🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
When Riverdale began in 2017, it was a show with a killer idea—what if we crossed the canon of Archie Comics characters with Twin Peaks? The combination of small-town soap opera, murder mystery (and gratuitous male toplessness) was irresistible.
It was a hard milkshake of a show, like the sort you might be able to get at Pop's Diner (or the illegal speakeasy that used to be below it). Frothy and sweet, but with a kick.
Four years later, that milkshake has been left out on the counter too long, and has become a concoction that even the most ardent Barchie stans have to admit is not as appetising as it once was.
With Riverdale Season 6, Episode 5, The CW show reached its 100th episode. A respectable number, especially in the days where streaming services love to cancel things 10 episodes in with reckless abandon. But the writing is on the wall for the show, and it is time for it to end.
Why Riverdale needs to be canceled
There is an issue that many shows face when they have a very conceptual first season—what the hell do you do next? What do you do when the murder mystery has been solved, the case has been cracked, the villain is defeated?
What usually happens is these shows release a disappointing second season. Without the central mystery tying everything together, the flaws of these series become more obvious. This is what happened to, say, Desperate Housewives. Or Heroes. Or True Detective. Or (not that fans will admit it) Game of Thrones, which without Ned Stark devolves throughout Season 2 into endless comedy double acts just wandering about Westeros.
The same problem befell Riverdale. The first season was a tight 13 episodes, which never outstayed their welcome in telling the story of who killed Jason Blossom (Trevor Stones). But Season 2 was 22 episodes, and the extra episodes dragged—by the time the Black Hood's identity was revealed, many viewers were just relieved the storyline was over.
And yet, the show still remained watchable. The cast has always been talented (see any of the musical episodes for proof if you are sceptical), and most TV viewers have a high tolerance for soapy teen drama, especially when much of that drama features KJ Apa with no shirt on.
When Season 3 came, it was a definite reaction to many fan's criticism that Riverdale Season 2 had been too boring. The show started to burn through plot in an attempt to keep fans interested. Season 3 gave us Griffins and Gargoyles. Fizzle rocks. The Gargoyle King. The Farm. Alice the FBI mole. The death of Hal. Veronica's speakeasy. The Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Hermione as mayor. Hiram buying the town. The Jughead death twist. Chic Cooper. And that's not even mentioning that time ARCHIE GOT MAULED BY A BEAR AND LIVED.
This certainly made Season 3 a more exciting season, but it also sowed the seeds for Riverdale's doom for three reasons...
When a show starts burning through plot, it starts a death spiral in which every storyline has to feel bigger than the last. This inevitably means that they get more and more ridiculous, meaning Riverdale lost even the tenuous connection to reality it already had.
Season 3 raised the profile of Hiram Lodge to make him the show's main villain. And Hiram has just never been that interesting a nemesis, and refuses to go away. He was even set up as the villain of Katy Keene Season 2 before that show was canceled.
It showed that nothing really mattered in Riverdale. You can maybe get away with a fake-out that a major character is dying once (even when they were MAULED BY A BEAR), but after, that every time a show tries to make us believe a character is dying, we just will not.
If Season 3 felt sweaty, then now the show is fully drenched in sweat. Like Archie when he is cutting wood. Or boxing. Or doing one of the other 1,000 things the writers have had him do as an excuse to get him to take his t-shirt off.
Five episodes into Season 6, and the show has already given us dream sequences. Character deaths. Parallel universes. Magic cults. The only thing it has not done is gone full Twin Peaks and have a character get trapped in a doorknob.
There simply is nowhere left for the show to go. Everything that could go wrong in Riverdale has gone wrong. Hell, the writers have even had to put the characters in a parallel universe so the same things can go wrong, but to different people. We have even had the long-teased Sabrina Spellman cameo that has kept fans tuning in in anticipation for so long. It is time for it to end.
Lili Reinhart may have had to go on her TikTok recently to ask people to "stop s*** talking the show...Go somewhere else with that. Or just don't watch the f****** show." Sorry, Lili—the problem is that people are not watching the show, and it keeps giving people reason to talk badly about it.
Ratings are down on Riverdale too
Fans have realised that the show many be running out of ideas, and are leaving it in increasing numbers. Viewers for Season 6 premiere were down nearly a half from the last season premiere, at just 330,000. Episode 3 of the season, meanwhile, received just 258,000 viewers. This from a show that once got as many as 2.3 million viewers.
Of course, these shows are not just useful to The CW as they air. They also make money from Riverdale and series like Dynasty, The Flash and All-American coming to Netflix. And while Netflix does not reveal viewing data on all its shows, we know Riverdale remains a hit for the streaming around the world—it is, after all, one of the few shows the streamer still airs weekly.
However, even these numbers must be on a downward trajectory. And 100 episodes (or 117 by the time the season ends) is a very respectable number, of the sort that is sure to make the series a syndication hit for whatever is left of cable TV in the next decade or so. Better to end it now when people may still enjoy its finale than stretch it to 150 episodes and have no-one left to mourn its passing.
