Riverdale: Season 4 – A Review

Hello, my darling readers!
Another season of Riverdale has come to an end. Due to Covid-19, it, unfortunately, ended sooner than intended but we’ll make do with what we get, right?

The Plot:

As usual, a whole lot of shit goes down in this season. Archie is struggling after his father died and is still trying to figure out what to do with his life. In the meantime, Jughead gets accepted into a fancy prep school which ends up not going according to plan. While Veronica and Cheryl explore new business ventures, some creep with unknown intentions descends onto the town…

Riverdale on Rotten Tomatoes

The Rating:

You have no idea how difficult it is to give a halfway decent summary of the plot when a show is so bat-shit crazy and makes as little sense as Riverdale does.

I’m not even going to attempt to avoid spoilers with discussing this season, so consider yourselves warned before clicking the read more button.

First of all, let’s talk about the episode dedicated to the late Luke Perry. I don’t know what I expected but this ended up being really touching and beautiful. They did it in a very respectful way (which is actually surprising when it comes to Riverdale), so it gets a big thumbs up from me.

Okay, so that aside, let’s move on to Jughead. He certainly had a lot going on in this season. At first, I was kind of intrigued by his new school and the whole conspiracy plot was interesting enough. (They put some cool details in there, like that weird psycho guy name Bret Weston Wallis)
However, let’s be real. We all knew that Jughead most certainly isn’t dead, as they wouldn’t dare to kill off a fan favorite. So, a good amount of that suspense was lost on me. Also, once the reality was revealed it was rather disappointed with the explanation we got for what Betty and the gang tried to pull off. So many things there didn’t make sense. I know, I should be used to that from now as it is Riverdale, but still…

There is a problem I had with the other seasons before: the season is way too long for the plot it gets and that’s why it turns wacky and weird about halfway through. Let me explain. Had the season ended with Jughead’s story at Stonewall Prep, it would have been a halfway decent story that could have worked. However, after those events, they introduced this weird video thing that due to Covid-19 never really got resolved.

Well, I actually liked the final two episodes (anything that is inspired by David Lynch is a win for me) but the story never really ended. I know that due to Covid-19 they couldn’t finish shooting but I’m really disappointed that they just left things like that. You could tell that they wanted to achieve some closure with it but ultimately most questions just weren’t answered.

As for the other stories in this season…
Well, I actually keep forgetting that Archie was in this one. What did he do for 19 episodes? I don’t remember, that’s how interesting it was.
Veronica and Cheryl start a Rum business which is somewhat weird considering they are teenagers and not even allowed to drink. (But I guessed we passed the “weird” threshold on this show a long, long time ago)
This was another storyline I could have done without and didn’t care for at all. Honestly, her rivalry with her father just seems so forced at this point and fails to intrigue me in any way.

After a decent start and an intriguing (despite sometimes foreseeable) storyline about Jughead, the season got a bit weird and ended far too abruptly to get any closure or make sense. I didn’t hate this season, as it certainly had its moments but all in all, there were too many half-arsed things not adding up.

Did you watch the season? Let me know in the comments what you think!

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