This week’s episode of Riverdale saw the return of Mark Consuelos as Hiram Lodge on The CW series and Hiram’s arrival in the Town With Pep comes at an interesting time. One of the teachers, Mrs. Thornton, has been fired for being a communist and is being temporarily replaced by Penelope Blossom. With the students just starting their drama unit and working on delivering monologues, Hiram offers his expertise as a tv star to the class. But it wouldn’t be Riverdale — or Hiram Lodge — if there wasn’t more going on and we soon learn that there are a few witch hunts of sorts going on in Riverdale, even among the students.
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It’s a scenario that lends itself to what might be the most timely of monologues from Archie Andrews. Archie, with a little guidance from Mrs. Thornton, chooses to deliver his piece from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, giving a moving delivery of John Proctor’s renouncing of his confession because he will not sign a false accusation and forsake his name. KJ Apa delivers a gut-wrenching performance in the scene — and in character, it particularly hits home for Cheryl Blossom who has been asked to turn over the other gay students at Riverdale high. You can check out the scene for yourself which The CW has given to ComicBook.com exclusively in the video above.
Season 7 of Riverdale Has Taken on Some Significant Historical Events
Being set in the 1950s, the final season of Riverdale hasn’t shied away from some of the more difficult historical events and aspects of the time period. The season premiere took on the murder of Emmett Till and its aftermath and this week’s episode touched on McCarthyism and the Red Scare, something that Consuelos spoke with ComicBook.com with a bit about in a recent interview.
“I totally agree. I thought that this was a much more human version of Hiram,” he said about this episode’s version of Hiram. “And it’s funny, just the historical references that they were making. I was wondering, when I was looking at KJ or at some of the younger casts, I’m like, ‘Did you guys even study this in history? Because I know I did. I knew all about this.’ We took a deep dive in McCarthyism. We took a really deep dive in this and I was a big history buff, so I was fascinated by this moment in history. So that made me smile a little bit, and I think a couple of them answered me, ‘Did this really happen?’ ‘Yes! People were blackballed.’ Desi and Lucy were at the target of this actually. Lucille Ball, namely, which is… I guess their show is fashioned Hiram and Hermione Show is fashioned after that as well.”
Society is One of the “Big Bads” of Riverdale‘s Finale Season
Unlike previous seasons of Riverdale that has a more direct villain to deal with, showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa previously told ComicBook.com that society and narrow ideas of how society should be is one of the real villains this season.
“Usually, when we talk about the season, when we’re planning the season, we usually have a big bad or a villain that all of the kids are at some point or other engaging with and fighting against. And in season six, it was Percival Pickens who was an intergalactic time-traveling sorcerer. But when we were talking about this season, we really felt like the villain or what they were fighting against society was the 1950s,” he said. “And that the conflict that all of our characters to some extent or other were caught up in was, how do we live honest, authentic lives that are individualistic and that allows us to be exactly who we want to be in a society that represses that and that demands conformity and that punishes anyone who falls outside of the carefully constructed mores of the 1950s, the institutions of the ’50s celebrated, which is to say via traditional American family, traditional American gender roles, traditional … a social order that has since been exploded and broken down and rebuilt time and time again since that time? So, it felt like the villain, if there was one, were the 1950s. And by the way, we have characters that symbolize that… but the big conflict was with society at large and them sort of bristling against that.”
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW.
