Riverdale is returning to our TV screens — but not in the way some may expect.
Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is expanding the fictional universe with a Disney+ series that is currently in development. Based on Afterlife With Archie, which is a comic book series written by Aguirre-Sacasa, the show “reimagines the beloved town of Riverdale as an apocalyptic, nightmare-fueled hellscape overrun with flesh-eating zombies.”
While casting has not been announced yet, it isn’t expected for any of the original cast members to reprise their roles in the spinoff. Riverdale ran on The CW from 2017 to 2023 and even inspired the short-lived spinoff Katy Keene.
Pulling inspiration from the characters of the Archie comic book series, Riverdale made KJ Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes, Cole Sprouse, Madelaine Petsch and Charles Melton household names. When news broke that the show would come to an end, most of the cast admitted to having conflicting feelings about saying goodbye.
“As an actor on the show, wrapping was maybe one of the hardest weeks of my life. The people that I work with — the cast and the crew — are truly some of the most phenomenal people on this planet. I feel very lucky to have spent seven years with them. We pretty much had the same crew for seven years so I think the hardest goodbye was saying goodbye to our crew,” Petsch, 31, who played Cheryl, exclusively told Us Weekly in July 2023.
Petsch added: “It’s more to me about saying goodbye to these people who made the show [and] put their love into it. So that was quite difficult. But I know it was time to put the red lipstick away and say goodbye to Cheryl. So I’m excited to say goodbye to Cheryl [and] I think her story has been completed really well. I think people will be happy with it.”
Mendes, 31, meanwhile, opened up about looking forward to doing new projects.
“There’s so much more I want to experience, there’s still so much more I want to achieve, and I get a small window to do that between seasons,” the actress, who played Veronica on the show, told InStyle in 2022. “I want to have other things under my belt. I don’t want it to just be Riverdale.”
After filming wrapped, Mendes released an emotional message.
“That’s a wrap on Veronica 💔 there’s no caption or photo dump that can illustrate what an emotional experience it’s been filming our last episode of Riverdale. I’m not just saying goodbye to a TV show, I’m saying goodbye to an entire life I created in Vancouver, to a transformative period of time that shaped me as an adult, to a community of people who have seen the best and worst of me over the course of seven intense seasons,” she captioned an Instagram post in June 2023. “It doesn’t matter how ready you are to move on, goodbyes are painful, and walking away from this show will be a process of mourning for all of us.”
Reinhart, 29, who portrayed Betty, also weighed in when she called out haters of the show, writing via Instagram Story at the time, “Assholes saying ‘can’t wait for this show to end,’ like, babe, why does the show have such an impact on your life that you feel the need to make a public comment about it?. Run along now.”
