Have you ever heard that saying about how those living in houses made of glass shouldn’t throw stones at others’ homes? Well, if you have, can you please tell this to Riverdale star Camila Mendes?
Despite being popular and loved, Riverdale never ceased to be the center of memes and the butt of jokes online throughout its seven seasons. There have been instances where scenes from the show have been mocked for their often absurd setup, but according to Lili Reinhart in a chat with Vulture, that was the whole point of the show, and being made fun of for embracing the theme of the show has “really not been easy to feel.”
To this, Mendes added her style of defending the reputation of their comic book adaptation by not-so-slyly making fun of the live-action adaptation of Rocket Raccoon from the Marvel comics in the MCU.
“Superhero movies are the main thing at the box office these days, and those are the most absurd stories you could imagine! You’ve got a [expletive] talking raccoon fighting aliens in space! No one’s like, ‘This makes no sense.’ We’re a comic book; it’s supposed to be fun and fictional and weird. If you want to watch a teen show where there’s just a bunch of kids in a high school dealing with relationship drama, there’s a lot out there.”
Well, apart from the fact that Mendes herself plays a comic book character (Veronica Lodge) in a series that is considered a dark version of the far chirpier Archie comics, Riverdale (which is barely connected to the comics) has questioned logic in ways that rival the methods of MCU approaching fantasy — at least the latter tries to abide by the rules of its made-up universe, whether it was the show pulling a hard Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and just diving headfirst into the world of science fiction or turning Toni into La Llorana or the organ harvesting cult scene where its leader tried to escape on a rocket.
We are not saying we don’t love Riverdale’s wild approach to its campiness — we have not obsessively binge-watched it for nothing. But it would be wise to not defend the same by trying to question the wackiness of the world it exists in.