‘Riverdale’ Has a Surprising Connection to ‘The Vampire Diaries’

Fans of The CW know that if you watch carefully enough you can sometimes catch unexpected connections between the shows and we aren’t talking about the deliberately connected Arrowverse shows. From time to time an actor or a location will show up on one show that has a history with another and it turns out that Riverdale and The Vampire Diaries have such a connection that you may not have noticed until now.

It turns out that Riverdale‘s Cheryl and Penelope Blossom are living in what was, at least briefly, the Salvatore Boarding House on The Vampire Diaries. Julie Plec, the executive producer behind The Vampire Diaries directed the most recent episode of Riverdale and revealed in an interview with Bustle that even she didn’t make the connection right away.

“It was so funny, I had seen Thistlehouse on camera, but it hadn’t registered with me,” Plec said. “And when we pulled up the driveway for the location scout to go see it, I was like, ‘This is so familiar. I feel like I’ve been here before.’”

Turns out, Plec had been there before. The house that is now Cheryl’s Thistlehouse was the Salvatore abode for the pilot of The Vampire Diaries. While The Vampire Diaries was ultimately filmed in Atlanta for the full series, the show’s pilot episode was shot in Vancouver. If you didn’t catch the connection right away, don’t feel badly. Plec said it took her a moment as well.

“I actually took a good look at the house and I realized it was the Salvatore House from [The Vampire Diaries] pilot,” Plec said. “Isn’t that hilarious? Because we shot the pilot in Vancouver [before moving to Atlanta for the series]. And the backyard of it which is so gorgeous is where we built our cemetery. That was a nice flashback!”

The idea of Cheryl Blossom living in a house that was once sort of inhabited by vampires is actually quite fitting considering the dark turns on Riverdale this season. Death has been a constant specter for the show’s characters thanks to the Black Hood killer, but the idea that Thistlehouse had another life as a boarding house even if on an otherwise unrelated show is also curiously fitting. Penelope has been offering her companionship services out of Thistlehouse this season, much to Cheryl’s disgust and dismay.

This interesting connection to another CW show is just the latest example of shared locations popping up. Earlier this season, Supergirl tracked down the villain Livewire working at a diner that looked more than a little like Pop’s.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.