Camila Mendes, who portrays Veronica Lodge on The CW‘s Riverdale, recently compared the hit show’s storylines to the superhero antics in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The comparison came up during Vulture‘s wide-ranging interview with the cast of Riverdale. After Lili Reinhart (Betty Cooper) and Casey Cott (Kevin Keller) commented on how often their show — which is based on characters created by Archie Comics — gets made fun of online, Mendes chimed in stating that Riverdale should be silly since it’s based on a comic book.
“Superhero movies are the main thing at the box office these days, and those are the most absurd stories you could imagine,” she said. “You’ve got a fucking talking raccoon fighting aliens in space! No one’s like, ‘This makes no sense.’ We’re a comic book; it’s supposed to be fun and fictional and weird. If you want to watch a teen show where there’s just a bunch of kids in a high school dealing with relationship drama, there’s a lot out there.”
Riverdale comes to a close after seven seasons
Riverdale premiered on The CW in January 2017. While the first season was a noir-tinged murder mystery, later seasons introduced less realistic storylines that saw Archie and the gang dealing with an organ-harvesting cult, evil nuns, an alien abduction, and — just like the MCU — superpowers. In March 2022, the show was renewed for a seventh and final season, which follows Archie and his pals ‘n’ gals as they are sent back to the 1950s as teenagers unaware of their past lives in the present day.
Besides Mendes, Reinhart, and Cott, Riverdale’s ensemble cast features KJ Apa as Archie Andrews, Cole Sprouse as Jughead Jones, Madelaine Petsch as Cheryl Blossom, and Charles Melton as Reggie Mantle, among others.
Riverdale is also part of its own shared universe, which was created after the success of The CW show. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, based on the Archie Comics character Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka), premiered on Netflix in October 2018 and concluded after two seasons in December 2020. Sabrina later made a guest appearance during Riverdale’s sixth season. The third and final entry in the ArchieVerse (as it is known by the fandom) was Katy Keene, which aired for a single season on The CW in 2020.
The series finale of Riverdale airs on The CW on Wednesday, Aug. 23.
