June has been a rough month for fans of The CW. With the network cancelling a lot of fan-favorite shows, including Batwoman and Legends of Tomorrow, it's been clear that the brand is moving away from the properties that made it originally popular. Amongst the shows that got the axe is Riverdale, which will be ending after its upcoming Season 7. However, its cancellation is not a surprise to anyone who's watched the show recently.
Some would even argue it was a long time coming, given how its storylines had gotten progressively weirder before Season 6 started. What started off as a promising series with a Twin Peaks-style murder mystery quickly descended into something that could be best described as throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick. This naturally resulted in a steady decline in ratings, with Riverdale's audience even falling below Batwoman despite that show's many production issues.
After a strong first season, Riverdale stopped trying to tell a good story and opted for storylines that were even goofier than the Archie Comics crossovers. One of those storylines included Betty and Veronica both having villainous fathers with ludicrous motivations in Season 2. The theme of continued in Season 3 with Cheryl's mother orchestrating a deadly game of Griffins and Gargoyles, and being behind the villainous actions of Betty's father and the Gargoyle King. Another implausible storyline viewers had trouble wrapping their minds around was the organ-harvesting cult known as The Farm.
By Season 4, Riverdale appeared to be getting back on track with a new mystery. But while the stalkery videotapes started off promising, the plot failed when it was revealed that the videotapes were created by Jughead's little sister Jellybean as a way of keeping him from leaving her. The quality of the storytelling didn't improve with the introduction of the Trashbag Killer (TBK) or the exploration of a Donnie Darko-style universe with Rivervale. Even now, Riverdale is exploring the idea of Archie and Betty having mysterious superpowers, with Cheryl being possessed by the spirit of her ancestor Abigail.
The current season is epitomizing what fans have been complaining about -- that the show failed to capitalize on interesting ideas while doubling down on the unimportant ones. One significantly missed opportunity was a proper crossover with Riverdale spin-off series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Given how many episodes during the Rivervale event dealt with the occult and other supernatural elements -- human sacrifice, deals with the devil, La Llorona, the curse of immortality, witchcraft -- it was shocking that Sabrina Spellman was relegated to a glorified cameo and wasn't featured as a more prominent guest character.
Instead, the showrunners went with two Jugheads being aware of the town existing in a pocket universe, and figuring out how to save both that universe and the mainstream Riverdale universe from destroying each other. The solution they came up with was to keep one Jughead hidden in a bomb shelter to essentially function as the Rivervale universe's human battery, while the other Jughead carried on with life like normal. This was a far less interesting conclusion than if Sabrina had been around to sort out the crisis with her own resources as a witch.
When Season 6 returned to the proper Riverdale universe, it missed another opportunity, this time to polish the ideas that were explored during Rivervale. Apart from Archie and Betty acquiring superpowers as a side effect, Cheryl's storyline with Abigail somehow managed to be more cliché than the Rivervale version. Where Rivervale established that Cheryl was an immortal Abigail looking for a way to end her immortality, the Riverdale version of Abigail is a vengeful spirit who initially possessed Cheryl's body before being transferred to a doll. The Rivervale version of Abigail had far more compelling motivations and felt more realistic -- as realistic as the show is anymore.
While the declining quality of Riverdale's storytelling factored into the decision to cancel the show after Season 7, it's also worth noting that the timing of its cancellation also coincides with a major shift in Warner Bros. Discovery's economic landscape. One of the major changes coming out of the merger is the potential sale of The CW. Though the fate of the network hasn't been decided yet, Riverdale's fate could also have been informed by this change in direction. However, regardless of those outside factors, the show hadn't done enough creatively to justify more than a final season.
Riverdale airs Sundays at 8:00 p.m. on The CW.