Riverdale has been a wild ride. The show is currently in its final season, and frankly, we struggle to think of another show that’s been through so many radical changes in tone and in genre. Riverdale has been a thriller, a teen drama, a murder-mystery, a science fiction adventure and a horror story, and somehow it’s based on a comic book series that is none of these things.
Riverdale is broadly based on Archie comics. We use the term “broadly” because outside of the characters and the setting, Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has carried very little over from the source material. This is not accidental. During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Aguirre-Sacasa talked about the process of adapting the Archie comics, and how he goes about making changes.
“The show really crystallized, when it went from just being a coming-of-age show to a loss-of-innocence show,” Aguirre-Sacasa explained. “It really framed every story we would tell. Something a little bit darker, a little moodier, a little noir. That became how the show evolved… [I like] putting them in perhaps more adult, more edgy situations and having those situations test the integrity of the character.”
The bold departure from the source material has had polarizing effects. On one hand, Riverdale was a cultural phenomenon from the moment it premiered, and helped to turn actors like KJ Apa, Camila Mendes and Lili Reinhart into household names. On the other hand, the decision to ditch the wholesome tone and the kid-friendly stories has led to some fan backlash.
Ironically, given his willingness to play fast and loose with the source material, Aguirre-Sacasa got his start in comics. He created Afterlife with Archie in 2013, and used the attention from that release to become Archie Comics’ CCO in 2018. It was a decision made in an attempt to keep the brand relevant, and it was something that publisher and Archie Comics CEO Jon Goldwater has continued to stand by.
“The backlash was all good,” Goldwater told THR in relation to Riverdale. “People were thrilled that we changed it. You can only go down that road for so long and then you need to change that dynamic. We can kind of go anywhere with it right now… They may be in different situations. They may be in modern times, [but] the integrity of the characters has maintained — that hasn’t changed.”
Despite the wild tonal differences, Riverdale has continued to make reference to the comics. The final season has largely taken place in 1955, and sees the characters donning the outfits that they wore when they were initially introduced to the world in the 1940s. There is some wild science fiction reasoning as to why the gang ended up in 1955 when the rest of the show has taken place in modern times, but that’s a breakdown for another article.
The big takeaway here is that no matter how far Riverdale gets from the source material, it still pays tribute to the comics that led to its creation (and helped sustain its success).