With Riverdale set to conclude with its upcoming seventh season, showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa assures that The CW’s Archie Comics-based drama will go out with a “big swing.”
During a recent interview with TVLine, Aguirre-Sacasa was asked how the decision to end Riverdale with Season 7 came about. “It came out of conversations with the studio and The CW and [CEO] Mark Pedowitz,” he replied. “When we were renewed for Season 7, though we weren’t told at the time it’d be our final season, I think we were all feeling that it might be. When Mark and I talked about it… it was bittersweet.”
However, Aguirre-Sacasa and the rest of the Riverdale team “are so proud of the run we’ve had, and the call did come as we were working on the last episode of Season 6. We were debating on what the final beats of that episode would be and torn between a very big swing and a quieter ending. And it definitely emboldened us to go for the big swing for Season 7. It’s really exciting.”
A brooding, dramatic re-imagining of the iconic teenage characters owned by Archie Comics, Riverdale initially premiered on The CW in early 2017. Five years on, the show is currently in the midst of its sixth season, with its lead characters having left high school behind and entered the adult world. All the while, the town of Riverdale itself has only gotten weirder and more dangerous.
In March 2022, shortly after Riverdale Season 6 returned from its hiatus, the show was officially renewed for Season 7. A few months later, however, it came to light that Riverdale‘s seventh season would indeed be its last — something even series star Lili Reinhart predicted might be the case as far back as December 2021.
In addition to Riverdale, Aguirre-Sacasa served as showrunner on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a Netflix series based on the Archie Comics title of the same name, itself a mature re-imagining of the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch comics. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina ran on Netflix for two seasons (broken up into four parts) from 2018 to 2020, with series lead Kiernan Shipka later reprising her role as Sabrina Spellman in Riverdale Season 6. Riverdale also spawned a direct spinoff series in the form of Katy Keene, which aired on The CW for a single season in 2020.
The next episode of Riverdale Season 6 airs this coming Sunday, June 26, on The CW.
Source: TVLine