Riverdale began on The CW as a teen murder mystery centered on Archie Andrews and his friends’ attempt to uncover who killed Jason Blossom. The show soon moved far beyond that premise, introducing serial killers, cults, supernatural abilities and time travel. Rather than hiding its increasingly unusual storylines, Riverdale embraced them, turning the town into a larger-than-life comic-book setting.
One of the show’s strangest developments involved Cheryl Blossom and her dead brother. After Jason’s body was exhumed by the Farm cult as part of an attempt to psychologically torment Cheryl, she recovered it and kept it in the Blossom Mansion chapel. She groomed him, dressed him in different outfits and spoke to him as though he were still alive. The storyline was deliberately bizarre, but it also reflected how profoundly Jason’s murder had affected Cheryl.
The Farm’s leader, Edgar Evernever, provided another memorable escalation. The cult was ultimately revealed to be a front for an organ-harvesting operation, but Edgar appeared to believe in the promise of “ascension” himself. While trying to escape Betty and the FBI in Season 4, he attempted to leave a motel roof aboard a homemade rocket while wearing a white leather jumpsuit. Alice Cooper shot him before the launch, ending one of the series’ most outlandish escape attempts.
Riverdale became even more ambitious when Tabitha Tate gained the ability to travel through time whenever she nearly died. After being shot by one of Percival Pickens’ henchmen, she visited 1944, 1968 and 1999. In the 1960s, she arrived shortly before Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and tried to prevent it. Her guardian angel, appearing as Toni Topaz, explained that the event was a fixed point in time. The storyline was far from subtle, but it used the show’s supernatural framework to address racism and the history of small-town America.
The series also gave its central characters superpowers. An explosion at Archie’s house at the end of Season 5 led to abilities appearing in Season 6. Archie gained super strength and invulnerability, Betty could perceive whether people were evil, Veronica produced poison in her body, Tabitha continued to travel through time and Jughead eventually developed the ability to read minds after recovering from deafness. Cheryl’s powers were pyrotechnic, adding a magical dimension to her already unusual character.
The most spectacular development came when Cheryl used her magic and pyrokinesis to absorb the others’ powers and destroy Bailey’s Comet before it wiped out Riverdale. The enormous energy released by the spell sent the characters back to the 1950s, setting up the show’s final season and returning the story to the era associated with the original Archie Comics. Tabitha erased their memories of the previous timeline, but the new version of Riverdale remained just as eccentric, featuring a milkman serial killer and Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead in a polyamorous relationship. For a series that had long abandoned realism, the ending was entirely consistent with its own brand of chaos.
Sources: TVLine.