Riverdale Season 7 – All We Know

The CW has seen a lot of changes occur with ownership in recent months, and headlines popped up primarily due to the cancelations of once-popular television shows. Series like Batwoman, Dynasty, and Legacies all saw an end to their runs on the network in 2022 alone. Looking ahead to the rest of 2023, The CW hopes loyal fans of Riverdale tune in to watch Season 7 unfold.

Riverdale is based on the characters of the famed Archie Comics, adapted for The CW as a supernatural crime series with many of the characters in lead roles. The series that began in 2017 has been a success for The CW, introducing young actors to popular culture. Those were the likes of KJ Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes, and Cole Sprouse.

Riverdale was renewed for Season 7 in March 2022, and filming began for the new season shortly after that. The series will pick up after a cliffhanger of the Season 6 finale. Here is all we know about Riverdale season 7.

RIVERDALE SEASON 7 WILL BE THE FINAL FOR THE SERIES

After Riverdale was renewed for Season 7, it was expected that the television show might end soon. As one of the remaining legacy shows on The CW still in production, Riverdale will follow the lead of The Flash by ending with its next season. TVLine confirms that Riverdale will conclude its storylines with Season 7, but only after the series has a chance to tie up as many loose ends as possible.

Arguably, there are many loose ends to tie up, as Riverdale is known not only for its dark themes but also its soap opera elements. A twist at the end of Season 6 depicted Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) using her powers to redirect a comet away from the town of Riverdale.

In doing so, viewers were undoubtedly confused when they saw Archie (KJ Apa) awake in the 1950s, and it seems only Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) remembers the comet’s threat.

RIVERDALE SEASON 7 WILL RELEASE ON MARCH 29, 2023

The CW is ready to present Riverdale Season 7 with a season premiere release date of March 29, 2023. Riverdale has not been on television since the summer of 2022, and a cliffhanger ending that leaned heavily on its newer supernatural elements was a surprise to audiences everywhere.

The season will run until August 23, 2023, and viewers will likely be looking to see if the love triangle between Archie, Betty, and Veronica finally comes to a healthy resolution.

KJ APA, CAMILA MENDES, LILI REINHART, AND COLE SPROUSE, WILL RETURN TO THE CAST OF RIVERDALE SEASON 7

The cliffhanger ending of the previous season means that Riverdale Season 7 will take a decidedly different direction not seen in the series before. This new time period means that many of the characters from the show will return but in various costumes and dramatically different settings. There might be some playful themes in the new season set in 1955, like Pop (Alvin Sanders) showing up as his younger self, for instance.

The cast of Riverdale Season 7 should remain the same as the other seasons before it. The show’s devoted fanbase will witness KJ Apa as Archie Andrews, Camila Mendes as Veronica Lodge, Lili Reinhart as Betty Cooper, Cole Sprouse as Jughead Jones, Madelaine Petsch as Cheryl Blossom, and Casey Cott as Kevin Keller.

While many of the young principal cast members will see their characters’ storylines come to an end with Riverdale Season 7, recurring characters might also pop up in the final season.

Mark Consuelos saw his alter ego Hiram Lodge meet his maker in Season 6, but an alternate universe in the 1950s means fair game for creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to bring him back in some capacity.

Riverdale is notable for its guest appearances and cross-over attempts with other television shows that share the same universe.

Kiernan Shipka appeared in Season 6 as Sabrina Spellman, the same character she plays in the Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Josie McCoy (Ashleigh Murray) was a fixture of Riverdale for several seasons before Murray took the superstar character to Katy Keene, a series that The CW canceled after one season. 

Both Sabrina and Josie might show their faces in the town of Riverdale again, depending on how the writers want to include them in the new 1950s setting.

Other recurring cast members are likely to show up again in Riverdale Season 7, including Marisol Nichols as Hermione Lodge, Mädchen Amick as Alice Smith, and possibly fan favorite Skeet Ulrich as F.P. Jones.

After the sudden death of Luke Perry, who played Archie’s dad Fred Andrews, in 2019, Molly Ringwald stepped in as Archie’s mom Mary Andrews. It’s conceivable that Ringwald would be back as a featured guest star in Riverdale since she had a guest appearance in the Season 6 finale.

THE SHOW’S FINAL SEASON WILL BE A “BLANK CANVAS”

According to an interview Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa gave to Entertainment Weekly, the Riverdale showrunner noted the twist ending of Season 6 is “as close to a blank canvas as you can get without it being a completely new show.”

This opens up a world of possibilities for the final season, given that all of the characters embodied by the main cast in 1955 might be different than those depicted for six seasons in the present day. Their day-to-day problems might fluctuate, and the established couples from Season 6 might return to the beginning of the series with Archie and Veronica rekindling their romance and Jughead and Betty rekindling theirs.

Six seasons of Riverdale saw a number of mysteries rise to the surface, chief among them being Jason Blossom’s murder and the terror of the Black Hood. Musical episodes, teenagers opening up speakeasies, and characters returning from the dead have been par for the course for a comically strange television series like Riverdale. With Season 7 on the horizon, even the show’s crew has remarked that the final season is sort of a do-over.

Riverdale Season 7 will attempt to paint the new season in an innocent manner, tossing out many of the demonic storylines that occurred in past seasons. Season 6 concluded with the twist ending of Archie waking up to the news of actor James Dean’s death, which in real-life occurred on September 30, 1955.

This will immediately set the kids of Riverdale up to mourn a rebel icon at a time in American history when teenagers believed no one understood their dilemmas.

But Riverdale is predominantly known for its use of mysteries outlining each season, with the young cast responsible for solving murders and even taking on a powerful cult bewitching the town. Season 7 will most likely showcase a new mystery for the kids of Riverdale to solve, unmasking a big bad like the Scooby-Doo gang they are.

Since Jughead seems to be the only one who remembers the comet, he could reconnect with Betty while the two return to their typical investigative ways in Riverdale Season 7. While the series now takes place in 1955, the same year that Marty McFly found himself landing a Delorean in Back to the Future, time travel and Pleasantville jokes might be plentiful in the final season.

THE SEASON MIGHT MIRROR ASPECTS OF DON’T WORRY DARLING

Many of the episode titles from Riverdale over the years have coincided with a real movie with similar themes. Viewers have watched episodes entitled “A Touch of Evil,” a reference to the 1958 Orson Welles film noir of the same name. Other episodes include “The Last Picture Show” and “Dog Day Afternoon,” obvious homages to classic Hollywood movies.

The first episode of Riverdale Season 7 is called “Don’t Worry, Darling,” referencing the Florence Pugh and Harry Styles movie released last year. If history is any indication, longtime fans of the show might be treated to a bit of a psychological thriller akin to the movie’s subplots when Riverdale returns in March.

Don’t Worry Darling became a surprise box office draw in 2022 after a chaotic promotional tour concerning its lead stars and director Olivia Wilde. However, the film depicts a 1950s housewife who suspects that her utopian suburban neighborhood might inhabit dark secrets from within. Any take on this premise might be an exciting path for Riverdale Season 7 to play around with.