Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is the creator of The CW’s Riverdale, which is based on the characters from Archie Comics. New episodes of the hit series will begin airing on Wednesday, August 11. Riverdale has already been renewed for a sixth season. Aguirre-Sacasa is also known for Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Katy Keene, Glee, Carrie, and more. He is the Chief Creative Officer at Archie Comics as well.
Season five of Riverdale will begin with our characters’ final days as students at Riverdale High. From an epic Senior Prom to a bittersweet Graduation, there are a lot of emotional moments and goodbyes yet to come — with some couples breaking up, as everyone goes their separate ways to college — or elsewhere. Then, we will redock with our gang as young adults, all returning to Riverdale to escape their troubled pasts. And life — and romance — will only be more complicated now that they’re in their twenties…
Aguirre-Sacasa and I discussed Toni’s return, what’s ahead for Reggie, Fangs and Kevin’s relationship, the musical episode(s), and more! Read below to find out everything he told me and be sure to stay tuned for part 2 of my interview talking about a bunch of 5×11 spoilers.
Riverdale definitely isn’t the same without Toni, can you speak a little about her return? What we can expect in terms of getting to see her as a mother and starting a family?
Aguirre-Sacasa: I think the first episode that she’s back in is 5×15, which is our Pussycats episode. I’ll tease and say that we get a big resolution to Toni’s pregnancy in that episode and Toni performs an amazing number, even though she’s nine months pregnant, with Tabitha Tate, who runs Pops of course, and Alexandra Cabot, who’s visiting us from Katy Keene‘s world of New York. I think one of the big things for us this season was making sure that the character of Toni and the actress Vanessa were honored and that it felt like she was driving her own story and not just part of a couple. So, we really kept the focus on that. We do see a lot of Toni being a mother. We see a lot of Toni being an activist in Riverdale, fighting for Riverdale alongside Archie. We do see a lot of Toni and Fangs as the Serpent leaders as well. So, there’s a lot and we do bring Cheryl and Toni back into each other’s orbits in I think a really healthy way. So, there is a lot of Vanessa in the subsequent episodes. It’s funny, we talked and I said, “How much do you want to do on the other side?” She said, “I want to be back,” and it’s been really great. I think Toni fans will not be disappointed.
Reggie has a big episode coming up. What can you tease about that and are we going to get to see more from the character moving forward?
Yeah, I think when we talked about doing a special episode that focused on Hiram, we sort of realized that we hadn’t put that kind of spotlight on Reggie. Usually, Reggie is a little bit more of a comedic character, a little bit more of a bro, always kind of working a hustle. Charles is a wonderful actor and we thought, why don’t we do an episode that focuses not just on Hiram and his story, but a little bit more on Reggie, why he’s working with Hiram, what he wants out of life, check in on his relationship with his own father, and that sort of is what inspired that episode. I feel like it was a such a showcase for Charles, who’s so handsome and is so clearly a leading action hero type, but to get him to play some emotion. We do continue exploring Reggie, separate from Hiram, in the second half of the episodes and sort of rebuilding his relationships and re-earning his friends’ trust, including Archie.
What’s next for Fangs and Kevin?
There’s definitely some stuff that’s gonna happen with Kevin and Fangs. I don’t want to say too much about that because there are some surprises. We root for them, but stay tuned because I think both Kevin and Fangs are going to take an interesting turn in the season.
Can you share anything about the musical episode?
Yeah, well, it’s weird — it’s almost as though we have two musical episodes, not necessarily planned that way, but our Pussycats episode, which is 5×15, is a musical episode. I think there’s like six or seven numbers and it’s such an important, wonderful episode; it’s one of our best this season. The girls all brought it and everyone was so excited to welcome them back. Then, in 5×18, our penultimate episode, late in the season for us, we do have our kind of annual musical episode. I will say it’s very, very, very different from our other musical episodes. It’s very emotional and it focuses a lot on Betty and Alice.
Lastly, I have a fun question for you, if you were able to pick two couples from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Riverdale to have a double date at Pops, who would you pick?
Oh, that’s so good! Well, I guess it would have to be Sabrina and Nick, hard though because they’re both dead in The Sweet Hereafter. Then, I would say… truthfully, my dream would be to have Sabrina interacting with all the cast, it would be hard to break them into just a couple. I think Kiernan would have such a blast. But I guess if I had to say, I would probably say Archie and Veronica with Sabrina and Nick.