence and the skull, viewers might have paused and noticed the similarities to The Punisher and it turns out, they wouldn’t be wrong necessarily. Ahead of Wednesday’s episode, Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa took to Instagram with a still from the episode and said that one of his favorite comics just so happens to be Archie Meets The Punisher, a cool but bonkers crossover between Archie Comics and Marvel from the mid-1990s (which, honestly, sounds right at home on The CW series) and he suggested someone more than Katy Keene would be showing up.
Now, to be fair this Ted situation in Wednesday night’s episode isn’t really a true “crossover”. It’s not even really an adaptation since the plot of that comic book was very, very different and involved The Punisher mistaking Archie for a criminal named Red. Instead, it’s more an homage and a fun nod that feels very true to Riverdale, a world in which things like the “Five Seasons”, “Shankshaw”, “Glamerge”, and “American Excess” are all riffs off of real-world brands. Still it was a really cool moment for comics fans and one that is sure to prompt them to keep their eyes peeled in the future.It’s Riverdale, after all. You never know who or what will show up next.
