Riverdale is no stranger to horror: the pilot episode ended with the body of a murdered Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines) washing up on the edge of Sweetwater River. There have been countless theories about the nature of the killing, which occurred after Jason was tied up and tortured for days, but one particularly popular theory suggests that Jason's captors had a very good reason for keeping the Blossom boy sequestered: Jason had become a zombie. Fans have noticed Easter eggs that suggest Riverdale might ultimately morph into a television version of Afterlife With Archie, a comic in which Archie and the gang fight off a zombie apocalypse that Sabrina, the teenage witch, accidentally causes. (Yes, really.) Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa just so happened to write that comic himself, and now, he's teasing that fans might not be very far off in their zombie predictions after all. Gulp.
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In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Aguirre-Sacasa revealed that there actually was a plan to do Afterlife With Archie, the television series, and that it was an idea "everybody was passionate about." Ultimately, however, The CW series morphed into something a little more Dawson's Creek than Walking Dead. While we're more concerned with Archie's (K.J. Apa) love life and blossoming music career than, say, Jughead (Cole Sprouse) turning into a walker, things might not stay that way. Aguirre-Sacasa told EW:
"It’s funny, when Greg Berlanti — who of course is the godfather of all these shows and my boss — and I were talking about possibly doing Afterlife with Archie, or introducing the character of Sabrina, I said, 'Yeah, but we can’t just suddenly have magic and supernatural elements on the show,' and Greg, without missing a beat, said, 'Of course you can.' I was like, 'Wait! Yeah, we can.'"
He then added this tidbit of information that certainly makes a zombie apocalypse seem plausible:
"There will definitely be a very strong, bold genre statement [in the finale]. If season 1 is a murder mystery, it won’t necessarily be another murder mystery. We’re telling, for us, kind of the best version of a murder mystery: Who killed Jason Blossom? So whatever twist in genre element that we add in season 2, it’s going to be different from that and probably, I think, it’s going to make people go, 'They’re not really doing that, are they?'"
It might seem strange for Riverdale to add a magical horror element when we've spent the first season comparing it to Gossip Girl, but Riverdale wouldn't be the first series to surprise us with a supernatural element late in the game. Twin Peaks — a series also about the murder of popular teenager — famously solved its own mystery by incorporating a demonic force into the storyline.
Sure, Riverdale turning its beloved characters into brain-eating monsters might seem crazy now, but...well, why not? I'm all for this series turning the teen drama on its head...even if it means turning the teens into zombies.
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