Riverdale season 7 has it all: absurd alternate universes, an on-screen kiss between basically every cast member who’s ever stepped on set, musical episodes… it’s hard to not be compelled by the sheer insanity of it all. Unfortunately, though, Riverdale‘s final season just broke a record no series wants to break.
No, it’s not for the most amount of out-of-context scenes to go viral on Twitter — that’s actually a good one. It has to do with the collateral damage of The CW network being up in flames right now.
While networks like HBO are hitting strides with some of the best TV series in the past decade (we’re almost too excited for the House of the Dragon season 2 release date), the long-running, teen-focused, CW is struggling. Responsible for some of the best drama series of our high school years, it’s tough goings, and the ripple effects are clear.
Season 7 will be the end of Riverdale, and maybe it’s time; TVLine reported that the most recent musical episode (Archie the Musical) was met with an all-time audience low of 152k viewers, the grimmest bit of data in the show’s history.
The CW is the only place to catch Riverdale season 7 while it airs, whether you watch it on traditional TV or stream it on their service. And while the network has been home to many series with long staying power on streamers like Netflix (The Vampire Diaries, Arrowverse shows, 90210’s reboot), it’s fair to say Riverdale’s young, self-aware audience may be more likely to be browsing the best streaming services on their laptops that watching cable television.
Riverdale, while it started off strange, has snowballed into one of the most amusing serials airing, quite often piquing the interest of people who love camp storytelling and ‘good-bad’ content. It tackles similar subject matters to Euphoria, with the same misplaced self-importance, but with a bubblegum approach that waters even its craziest moments down into something binge-able and humorous.
Its petering out is a little sad but appears inevitable. The CW chose not to renew Riverdale during a round of cancellations prompted by financial woes. If owned by Netflix, with its line of cheap, highly-targeted YA content, who knows what its viewership would look like? At the time of its inception, The CW made all the sense in the world.
The landscape of television is changing every day, so we have guides to the 2023 Writers Strike explained, the best VPN for streaming to make sure you can watch everything you want, and we’ve also got a list of all the new anime and everything new on Netflix.