WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 5, Episode 1 of Riverdale, "Climax," which aired Wednesday, Jan. 20 on The CW.
Riverdale has never been a show to shy away from the taboo and the unexpected, yet an unfolding subplot carried over from Season 4 into the Season 5 premiere smacks of cliché and contrivance. And yes, accusing a show that, in the same episode, also implies one of its characters (Hiram Lodge) is beating an "incurable" disease through violent street brawls of being contrived isn't exactly the hottest of takes.
However, when it comes to something as trite as a standard, soap opera-style love triangle... is that really the best you can do, Riverdale? Is this not the same show that gave us floating babies and the Gargoyle King?
The participants of this triangle are three of the series' principal cast: Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge. Having danced around the subject in Season 4, the drama comes to the surface in "Climax" right on the dance floor of the senior prom, where Archie admits to Veronica that he and Betty shared a kiss. With her prom night thoroughly ruined (nice one, Andrews), a tearful Veronica decides to uphold social decorum for as long as possible: she and Archie will keep up appearances for the next two weeks until high school is done, and then go their separate ways for college.
In fairness, Archie and Betty are the intended OTP from the series' comic book source, so we could sort of see this coming... though this predictability only lessens its intrigue for the audience. Riverdale's first season laid the groundwork with Betty pining over Archie -- the boy next door who'd recently blossomed into a guitar-playing jock -- but her childhood BFF couldn't return her feelings. Instead, Betty moved on to Archie's new friend, Jughead, while Archie to Veronica, forming a friendship group that has lasted five seasons. But things became complicated when the four of them needed to stage an extremely elaborate fake death for Jughead to escape an actual murder plot in Season 4. The plan involved Jughead going into hiding while Betty and Archie, to convince prying eyes that his grieving girlfriend had truly moved on, pretended to start dating.
Betty's unresolved feelings come bubbling back to the surface and to her (and our) surprise, Archie begins to reciprocate, for no apparent reason other than Betty being just... a human woman in front of him. He even went so far as to pen her a love song, which Veronica discovers in "Climax" and awkwardly performs at La Bonne Nuit in front of a squirming Betty and Archie. Yikes. In case it wasn't clear enough that Archie Andrews is just the worst, he comes clean about this, too, to poor Veronica, only humiliating her further.
But Betty and Archie aren't the only pair in this equation with established chemistry. Betty and Veronica shared a kiss at the start of the series, too, a clunky moment of faux lesbianism that Cheryl Blossom, an actual LGBTQ character, rightly lampshaded as an outdated piece of flagrant fan service. However forced this was in the script, it does establish some in-universe bi-curiosity between the pair, which might have been more subversive to explore more fully than pairing up Good Girl Betty with Bad Boy Jughead. Even more daring is the potential solution to this dull love triangle: why not just make it a threesome?
At this point, given the three's history, a little polyamory wouldn't be totally unnatural, but it would be something far fresher than the triangle drama we've seen so many times in so many other places. That's not to say that unoriginality itself is a problem -- a good story doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. But in Riverdale's case, the bar for WTFness has been raised so high, viewers just expect a bit more. Archie, Betty and Veronica exploring a polyamorous relationship might sound like a dead-end, dramatically speaking, but given how underseen this type of non-traditional relationship remains in mainstream media, there's a lot to dig into. And, if the representation helps normalize a stigmatized preference, then all the better.
Riverdale has done a fairly decent job at inclusivity so far (gay conversion subplots aside...), so why not push the envelope even further? The only victim here would be Jughead but, hey, if you can't beat them, maybe join them.