‘Riverdale’: 20 Wildest Storylines Ranked, From Superpowers to Cult Sacrifice
In 2003, a play called Archie’s Weird Fantasy was making final preparations to open in Atlanta. It followed the perpetual teenagers of Archie Comics into adulthood — particularly golden boy Archie Andrews who, over the course of the play, begins dating future serial killer Nathan Leopold, moves to the big city with his pals, and brushes up against everything from the McCarthyism-era comics witch hunt to an AIDS-like disease targeting comic book characters.
The day before the first performance, the creatives behind Archie’s Weird Fantasy received a cease-and-desist order from Archie Comics threatening legal action if they didn’t change the characters’ names. Yet in a truly CW-worthy plot twist, the show’s playwright, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, went on to create and run all seven seasons of Riverdale.
In retrospect, it feels inevitable that Riverdale soon mutated beyond its teen-drama trappings, transforming from a Twin Peaks-esque reimagining of the comics’ squeaky-clean source material into a campy, Frankensteinian mash-up of genres, pop-culture references, and pie-in-the-sky melodrama that’s frankly unlike anything that came before it.
Over the course of Riverdale’s run, it’s become a popular internet punching bag, with sneering detractors taking to social media to mock the latest out-of-context viral clip or blame it for Netflix’s decision to cancel yet another original series (ignoring the fact that Riverdale is a CW show available to stream on the platform, but let’s save our current media literacy epidemic for another day).
And yes, plenty of jabs at its storytelling decisions and overall quality are justified. But in a landscape plagued by formulaic IP reboots, it feels like a miracle that a show as strange and eager for reinvention as Riverdale has existed for so long.
So as the show finally winds to a close after seven delightfully unhinged seasons, I’d like to take a moment to remember all of its big swings. Without further ado, here are 20 of the wildest Riverdale storylines of all time, ranked.
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Kevin’s Tickle Videos
Of Riverdale’s core characters, Kevin Keller has gotten the shortest end of the stick, never truly moving beyond the gay best friend archetype he’s been saddled with since the pilot episode. That’s not to say that the show hasn’t tried to give him an outlandish arc of his own, most memorably in a bizarre storyline in which he and his boyfriend Fangs tried to make some extra cash by participating in tickle fetish videos.
It’s the kind of salacious but ultimately fruitless storytelling that feels more synonymous with a Sam Levinson series than Riverdale’s one-of-a-kind lunacy. Nevertheless, it’s just weird enough to make it onto this ranking. -
The Auteur
In Seasons Four and Five, the town of Riverdale was dogged by a creepy videographer known as “The Auteur,” who left VHS tapes on their doorsteps featuring grisly reenactments of local murders. The culprit turned out to be Jughead’s younger sister Jellybean, who created the mystery in hopes of keeping her big brother from moving away for college. I’d personally try out a few less elaborate ploys first, but bonus points for creativity.
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Archie’s Bear Fight
No matter how unfamiliar you are with Riverdale, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen the viral clip in which Archie heatedly tells his pal Reggie that he’s had a lot on his plate lately — namely, fighting an entire bear.
And yes, it is wild in context, occurring mere days after Archie escaped from an underground prison fight club. But in a show filled with cults and alternate dimensions, a riff on The Revenant is practically down-to-earth.
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Jason Blossom’s Murder
It’s easy to forget that Riverdale started off as a good old-fashioned murder mystery. After Cheryl’s twin brother Jason washed ashore from Sweetwater River with a bullet in his head in the pilot, the show’s first season interrogated pretty much every character as a potential culprit. Things became even more complicated when Cheryl confessed that Jason had planned to run away with Betty’s siter Polly, who had become pregnant with his twins.
But in Riverdale, the call is often coming from within the house. It turned out that Blossom family patriarch Clifford Blossom killed Jason after he refused to take part in the family business: Using a booming maple syrup business as a front for drug-dealing. Now that’s succession drama if I’ve ever heard it!
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The Mothmen
Riverdale Season Five initially seemed to embrace the supernatural when Jughead was seemingly abducted by aliens after investigating local folklore about “Mothmen.” Some Riverdale residents believed that these extraterrestrial creatures were responsible for abducting townies over the years. In reality, these beings were actually a clan of inbred Blossom descendants who lived in the woods and occasionally preyed on unfortunate passerby — including Betty’s poor sister Polly, who they encountered on the Lonely Highway just outside of town.
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Tabitha Tries to Stop the MLK Assassination
Erinn Westbrook’s Season Five introduction as Pop’s Diner owner Pop Tate’s granddaughter Tabitha was easily the best decision that Riverdale made in its post-time-jump era, which often floundered in its attempts to portray the gang’s adult lives. Westbrook fit seamlessly into the core cast, bringing a warmth and unflappable curiosity to her role that felt refreshing after seasons of the same character dynamics.
By Season Six, Tabitha got her own storyline when the gang unexpectedly developed superpowers (so much more on that later). After discovering that she had the ability to travel through time, she eventually wound up in the year 1968, just before Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Although Tabitha resolved to save the civil rights leader’s life, she was forced to reckon with the fact that his death is a fixed point in time. But hey, at least she found out that she was Riverdale’s guardian angel! The show’s, um… questionable incorporation of African-American history continued in Season Seven, in which the gang — now sent back in time to 1955 — attempted to educate their local community about Emmett Till’s murder.
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Julian the Haunted Doll
Even after Jason’s murder was solved, the Blossom family’s shamelessly melodramatic, great-value Gothic antics were responsible for some of the most delightfully unhinged storylines in Riverdale history — including the introduction of a haunted doll
In Season Four, the Blossom family’s lore took a turn for the supernatural when Cheryl’s grandmother Nana Rose revealed that she and her Jason had a triplet named Julian, who Cheryl absorbed in the womb. In the present, he haunted Cheryl in the form of a creepy doll who she eventually drowned in her bathtub.
Julian became a real character when Riverdale went back to the 1950s in Season Seven, taking over for Jason as Cheryl’s jock twin. He wasn’t super interested in seeing his doll counterpart when the gang got their memories back in the penultimate episode, and honestly? Fair.
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The Gargoyle King
Someone in the Riverdale Season writer’s room was clearly stewing over one too many failed Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, because the cult-favorite fantasy role-playing game had a downright villainous role in the show.
In Season Three, Riverdale townies became obsessed with playing Gryphons & Gargoyles, a much more lethal in-universe equivalent of D&D. Betty and Jughead discovered that the game is being controlled by a seemingly inhuman creature known as the “Gargoyle King,” who used it to control townies and even kill a number of players through ritual suicides. The entire scheme was masterminded by slippery local villain Chic, but more on him later.
Between Riverdale and Stranger Things, Hollywood clearly wants you to take away one key message: Nerdy tabletop games are not to be messed with.
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Chic & Charles
When Betty’s mom Alice was a teenager, she became pregnant during an affair with Jughead’s father FP, and gave said baby up for adoption. In a more conventional show, long-time couple Betty and Jughead sharing a half-sibling would be a weird enough storyline on its own. But this is Riverdale we’re talking about!
In Season Two, Alice’s long-lost firstborn seemingly re-entered the picture as Chic, a creepy guy who she invited into the Cooper household — even after she and Betty were forced to cover up a murder he committed immediately after showing up. The Coopers later found out that he was an imposter, and that Alice and FP’s son was actually an F.B.I. agent named Charles.
For a while, it seemed like Charles is a genuinely good dude, even helping his half-siblings — who, once again, were dating at the time — with their investigations into kooky local mysteries. But much to their surprise, Charles was actually in evil cahoots with his boyfriend Chic.
Although the couple are apprehended, they later broke out of prison together after Riverdale’s seven-year time-jump, convincing Alice to marry them in the middle of Polly’s twin children’s birthday party. Classic Riverdale!
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The Secret History (Jughead’s Version)
Riverdale Season Three ended on a particularly ominous cliffhanger, flashing forward to a scene in which Archie, Betty, and Veronica stood over what appeared to be Jughead’s dead body, covered in blood. The next several episodes revealed what actually led up to that night, beginning with Jughead’s enrollment in the prestigious private school Stonewall Prep.
While there, he uncovered a sadistic secret society known as the Quill and Skull, whose members later attempted to orchestrate the perfect crime by luring Jughead into their ranks, killing him, and then framing Betty. Luckily, Jughead was one step ahead of his classmates, going so far as to stage his own murder to expose the prep school’s rotten underside.
This storyline borrows heavily from Donna Tartt’s beloved 1992 novel The Secret History, which also revolves around a tight-knit secret society of students who cover up the murder of one of their own. One of Jughead’s classmates is even named Donna Sweett, for crying out loud!
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Jason Blossom’s Return
They say grief looks different for everyone. In Cheryl’s case, it looked like bringing her dead brother’s recently exhumed corpse to live with her in the Blossom family’s creepy manor, much to her girlfriend Toni’s chagrin. For a good chunk of Season Four, he hung out in the house’s chapel, where Cheryl dressed him in a parade of new outfits like a fucked-up Ken doll. Eventually, she was forced to abandon these gothic fantasies and gave Jason a proper Viking-style funeral on Sweetwater River.
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Archie Goes to War?
Post-high school graduation, Archie decided to enlist in the military and went off to war. Much like last year’s Top Gun: Maverick, we never found out exactly where he went to war, or who he fought.
What we did get was one of the most absurd — and dare I say inspired — cold opens in the show’s history, in which an injured Archie dreamt that he was engaging in World War I-style trench warfare on his high school football field. There were even Riverdale Vixen cheerleaders urging him on! The dream ended when he came face-to-face with his longtime nemesis, Veronica’s father Hiram, who raised a gun to his head. The epic highs and lows of high school football were truly just the beginning!
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Back to the Fifties
When a deadly comet nearly hit Riverdale at the end of Season Six, guardian angel Tabitha saved everyone by transporting the entire town back to the year 1955. In the process, the core characters became teenagers once again in the show’s final season, matching their original comic counterparts more closely than ever.
Sure, this twist meant that many of the show’s previous coming-of-age story beats were recycled as a result. But there was still plenty of fun to be had in this new reality, from Veronica becoming a Hollywood starlet who invents birth control to Betty writing The Feminine Mystique.
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Dark Betty
Riverdale’s Betty is so much more than the wholesome girl next door. In case you didn’t pick up on her dark side in the first few seasons, the show took pains to remind viewers that potential evil is literally encoded in her DNA. During a Season Three meeting with Alice and Polly, Betty found out that when doctors ran medical tests on her as a child, they discovered that she had the “serial killer” genes. As Polly pointed out, no one else in the family had them — not even their serial killer father!
To make matters worse, Betty also realized that Hal had attempted to groom her as his protegé during childhood. Her propensity for evil later led the Quill and Skull society to frame her as a would-be murderer. The serial killer genes continued to haunt her for most of the series, occasionally coming out in her fights against baddies. Women can be a little evil sometimes, as a treat!
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Abigail Blossom
Rest assured, Blossom family lore doesn’t stop with Jason and Julian! Season Five introduced Cheryl’s ancestor Abigail (also played by Madelaine Petsch), who was burned at the stake for witchcraft several centuries earlier and returned to seek revenge upon the descendants of her killers: Archie, Betty, and Jughead.
To do so, she possessed Cheryl’s body in Season Six, unbeknownst to the rest of the gang. Along the way, Abigail also tried to seduce Cheryl’s ex-girlfriend Toni, who she viewed as the reincarnation of her dear lover Thomasina. After wreaking plenty of havoc, Abigail was finally exorcised out of Cheryl’s body. But she didn’t hold a grudge against her ancestor — in fact, Cheryl and Toni later agreed to let Abigail and Thomasina’s spirits use their bodies as vessels to have sex one last time. Love wins, I guess!
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The Black Hood
Riverdale left traditional murder mysteries behind in Season Two, choosing instead to focus on one of the show’s very favorite subjects: Serial killers, starting with the Black Hood. This killer targeted citizens who he believed to be “sinful,” from predatory teacher Mrs. Grundy to the gang’s classmate Midge, who did drugs and allegedly cheated on her boyfriend.
After seemingly being vanquished halfway through the season, the Black Hood dramatically announced his return by displaying Midge’s murdered body onstage during Riverdale High’s production of Carrie: The Musical.
He turned out to be none other than Betty’s mild-mannered newspaper editor-father Hal, who she had some hysterical Silence of the Lambs-esque prisons meet-ups with in subsequent episodes.
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Rivervale
After Hiram attempted to vanquish his longtime foe Archie by planting a bomb under his bed in the Season Five finale, the subsequent explosion launched the gang into an alternate reality known as Rivervale, where the paranormal is everywhere. For the first five episodes of Season 6, the sky was truly the limit when it came to storytelling. Archie was killed in a town-wide sacrifice, Midsommar-style! The devil walked into Veronica’s casino! Toni turned into La Llorona!
The arc was conceived as a five-episode “special event” filmed long before the rest of the season due to Covid-related CW filming delays. But this is Riverdale we’re talking about, so of course they did the absolute most.
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The Gang Gets Superpowers
After the ordinary Riverdale was restored thanks to some quick work from Rivervale Jughead, our characters didn’t come back exactly right. This brush with Rivervale caused them to develop unique superpowers like super strength, mind-reading, and pyrokinesis. My personal favorite power is Veronica’s ability to poison people with a kiss, which she ultimately reverse-engineered to make Cheryl invulnerable.
As she exclaimed in the Season Six finale: “It’s not queer-baiting, it’s saving the world!”
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The Farm
Has there ever been a more bonkers villain introduction than Chad Michael Murray’s cult leader character Edgar Evernever leading his followers in a rhythmic standing ovation for a high-school production of the Heathers musical? Probably, but I don’t want to know.
Because a weird beast killing people with knock-off Dungeons & Dragons wasn’t enough chaos for Season Three, the show also introduced a cult known as The Farm, who recruit townies to live in their shadowy compound. Upon infiltrating the group in hopes of saving her recently converted friends and family, Betty discovers that the whole operation is actually a front for harvesting people’s organs. She narrowly escapes getting lobotomized for threatening to spill The Farm’s secrets, and eventually apprehends Edgar before he can attempt to flee Earth in his very own rocket.
It’s wild, but does it not sound like a premise that would make Elon Musk’s ears perk up?
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Percival Pickens
Riverdale’s audaciousness arguably reached a fever pitch in Season Six. Our newly super-powered heroes found themselves up against the cartoonishly evil Percival Pickens, an immortal villain who has his own magical powers thanks to a deal he made with the Devil back in the Pilgrim days (yes, really). It just so happened that he was originally from Rivervale, but ended up in Riverdale as a result of the bomb explosion.
So he set out to remake Riverdale to his liking, whether he was setting Biblical plagues upon its residents or trying to build a “ghost train” to bring the realm of the dead back into the world of the living. What did we ever do to deserve this show?!