For its seventh and final Season, Riverdale is set in the 1950s and it’s a shift that brings with it not only the expected aesthetic shifts, but some other major changes as well — including character relationships. As fans of the long running The CW series have seen thus far this season, the familiar characters aren’t exactly their familiar selves. This is particularly true for the series’ queer characters, Cheryl Blossom and Kevin Keller, both of whom are much less open with their sexuality given the time period. Now, series showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is opening up about how the series is approaching sexuality in its final season — and teases major developments for Cheryl and Toni Topaz in an upcoming episode.
“One of the biggest conversations we had when we decided on setting the season in the 1950s — I think the first conversation that we had in the writers room and that we had with the actors is, ‘what version of the 1950s are we going to depict? Is it going to be some utopia, where everyone’s accepted and everyone is open-minded about everything?’ And it felt like that would have been wrong for us to sort of erase or pretend that the very real struggles our queer characters and our characters of color would have been going through in the 1950s — to pretend that those wouldn’t have existed or didn’t exist felt like it would have been disingenuous and wrong. That said, we didn’t want to do a season that was all strife and turmoil for our characters. So, we started a conversation that we’re still having in the writers room: ‘How do we thread the needle of these characters?’” Aguirre-Sacasa told Nerds of Color.
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He continued, “I would say that in episode four, to reassure fans, it is a big Cheryl and Archie episode, but it is an even bigger Cheryl and Toni episode. Just to reassure fans, and ditto, Betty and Kevin. Toni’s a bit more confident in her sexuality and she’s a bit more secure in her sexuality, but the reality is that Cheryl and Kevin, in the 50s, would have been closeted and would not have been open about who they are. And I think for us, it was we wanted to sort of locate our characters on the cusp of these giant movements that were about to start and erupt kind of full force: the civil rights movement, the gay liberation movement, the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the modern feminist movement, the Vietnam War. All these things were about to start exploding and we kind of wanted to find our characters on the cusp of that and be part of those movements, and because they’re our characters, sort of be instigators of those movements, if that makes sense.
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.”
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW.
