Riverdale: This Week’s Episode Featured a Moment Ashleigh Murray Has Wanted For Years

This week on Riverdale, Ashleigh Murray’s Josie McCoy returned, along with her fellow Pussycats Valerie Brown (Hayley Law) and Melody Valentine (Asha Bromfield). For the first time since the series began in 2017, the Pussycats took point on a music-heavy episode which, among numerous other songs, included a brief performance of the theme song from the 1970 animated series Josie and the Pussycats. The tune only took about 20 seconds in the episode, but it was the culmination of years of speculation and attempts to finally bring an updated version of the song to the screen on Riverdale. 

The first season’s finale of Riverdale could have featured a performance of the song. The issue? If you remember that finale, it was jam-packed. 

“We didn’t get to get to the theme song this season,” Murray told me at a set visit during the production of that episode. “We really wanted to but… please, if we get a season 2! That’s absolutely on the table.”

“They were toying around with it for the final episode, but because they had to change the way the story is ending, we’re holding it off, in case we get to come back and start shooting in the summer,” Murray added.

During that season, Josie and the Pussycats had performed a number in a version of the classic leotards the characters sport in the comics and animated series. That, Murray admitted at the time, was her favorite Josie moment from the first season.

“I have been asking for that costume since Comic-Con!” Murray said at the time. “The second I landed in San Diego and I saw Roberto [Aguirre-Sacasa], I was like, ‘is there any way it’s going to happen? Please tell me we’re going to be in those costumes!’ I wanted to walk around Comic Con in those costumes! That’s the thing: I am so in love with this character and so in love with the things that they’ve done and who they are and who we want them to be.”

After leaving Riverdale, Murray took Josie to Katy Keene, the short-lived spinoff series that had some characters recur in Riverdale last night alongside Josie. It wasn’t until “The Return of the Pussycats,” which aired on Wednesday, that she finally got the opportunity to sing the Josie theme.

The song was written by Hoyt Curtin, with some lyrics credited to animated legends William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. In 2001, when there was a Josie and the Pussycats feature film, the song was updated by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, although the Riverdale version appeared to be a rearranged take on Curtin’s original.