Riverdale Will Form The Archies in Season 4

While there are a lot of things fans can tell you about Riverdale one notable element of The CW show is the music. Music plays a large part in the series, be it Josie and the Pussycats, Archie and his guitar, the notable music numbers scattered over the seasons, or the full-scale musical episodes that have become a much-loved part of the show. When the show returns this fall for Season 4, though, the series will see the introduction of a whole new musical element: a battle of the bands featuring none other than the iconic musical group from comics, The Archies.

Announced on Sunday during Riverdale‘s panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Season 4 will see The Archies finally form on the show, bringing together Archie (K.J. Apa), Betty (Lili Reinhart), Jughead (Cole Sprouse), and Veronica (Camila Mendes) to compete in a Battle of the Bands episode, something series creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told the crowd he’d been wanting to do since the very inception of the series.

“When I originally pitched the TV series in my mind the end of Season 1 was going to be a big battle of the bands between The Archies and The Pussycats and of course, the show then became what it became and as we were getting ready to do a bunch of stories set in the high school because it’s senior year, I was like, ‘it’s this year or never’ so we’re doing a Battle of the Bands episode which I think will be really, really fun,” Aguirre-Sacasa said.

For those unfamiliar with The Archies, here is a brief primer. The Archies are a fictional garage band founded by, you guessed it, Archie Andrews and his friends Reggie Mantle, Jughead Jones, Veronica Lodge, and Betty Cooper. The band was part of the animated TV series The Archie Show and has since then also appeared on the pages of Archie Comics. Despite being a fictional band, The Archies has actually had some notable real-life hits thanks to the band’s music being recorded by real-life session musicians, featuring The Cuff Links’ lead singer Ron Dante. The song The Archies may be most famous for is “Sugar, Sugar” which hit number one on the Billboard pop chart in 1969 and sold over six million copies, making it the number one song that year. Other hits from the band include “Who’s Your Baby”, “Bang-Shang-A-Lang”, and “Jingle Jangle”.

Given the information revealed at San Diego Comic-Con, it looks like Riverdale will be giving fans a version of The Archies that skews pretty close to the canon version. Archie is set to be on lead vocals and guitar Jughead on drums, Veronica on keyboard and Betty on tambourine. The only real missing element is Reggie Mantle, though with the little love triangle that Riverdale briefly had in Season 3, it’s not a huge surprise that Reggie won’t be jamming out with Archie’s band.

And, on another musical note related to Riverdale, Josie herself will be returning to the series. Ashleigh Murray, who left the show in Season 3 to star in the upcoming Katy Keene spinoff is set to return for the Season 4 premiere.

Riverdale‘s fourth season will begin Wednesday, October 9th, at 8/7c on The CW.