Riverdale: Afterlife with Archie Fan Theory Update

I’ve been keeping up to date with Riverdale – which I am continuing to enjoy despite its ups and downs – and I haven’t really seen anything that would further suggest that they are going to go down the Afterlife route which is what I said in the original article. It didn’t get a lot of traction at the time, in hindsight it was probably a bad time to post the article on reddit considering it was right after the third episode aired in the US and I’d only just finished the second one. However, overnight, for whatever reason, the article blew up and it has had over 1000 views in the last two days alone. Buzzfeed even linked to it in an article which was pretty nice.

With that in mind I would just like to do a quick update going over some new developments in relation to either supporting or disproving the theory that Riverdale will eventually go the Afterlife with Archie zombies route. I wasn’t going to do one of these before any more really strong evidence was suggested either way but there have been a few notable advancements which I’d like to sum up.

Going into episode 5, I kind of stopped thinking about the whole zombies thing because nothing really seemed to happen to support it and then this gem of a troll happened at the very start of the flippin episode. You can imagine my reaction right? Considering this turned out to be Cheryl dreaming, I initially thought that this actually disproved the idea that it would go down the Afterlife route, because it’s really on the nose and kind of just seems like a nod to the comics. However this seemed to give a few other people the idea that Riverdale would do the whole zombies thing, and now they’ve gone back and maybe that’s why my original article, which was published three weeks ago, started to get some traction. Anyway, I wouldn’t really look too much into this other than the fact that the creators are obviously thinking about the whole zombies thing. The first thing you learn as an English/media/film student is that 99% of the time, nothing is put in by accident.

So let’s break down the new things we learned, with the main one being the fact that showrunner Roberto Aguirre Sacasa has stated that Sabrina (the teenage witch) is going to appear in the last episode of the 13 episode series. The Sweetwater river, which is the side where everything occurs with Jason, splits the two towns of Riverdale and Greendale where the Sabrina universe is. The creator has specifically said that Sabrina, a character who is almost wholly defined by being a witch, exists in this universe and will only be appearing in the last episode – talk about setting up the next season. Plus the whole symbolism of Jason traveling from the non-magical to the magical side and then returning.

In Afterlife, Jughead’s dog Hot Dog is hit and killed by a car. It is Sabrina who resurrects Hot Dog who becomes patient zero in the outbreak. Isn’t it also funny how Archie’s dog, (I think it’s Spot?), is specifically shown at his house yet Jughead’s more famous dog Hot Dog is very specifically shown as not existing in Riverdale. There is a quite touching scene where Spot sacrifices himself for Archie in Afterlife as well. Dogs aside, it is not too much of a stretch to see that Sabrina will have something to do with Jason and resurrection, with the reveal being right at the end of the first season thus setting up the next as full blown weird voodoo magic Riverdale.

Considering that we’re nearly halfway through the season, and we’ve learned barely anything more about the killer since episode 2, it suggests that it’s not the traditional murder mystery type story that it is pretending to be. There are still huge questions relating to the scene with the coroner and Jason’s body. We know: his feet were frozen, he was bound with rope, he was shot in the head and he died a week after the 4th of July which is when Archie/Grundy heard the shot fired which everyone is assuming is the one which killed Jason. The couple of new posts on reddit I’ve seen have barely mentioned this. There’s no way he went missing a week before the 4th of July and then got killed on the day. He has to have been killed a week after the 4th of July.

Then there’s Dilton. No one really believes that Dilton is the one that killed Jason, yet he fired the only shot which was heard on the 4th of July, the day Jason went missing and a week before he was killed. I think in coming episodes, they’re going to have to go deeper into Dilton firing the gun because that shot couldn’t have been the shot which killed Jason because even if he’d been reanimated as a zombie, the headshot would’ve killed him (also the whole out of place thing with Dilton being a survival nut could very handily work out if Afterlife happens). I still think the most likely explanation, which was mentioned in the first article, is that someone out there (possibly Sabrina) had to tie up a zombie Jason or ended up with him after stuffing up some witchcraft and then was forced to kill him. Somewhere along the way, someone or something got bitten, which will eventually emerge from the woods, leading to the outbreak right at the end of the season, where Sabrina will reveal what happened and the next season will be full blown Afterlife.

Apologies for the long-windedness of this but I haven’t seen a very clear summary of the theory as yet. I’ll be keeping up to to date with the show and will update with any new info. As always, let me know what you think and have a good one.

Cheers,

JK Pimento

 

 

Theory: Is Riverdale going to turn into Afterlife with Archie?

I just finished watching the second episode of Riverdale on Netflix and it is phenomenal so far. I had this idea that the show will actually be turning into a loose adaptation of the super popular and widely praised graphic novel Afterlife With Archie which just so happens to be written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa who is also the showrunner and chief writer on Riverdale. So I thought I saw some obvious things in the show which hint at this so I assumed considering how the internet works, there should be some theories of this nature already floating around. However after a quick search, I couldn’t find anything. Very interesting I thought, below I will outline some of the reasons why I think Riverdale may be going the zombies route.

First of all the characters are very similarly based on how they are written in Afterlife (which I own and absolutely love if it needs mentioning). Afterlife was the most successful Archie run in years and kickstarted the company down the more mature story lines it has since started. Aguirre-Sacasa has obviously translated his takes on the characters from Afterlife, the way he can make these characters complex, modernise them, give them contemporary problems and generally make the characters more complex and genuine and thus the relationships between the characters are more interesting – whilst still alluding to many of the old aspects of the comics.

Secondly and I think this is the biggest point, is the character of Cheryl Blossom and the importance of the twins. They played no small part in Afterlife, and were portrayed as having a really weird and troubled semi-incestuous relationship which really set the tone for the rest of Afterlife. Considering their central role in Riverdale, Aguirre-Sacasa is clearly intrigued by these characters. At the end of episode two, Cheryl says that she’s “guilty”. She doesn’t specifically say what but we can assume it’s murdering Jason. Now the weird thing is, we kind of suspect this at first because of how creepy they are and how apparently remorseless she is about the whole thing HOWEVER when the body washes up at the end of the first episode, Cheryl is genuinely cut up after that.

The two biggest examples are when she blows up at Betty about possibly her sister shooting Jason and the other is her breakdown after realizing that he is “never coming back”. Now here’s the real kicker and what set me along this train of thought in the first place. I don’t remember when she says it exactly but I remember the words perfectly. I think it’s in the scene in the change rooms when Veronica is comforting her but she explicitly says, “You don’t understand, he was supposed to come back!” to which Veronica kind of offers a puzzled expression and brushes it off.

Now think about this, it seems clear to me what happened. Considering that Cheryl is genuinely cut up about Jason “not coming back” and also she really seems like she doesn’t know who shot him, plus what kind of sick maniac would kill their twin? So we can assume that Cheryl and Jason for whatever reason (with Jason’s consent as evidenced by the “are you ready” quote at the very start of the show) have entered into some voodoo ritual which was either meant to or ended up in Jason becoming a zombie. Something goes wrong during the process, maybe Cheryl kills him or gets him killed another way but Jason gets loose. His body shows up much later with a bullet through the brain (how else do you kill a zombie?) and frozen feet and rope marks also on the body.

Here’s something else that I only just remembered, the coroner specifically states that he died a week after the boat incident where he was meant to have drowned. So here’s what I think happened, Cheryl and Jason go to the river to perform this ritual, perhaps meeting up with someone else or perhaps not, it goes wrong or right and Jason turns into a zombie but Cheryl doesn’t know whether it worked or not. Somebody encounters zombie Jason, they try to kill him somehow, he ends up with a bullet to the head and back in the river. Perhaps the person who killed him got bit but freaked out about killing somebody, dumped the body in the river and didn’t tell anybody. The bit person will lead to the outbreak.

Now you can see what I’m getting at and I would absolutely love, love, love this to happen but at this stage it’s just a theory…but a pretty convincing one huh? I probably won’t be disappointed if the show doesn’t go this way because it’s been pretty awesome so far but I just needed to get this out there. Let me know what you think in the comments and share with friends if you agree. We might know tomorrow with the new episode anyway!

Cheers,

Pimento.