You’re not the only one who wants to go to Riverdale High and be friends with the characters. Showrunner, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa says of reading the Archie Comics, “I just really wanted to be friends with Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead. It just felt like a nice place, a benign place. I wanted to go to Riverdale High and I never quite outgrew that.
“I was always attracted to the wholesomeness and the innocence. Ironically, now, because Riverdale is not wholesome or safe. It’s the most dangerous place you can go to high school,” he adds.
There’s nothing like having someone passionate about the show’s world like Roberto is, and it probably explains why fans have flocked to Riverdale so much. We feel what he felt when he was younger.
I got the chance to sit down with Roberto in the press room at New York Comic-Con to find out what’s next for these characters we love and the world we love.
We have a new villain this season, the Gargoyle King. Roberto says he’s different from the other villains because he’s more of an urban legend, a myth. Roberto compares him to the Slender Man. He’s like a bad guy from a fairy tale and you don’t know if he’s real or someone in a suit. He’s more dangerous than the other villains, too.
The murder mystery will also have a different vibe this season. One of Roberto’s favorite shows recently was True Detective.
“It was a sort of a cult ritualistic murder. It wasn’t a supernatural story but it had the trappings and around the edges, it felt creepy and perverse and lurid, and that’s the vibe of this year’s villain and murder mystery,” he says.
“I love the idea of our teen detectives becoming true detectives this season,” he adds.
Roberto definitely has lots of things planned for this season and another possible musical episode is one of them, but if they are going to do another one, he says, it has to be right. They can’t just do it to do it.
“Carrie was the perfect musical at the perfect point in the season,” he says.
There are other special episodes coming fans ways too. There’s the flashback episode where they get to play their characters’ parents. This will air on Halloween. They’ve been talking about it since season one. Lili Reinhart really wanted to do it, and Executive Producer Sarah Schechter is a huge John Hughes fan. Roberto didn’t always want to do a flashback episode but he liked the idea of doing a Breakfast Club episode, which is kind of how the flashback episode is set up.
Episode seven this season will be like episode seven from last year, with interlocking stories. Last year’s episode had three dark stories. Roberto says episode five has a strong concept but doesn’t want to spoil it for fans, so won’t say more.
One thing fans are worried about is that there is a death coming this year.
“The saddest part of doing a show that is a crime show is that characters sometimes die,” Roberto says.
He says he never wants the death to be meaningless. He wants it to generate good stories and believes that’s what this death will do. Everyone’s lips are sealed on who that person will be.
To end this on a happy note, Choni fans will be very happy with what they get this season.
Roberto teases Cheryl and Toni’s relationship in season three: “They’re royalty. There’s no one cooler, there’s no one better looking… We’ll enjoy seeing them being a power couple and chic and fabulous.”
Check out the full interview: