‘Riverdale’ Boss Talks Season 7 Premiere, Hints Characters Will Face Off Against “Society Itself” For 1950s-Set Final Installment

deadline.com:

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the Season 7 premiere of The CW’s Riverdale. It’s the beginning of the end for Riverdale.

The series kicked off its final season on Wednesday, picking up where the last moments of Season 6 left off, after the characters were suddenly transported back in time to the 1950s right before Bailey’s comet decimated the town.

Archie, Betty, Jughead, Veronica and the rest of the gang are back in high school, in a decade that showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa says is “most associated with Archie Comics.” But while the season will certainly feel nostalgic, it also won’t shy away from the realities of the decade, Aguirre-Sacasa said. “It would have been disingenuous to erase the real struggles and the real hardships that a lot of people in the 1950s faced, especially for our queer characters and our characters of color,” he told Deadline, adding that for Season 7 “the big bad would be the 1950s and society itself — how conformist it was, how repressive it was, how homophobic it was, how racist it was, how sexist it was.” The writers make good on that promise right away in Episode 1, which centers heavily on the acquittal of Emmett Till’s murderers.

Tabitha (Erinn Westbrook) and Toni (Vanessa Morgan) have just returned from Mississippi, where the trial had taken place. While many of the students and faculty are ready to ignore the news, the OG crew is not.