Riverdale Showrunner Reveals How Different The Final Season Almost Was

In August, The CW's Riverdale ended after seven seasons, leaving Archie and the gang in the 1950s though not without giving viewers closure by revealing each character's ultimate fate. Now, almost two months after the series finale, series creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa reveals that the final season of the fan favorite series was almost very different — and originally was meant to include a bunch of time skips through different decades until the characters worked their way back to the present day.

"Originally, when we pitched the season one of the ideas that we pitched was that the first 13 episodes would be in the 50s and then starting around Episode 14 or so, we would start moving in time. So, Episode 14 would be set in the 60s, Episode 15 would be set in the 70s, and then the 80s, the 90s… kind of working through to the present day," Aguirre-Sacasa told TVLine.

That ultimately ended up not happening and, according to Aguirre-Sacasa, the big reason was budget, but he also noted that the series had already done time jumping in Season 6 and the cast and crew and writers just enjoyed the 1950s storyline.

"We thought we would just continue telling the domestic, personal, romantic coming-of-age stories that we tell, and then move everyone back at the end."

And even that notion changed. The penultimate series episode ended up revealing that they couldn't move back to the present and, instead, the characters just lived their lives forward from the 1950s. The showrunner explained that the "much more elaborate and ambitious plans about moving people through time" the writers had ultimate "when we were getting to it, it just didn't feel right."

What is Season 7 of Riverdale about?

The seventh season of Riverdale goes where no season of Riverdale has dared to go before-the 1950s! Picking up where last season ended, Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) finds himself trapped in the 1950s. He has no idea how he got there, nor how to get back to the present. His friends are no help, as they are living seemingly authentic lives, similar to their classic Archie Comics counterparts, unaware that they've ever been anywhere but the 1950's.

"The Archie comics, they're so nostalgic, and I think when people think of time periods, they think of the 1950," Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told ComicBook.com in a recent interview. "Through the lens of nostalgia. So that was one big thing," Aguirre-Sacasa said. "Absolutely. And even when we've done their iconic comic book costumes from the past, even though they were technically the 1940s, whenever anyone would write about it, they'd say, 'Oh my God, they're wearing their 1950s outfits.' So, it was sort of like, 'Okay, well, that is ... 'And even when we were pitching Riverdale, and this is true, when we were pitching Riverdale to try to do a TV show, the executives would say, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute. Is this a show set in the '50s?' And it's like, 'No, no, no, it's set in present day.'  So, there was that."

"The other big thing that felt really resonant is the 1950s were when the modern idea of the teenager was born," Aguirre-Sacasa continued. "Teenagers really didn't ... Teenagers as we know them, and as consumers of popular culture, as consumers of movies and television and comic books and things like that, that really ... The birth of the American of the modern American teenager was the 1950s as well. So, it felt like, "Oh, well that's Archie." I mean, that is Archie. So, it felt like this is the time period, this is actually the time period. So those were also things that kind of resonated with us and why we landed on this time period. Also later ... and the world is roiling later in the '60s with counterculture, with the civil rights movement, with the sort of a gay liberation movement and things like that. And it felt like in terms of our thematic, which is the wholesome sweet innocent facade, and then the darker, more dangerous, more fraught themes and issues bubbling underneath, it felt like the '50s sort of suited that to a T."

The seventh and final season of Riverdale is now streaming on Netflix.