Riverdale just aired the wildest TV twist I’ve ever seen

There’s nothing more lazy and boring than when a long-running show is on the news and someone says in spiteful disbelief, “This show is still on?!” However, there’s nothing more exciting than realizing that a long-running series is still on the air , and that’s what they’re doing with it now?!?!

The events of the season 6 finale of Riverdale, which aired Sunday night, hit my social media feeds this morning and I’m in disbelief. I am impressed. I’m confused – but also impressed.

Once upon a time, I watched the CW series, which at the time was a modern sexified teenage drama series inspired by the characters of the Archie Comics. As I recently found out, it has become something completely different. And Season 6 comes complete with a delightfully outrageous twist in that finale that makes me feel like we’ve all slept on true brilliance and perhaps the boldest art of our time.

I’m struggling with how far to zoom out here, because I’m not kidding, I’ve never felt more alive — so viscerally entertained — as I did that afternoon reading plot descriptions and synopses of recent episodes of Riverdale. Is more context valuable in this situation? Or would it be unfair to deny anyone the shock of being told in two sentences what happened in the finale – a stunning but invigorating experience?

(Warning: spoilers ahead!)

Here is the tweet that sent me on this journey, the source of this seismic shift in my entire existence:

Yes, that’s right: “Season 6 of ‘RIVERDALE’ ended with the residents slicing their palms open with the magical dagger to give Cheryl her superpowers to save Riverdale from a comet.” read a tweet from Discussing Film. “It changed the timeline and Season 7 of ‘RIVERDALE’ will be set in a retro 1950’s world where the characters are now teenagers again.”

I certainly wasn’t prepared to read the words “superpowers,” “magic dagger,” and “comet” in reference to this show, which when I last saw it, had its characters drinking milkshakes at a diner and getting ready for prom finished. The more information I learned, the more confused I became. This Tweet from the @lgbtzenin account summed up my exact feelings: “If you had told me in 2018 that Cheryl would save Riverdale through the power of lesbianism and literally be Scarlet Witch, I would have laughed in your face.”

If your instinct was to read more about what’s been happening lately Riverdale Hoping that it might help you understand all of this, I can tell you from personal experience that it won’t. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with it.

Did you know that an evil magical person named Percival placed a force field around Riverdale, trapping the residents to face their deaths as Bailey’s comet hurtled toward them? wait let me go back Did you know that Riverdale’s former teens all have magical powers now?

Betty can sense people’s auras. Archie is indestructible. Jughead’s friend Tabitha can jump back and forth through time. Cheryl had the power to bring people back to life, but if she uses her powers to melt the comet, everyone she resurrected will die. Apparently, Veronica’s supernatural gift is that she can absorb other people’s powers. At one point, she comes to the realization that magically taking on everyone else’s powers and then transferring them to Cheryl—through a hot lesbian kiss, of course—might be enough to save everyone.

I’m really excited about all of this. I especially love to think there are probably hordes of Riverdale Fans who never gave up on the show, and therefore all these twists don’t seem so ridiculous to them. There are people who, like me today, are reading a recap of that season finale on EW.com, stumbling across that passage and thinking, “Yeah, that makes sense!”: “Cheryl and Toni need to give up their bodies as their ancestral spirits and have sex.” The episode’s quote goes to Cheryl: ‘Heather will keep our spirits in a jar until the lovemaking ends.'”

Listen, swing to the fences. Be brave. There are over 500 scripted series on television. What’s the point of being one of them if you don’t ask questions like, “What if a comet exploded and these characters we’ve been following for six seasons suddenly go back in time to the 1950s and they’re kind of teenagers again too ? ?”

Season 7 will apparently take place in that 1950s reset, which is actually meta in a way. It’s of course the period most people associate with the original Archie Comics. When Riverdale First premiered, skeptics were confused as to the point of using Archie Source material if the series were set in the present day and would have little connection to the classic characters other than their names and vague physical resemblances.

Well, all those critics needed was to wait six seasons, survive the surprise introduction of supernatural powers, and wait for a comet to hurtle towards Earth, and so on Riverdale they always wanted that they would finally arrive.

I can’t get over it. Simply spectacular.