Season 6 of The CW’s Riverdale has seen Archie and the gang face off with alternate realities and genuine evil, but the series may have just saved the biggest challenge for last: the literal end of the world. Last week’s episode of the series revealed that while the group defeated Percival Pickens (Chris O’Shea), he managed to get one final spell cast, a spell that is now sending Bailey’s comet right at Riverdale. Now, the town is facing seemingly certain death and showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa says it lets them focus on more emotional stories for the characters.
“In a weird way our penultimate episode, which was the final battle between Percival and our gang, felt like our really big, action-packed finale,” Aguirre-Sacasa told EW. “We did that consciously so that our last episode, we could focus weirdly on more emotional stories and character stories and relationship stories. The question we asked when we were breaking the story was: ‘Okay, all of these character we love, they have one last day to live. They have 12 hours how are they going to spend those 12 hours?’”
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But even with the stories being more emotional, Aguirre-Sacasa didn’t downplay the apocalyptic nature of it all.
“They threat they’re facing is apocalyptic,” he said. “A comet is going to destroy everyone and there’s a magical forcefield keeping everyone trapped in Riverdale.”
However, while things certainly seem bleak for the citizens of Riverdale now that Bailey’s comet is coming right for them, this is just a season finale. The series was renewed for a seventh and final season so whatever happens in tonight’s finale will ultimately set the stage for that last season and the showrunner has previously teased a “big swing”.
“It came out of conversations with the studio and The CW and [network president] Mark Pedowitz,” Aguirre-Sacasa told TVLine. “When we were renewed for Season 7, though we weren’t told at the time it’d be our final season, I think we were all feeling that it might be. When Mark and I talked about it… it was bittersweet. That said, we are so proud of the run we’ve had, and the call did come as we were working on the last episode of Season 6. We were debating on what the final beats of that episode would be and torn between a very big swing and a quieter ending. And it definitely emboldened us to go for the big swing for Season 7. It’s really exciting.”
Riverdale airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW. “Night of the Comet” airs July 31st.
