War is coming to Riverdale. As tensions between the Northside and Southside continue to mount, an explosive conflict seems inevitable -- and, according to the cast, that's exactly what will happen as Season 2 moves forward. During a set visit, Cole Sprouse (Jughead Jones), Marisol Nichols (Hermione Lodge), Lili Reinhart (Betty Cooper), Ashleigh Murray (Josie McCoy) and Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) weighed in on Riverdale's brewing "civil war."
"I mean, I think the Southside is always going to be a strawman for the Northside. Like, it takes a lot of the flak just because it’s the easiest victim to point at, which is something that we continuously talk about until the eventual culmination of basically a civil war," Sprouse explained. "I think -- because institutionally the Southside is an area where a lot of that stuff is forced to take place -- people see that as the very first source of that, of that trouble and that drama, and eventually the Northside just says, 'We don’t want this blemish on our town anymore' and how are we going to end up dealing with this, but I think they’ve always been the fall guy and Jughead realizes that they’re the fall guy and Jughead -- because he’s got a foot on the North and the Southside -- has to figure out a way to mediate that, which is kind of the continued narrative."
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"For Jughead and for the Southside, the point is that these bad decisions that are being made are because of a kind of institutional violence that forces their hand, which is what often happens in the real world in those kind of situations, is that the institutions force the hands of the people who don’t have the agency to do otherwise, and so crime does take place, but it’s justified crime in some strange way," he continued. "That’s kind of what Jughead ends up discovering about the Southside, is that the reasons people have had to do these things are matters of survival, not so much like a kind of cliched, 'I just want to do baaad!' Which is funny, because episode 6 has a character that’s like, 'Chaos, baby!' I love his character."
"The war between the South and Northside to me is like old school Outsiders, wrong side of the tracks stuff. That I’m assuming goes on anywhere. In any town, there’s this side and that side; it’s kind of an age old conflict," Nichols added. "The Lodges fed into it, particularly Hiram, because in my mind he’s the type of man who loves to watch chaos and loves to create it. The Lodges aren’t as innocent as they may or may not seem at all, and they are invested in what’s going on, even if we haven’t seen it yet."
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"I think Betty’s kind of idea of the Southside, she has a soft spot because her boyfriend is involved I don’t think she sees the Southside as a bad group," Reinhart shared. "She doesn’t see them as the bad guys and she doesn’t see the north side as the bad guys they just happen to be enemies of one another and I think she is trying to find balance and she feels a little bit like she is caught in the middle."
"There isn’t much of a perspective from Josie’s point of view. You’ll definitely see more from Mayor McCoy, she gets more tied up in it because of the position she’s in and because of the deals she’s made previously in the first season," Murray revealed. "I imagine that more of that will come to light to Josie as we move on throughout the season, but right now she’s still blind to what’s going on."
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The conflict will also spell trouble for Kevin Keller. "I can say I think you'll see every character at some point thrown into a situation where they will definitely deal with that. That's all I can say about it, but yes," Cott said.
Airing Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, Riverdale stars K.J. Apa as Archie Andrews, Lili Reinhart as Betty Cooper, Camila Mendes as Veronica Lodge, Cole Sprouse as Jughead Jones, Madelaine Petsch as Cheryl Blossom, Ashleigh Murray as Josie McCoy and Casey Cott as Kevin Keller.