Riverdale Returns For The Last Time
Much like The Flash, Riverdale is back for one final season! Is it still in the new age of wonderment? When last we visited, the townies were transposed back to 1955 after Cheryl Blossom used the Phoenix Force against a misaligned comet. That’s in the trailers, so the end of season six shouldn’t be a surprise. Worry about SPOILERS for new stuff in the season seven premiere, “Don’t Worry Darling,” below. Verily I have become All Context Riverdale, the antithesis of no context riverdale. (This sums up the two kinds of Twitter checkmarks. @CherylBombshell never followed me back like she promised.)
As opposed to my other CW reviews & SHAZAM: Fury Of The Gods, this is another non-DC property for 2023. It’s easy to get confused sometimes though. Wonder Twins movie powers activate! Nevermind! That KJ Apa vehicled got swiftly Zaslaved. Gotham with Riverdale dialogue doesn’t have any Babs & Tabs with Choni talk? Camila Mendes in a top hat is a pair of fishnets away from being Zatanna, especially the DC Super Hero Girls iteration. I’ll dip into The Flash again afterwards anyway.
The trailer for the final season was released less than a month before the premiere. They actually released a bunch of intriguing stills for the first several episodes, particularly of Choni. Why can’t The CW’s superhero shows do likewise?
Ms. Madelaine Petsch’s perfectly madcap dialogue delivery will be missed.
Season seven is getting back to basics. Although they were adults at the end of season six, time travel magic has reverted the core cast back into teenagers. So are they now their own grandparents? What happened to the original timeline’s grandparents? Were they erased or did they get pushed back earlier in the lineages? Jughead correctly postulates they’re in an alternate dimension so you don’t need to consider these logistics as hard as I did. Just enjoy the retro title sequence featuring nonplussed Jughead.
Jughead has the absurd task of trying to explain to his friends they actually belong in the future. This is a deftly written scene that shows how frustrating this can be to explain to people who don’t know they’re in a weird fiction story. He’s conscientious enough not to out anyone, unlike teen Jean Grey. The graduation time capsule conveniently traveled with them so he has tangible proof they don’t believe. Does the grody sex bunker still exist?
This season doesn’t shy away from showing 1950’s weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Plenty of fans are upset that its LGB characters (Riverdale only has as much representation as a German model railway manufacturer.) are closeted, but it’d be disingenuous to show mainstream 50’s America wasn’t homophobic or racist. There is valid concern, however, that an extended stay in this status quo will become misery porn. The decade was overtly repressed for white heterosexuals too, so I don’t understand who 50’s nostalgia is for. The folks that read 50’s Archie firsthand probably aren’t watching this. Without the historical context, they could’ve just had everyone wear nostalgic fashion without time travel kookiness. Speaking of which, why hasn’t the wardrobe department won all the awards yet?
Much of the premiere is about the gals’ uphill battle to raise awareness of Emmet Till’s murder spearheaded by Toni. (Vanessa Morgan gets her own arc that’s not romance-centric.) This tragedy is handled surprisingly respectfully. The death of James Dean is also on the town’s minds with less pushback. How soon will this season pivot back to gory depictions of fictional murders though?
Toni & Betty pin Cheryl with a tag team bathroom intervention!
The trailers tease lots of wacky new couples for the era, but none are solidified yet. Kevin & will use Betty & Archie as beards, to many shippers’ angst. Methinks Ms. Blossom doth protest too much against homosexuality. Betty will be horny on main for everybody? So Beronica may sail? With Kevin’s canon husband, Clay Walker, being introduced & Choni being confirmed soulmates (), season seven would be the perfect time to kill Fangs or at least put him on a bus. These new romances might feel more meaningful if they were happening in the main timeline. Maybe that’ll be a nice loophole if any are extra unsavory.
Veronica is now the exiled scion of Hollywood royalty. (When is she going to become vampirized?) Her & Cheryl hating each other at first sight is a lot of fun. Cheryl confronting Veronica the lying liar who lies at Pop’s is my favorite scene along with Jughead’s botched synopsis. Veronica’s pants would be on fire were she wearing any, not necessarily do to pyrokinesis. Jason Blossom is missing like Polly, but Julian Blossom is now a real live boy. Ads for Blossom Maple Syrup will be sweet.
Warden Norton’s actor is now Principal Featherhead. Is he the father of Principal Featherhead from “The Midnight Club?” Since school segregation only ended in 1954, it tracks that Waldo Weatherbee’s counterpart wouldn’t yet be Riverdale High’s Principal. Featherhead is a dead ringer for comics Weatherbee though. The former Mr. DuPont of Stonewall Prep is now child psychologist Dr. Werthers, who appears inspired by Dr. Frederick Wertham. Don’t trust authority comprised of recycled antagonist actors!
It turns out there’s a second angelic Tabitha who does remember the original timeline. She says Cheryl failed to destroy Bailey’s Comet, which undermines her big damn superheroine moment. Before the extinction event kicked in, Tabitha shunted everyone into an alternate timeline. How could she if her chronokinesis had been siphoned into Cheryl? Tabitha thankfully debunks the theory that this is an afterlife. If there a two Tabithas, what happened to the original teens populating this reality? Why didn’t she keep everyone the same age? This contingency is supposed to give them a second chance to eventually avert the apocalyptic future. Jughead’s memory is a dangerous anomaly for The Time Being (my favourite non-Nimon Doctor Who villain), so she gives him an amnesia kiss ala Superman 2. How can lone Tabitha set time out of joint right? Can the annual musical anachronistically be The Rocky Horror Picture Show to time warp everybody back?
Midge Klump has been unkilled. Unfortunately she’s been recast with Abby Ross. Netflix’s & CBC Gem’s Fakes showed Emilija Baranac deserved more screentime. Dilton Doiley has been recast with Daniel Yang, who was actually the original Dilton in the pilot before Major Curda took over. (His sister Piper Curder once played Avery Ho & then vanished from The Flash.) Shannon Purser is back as Ethel despite not doing anything yet. Hiram Lodge is also returning but he still won’t have glasses, white hair, & a moustache? Everybody else looks period accurate to the comics (if they existed in the 50’s) except him?
Where are Josie & The Pussycats? (What’s stopping Josie from dressing like this pre-apocalypse?) Will a new band form to rival them & Fangs as imitation Elvis? Will Sabrina Spellman & Kate Kane Katy Keene make any more crossover appearances? Will FP swoop back in so Falice isn’t a fallacy?
So now the big question is how much of the final season will be set in the alternate past. With Bailey’s Comet two years away from ’55, will they compress that much time into the final run? Will viewers actually witness endgames develop, or will couples hastily be slapped together in the series finale? Or will they realize they can get along just fine without the Archie vertex of the love triangle? Tabitha warned of the future’s moral decay, so will Riverdale be reset to the more wholesome version from the comics when they leave the past? So much has changed since season five that it’d be very unsatisfying if they didn’t return to the present until the series finale. What’ll happen with Big Anthony? This is how it must end!
I’m somewhat disappointed Lamila Petschart picked the Sanderson Sisters for their (possibly final) costume instead of King Ghidorah. Hotel For The Holidays is Bizarro The White Lotus. I’ve been remiss in not seeing Jane or Margaux yet, but they’re in my Choni queue. Heathers On A Train Do Revenge contains a that has Cheryl Blossom’s fursona self-portrait vibes. “What if … Veronica Lodge’s life didn’t revolve around Archiekins & Daddykins?” The least believable part was The Queen In The North not knowing what snow looks like.
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Following the conclusion of the Red Death arc, the next episode was entirely skippable if you’re only sticking around for West-Allen. Iris & Barry are only in it for two measly scenes. Flash-light episodes used to be a way to give Grant Gustin a breather after crossovers, but do we really need one at this point? Unlike Gotham, The Flash didn’t have its final episode order enlarged during production & need to scramble for more scripts. The cold open montage of Becky “Hazard” Sharpe’s lucky Post-Crisis revival was cute, but overall it was a baffling use of the show’s limited time remaining. Nobody asked for a backdoor pilot for a Cecile & Allegra spinoff. Why couldn’t Cecile use one of Allegra’s teleportation smoke bombs to get to her daughter’s birthday breakfast on time or just rent a car like a normal person? Thankfully the next episode is better, despite having much Chillblaine & Khione.
Instead of being awkwardly tacked on to Red Death, Grodd should’ve been responsible for the nightmare Barry had in the final season premiere. Nial Nal doesn’t actually help with that lingering mystery. She just gets Iris to recognize that she built her own destiny with her own choices. (I’ve been trying to tell her not to cut off her nose to spite her fate!) Iris inspires Dreamer to get a power up from the first Naltorian Dreamer’s ghost by embracing the unknown. There’s no real antagonist besides these journalists getting in their own way, so the plot deflates. Maybe the real sleep paralysis demon was the friends we made along the way? If her predecessor wanted to give Nia a power-up out of love, why was Nia’s initial dream so threatening? Why trap her & Iris in a potentially deadly dream coma? It’s a nice victory lap for Nicole Maines as Dreamer, but viewers who weren’t also Supergirl fans may be confused about why the final season gave her a showcase. Dreamer & Brainiac 5 should use their time ship to save Legends Of Tomorrow!
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Roll to see if there’s a DnD movie review next.
