So Uh, The Riverdale Characters Randomly Have Superpowers Now
That came out of nowhere.
Remember back in the day when Riverdale was a dark teen drama? After five years of unpredictable weirdness, now it’s anyone’s guess what type of show you’ll be getting when you tune into a new episode. It might be a supernatural witch story, a full-blown musical, an FBI procedural, a mind-bending piece of sci-fi, or an inspiring sports drama about the epic highs and lows of high school football. But despite its constant genre-hopping, Riverdale still managed to take a wild new turn when returning from its mid-season break by flirting with the realm of superheroes. Yep — Riverdale Season 6 seems to have given Archie and Betty superpowers.
Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers from Riverdale Season 6, Episode 6, “Unbelievable.” Everyone knew the first five episodes of Season 6 were going to be a whole new direction for the show. Set in an alternate dimension, the Rivervale event fully explored the supernatural elements that Riverdale had only ever hinted at before, introducing pagan spells, vengeful ghosts, and the devil himself into the twisted town. But apparently, the weirdness didn’t stay confined to Rivervale. When the show returned to its core world in March 20’s return episode, it surprised viewers with a new twist: superpowers. Somehow that explosion in Archie’s room granted both Archie and Betty superhuman abilities. Archie became invulnerable, while Betty became able to see a red aura appear around dangerous individuals.
You’d think the show would offer up some explanation for why Archie and Betty are suddenly superheroes, but no. Instead, it looks like this is going to be a much more drawn-out mystery. At least their new powers are perfectly suited for cleaning up Riverdale: Archie used his new invincibility to take care of those pesky Ghoulies, while Betty’s villain-vision helped her nab a murderer.
And they’re not the only ones with impressive new powers. Archie’s dog Bingo also seems to have gained the power to rapidly regenerate, fully healing all four of his broken legs in just a couple of days. Jughead, on the other hand, didn’t get out of the explosion so lucky. The episode saw him lose nearly his entire sense of hearing following the blast. But... could he be developing some sort of power, too? He was in the vicinity of the bomb going off as well, so there might be more to Jughead’s changing senses than the show is letting on.
Sundays just got super, with new episodes of Riverdale Season 6 airing each week on The CW.
