‘Riverdale’ Needs to Stop Sidelining Its Best Relationship

There’s only a limited amount of time in a broadcast TV show. Streaming is another matter, you can run as long as you want, for better or worse (looking at you, The Romanoffs). So what that means is that you’ll never be able to cover every single aspect of a show that fans want you to cover in a tight 42 minutes. But ever since the end of Season 2, Riverdale has been sidelining one of its best relationships, the one between Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) and Toni Topaz (Vanessa Morgan), a.k.a. Choni. Making the choice to put them front and center as Season 3 continues would by a supremely smart decision, and one that would mean a great deal to a huge chunk of the fanbase.

Even in the short span of the history of the show, Choni is a relatively new development. Cheryl Blossom was (and still is), the mean girl in the town of Riverdale, albeit with a fiercely loyal streak for her friends and a penchant for drama. She and Toni first met briefly on opposing sides of a drag race during Season 2’s “Chapter Nineteen: Death Proof.” Then Cheryl went on a crusade to get rid of the much poorer and rougher Southsiders from North Riverdale (including Toni) through most of the rest of the season.

It wasn’t until months later on “Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Hills Have Eyes” (which aired March of 2018) that the duo had any sort of real connection. When the town ended up obsessed with the gay romantic comedy Love, Simon, which very conveniently was directed by Riverdale producer Greg Berlanti, Cheryl revealed to Toni that she had a lesbian relationship years earlier that was halted by her mother. Coming out led the two to grow closer (Toni is bisexual; Cheryl as of yet has not been canonically established as lesbian or bisexual), and unfortunately also led to Cheryl’s mother sending her to conversion therapy.

What followed was a heartbreaking series of events showing Cheryl’s torture, followed by Toni’s daring rescue, and a beautiful kiss. It was an incredible moment, and the fanbase for the show freaked out, eager to see more of the new couple.

Then, they didn’t. Or rather they did, but mostly in the background, or as supporting characters in other storylines. All the big emotions that had built up over the course of that brief coming out arc were shoved to the side to make way for a serial killer, and Archie (KJ Apa) jumping around to approximately forty different careers. There was another dramatic rescue — this time, Cheryl came for Toni — in the season’s penultimate episode, and a sweet, supportive moment as Cheryl came full circle and joined Toni’s Southside biker gang the Serpents in the finale… But none of the emotional development or intimate moments other popular couples on the show are afforded.

Making matters even more frustrating, some of those development scenes had been filmed, and cut: a musical number in “Chapter Thirty-One: A Night to Remember,” as well as a scene involving a kiss in a dressing room; a scene where Cheryl officially calls Toni her girlfriend; and even a scene showing Toni moving in with Cheryl in the finale. Many of these scenes showed up later on the Season 2 DVD, or online, but that made them “non-canon,” a.k.a. not officially part of the show.

To be fair, filming for the second season finished on March 27, 2017, one day before the episode that made the Choni relationship official aired, so it’s possible that the folks behind the scenes had no way of predicting how hugely the audience would react to the pairing. Arguably, they could have looked to past LGBTQ+ pairings on teen-friendly shows, particularly the “L” part of that for evidence: the huge outpouring of support and thanks for Clarke and Lexa on The 100 and Emily and Alison on Pretty Little Liars come to mind. The audience is starved for this sort of representation, and when presented with it, responds in droves.

Regardless, they could have prepped more effectively given the response, over the summer… But based on the first two episodes of Season 3, didn’t. Cheryl had a brief scene with Toni in the Season 3 premiere, mostly lamenting Archie’s potential incarceration for a crime he didn’t commit. In both of the episodes that have aired so far, Cheryl has referenced a seemingly epic bike tour she took with Toni over the summer. But that’s it!

In case you think this is myopia talking, take a look at Google Trends for the three biggest relationships on Riverdale since that March 7 episode, when fans first got an inkling of what was to come:

 

The red bar is Bughead, a.k.a. Betty and Jughead. They’re played by Lili Reinhart and Cole Sprouse on the show, a real life couple that have sent fans into a frenzy since their surprise pairing in Season 1. The blue line is Choni, which actually matched Bughead interest the week of March 25 through March 31 (during the range when the kiss episode happened), and again in the week of August 26 through September 1 (the Season 3 trailer premiered on August 29). The yellow line is Varchie, a.k.a. Veronica and Archie, the other relationship that gets the majority of the screentime on the show (and the fans hot and bothered).

Similarly, in a study done by the company Fizziology of social trends around the Riverdale Season 3 premiere that was provided to Decider, these trends were backed up (at least in the first 24-hour period following the episode’s initial airing): Bughead was the number one trend; Choni number two; Varchie about half that at number three. Meanwhile, Cheryl was the most mentioned character on social, eclipsing Archie (who was the focal point of the episode), and Betty, who came in a distant third. The second episode (which aired on October 17), to be fair, changed that trend with a Varchie-focused episode: Bughead was still number one, according to Fizzilogy; but Varchie was number two, mostly powered by fans responding to Archie calling Veronica “my girl.” Cheryl still held on, dominating the solo social traffic high at number one; but with her girlfriend absent, Choni social chatter fell to a distant third.

Regardless, I’m not going to argue that you need to reduce lines and scenes for anyone based on Google Trends or social mentions. This isn’t meant to be a subtractive argument (I personally think all the ‘ships are great!), so much as an additive one. And frankly whatever I say, the writers should do what the writers are going to do. If they went out of the way to please all of the fans, all of the time, every episode would be seventy-two hours long, choose your own adventure style, and still not everybody would be satisfied. This is merely to show that the interest and excitement is there for Choni, if that’s something the writers want to hone in on.

And happily, without getting into spoilers, I can say that the next episode of the show, “Chapter Thirty-Eight: As Above, So Below,” does more heavily feature the couple, acting like a couple and working together. They hold hands, they flirt, and for Choni fans will be a breath of fresh air. They’re presumably taking an episode off after that for the much ballyhooed flashback episode that has most of the cast playing their own parents. And then when the show returns to the present, there’s the promise of a kiss/more focus for the couple in the fifth episode of the season. It’s not the non-stop focus the “Core Four” of Veronica, Archie, Betty and Jughead have gotten over the past two seasons and change, but it’s a start.

That’s the key, though: it needs to be a start, not lip service… LGBTQ+ pairings are incredibly important to viewers, and young viewers in particular, who may be seeing characters who look or act like them for the first time on a show like Riverdale. And particularly having a couple that is completely and unequivocally accepted for their queerness like Choni is vital, particularly in light of The CW’s recently launched “Open To All” campaign that celebrates the network’s diverse faces and voices. It’s also important to see those voices and faces — specifically Cheryl and Toni’s voices and faces — get the same treatment as everyone else on the show. That means getting involved in the action, sure. But it also means getting the same level of physical interaction and emotional development as other pairings.

The amount of times (and locations) other characters have gotten physical is a joke among the Riverdale fandom, to the point where viewers call the show’s central character “Sex Archie.” Meanwhile, Choni fans lament that they’re “being fed” in the rare event their favorite couple gives each other a side-hug in the background of a crowd scene. It’s not that we need to see Cheryl and Toni get it on; but we do need to see them have the same equity as other characters on the series. And to get back to the point above, seeing a lesbian relationship treated physically as something normal and, in fact, good, same as with your Bugheads and Varchies, would be an extremely positive step for the show to take.

Similarly, another thing that frustrated fans of the couple was skipping those big moments: the first time they call each other “girlfriend,” the first time one of them says “I love you.” These are rites of passage that every straight couple on every TV show goes through, so why not Choni?

For those bits, it might be too late: they were riding on bikes for three months alone together, so they probably already hit the basics offscreen. And there’s a lot going on in Riverdale, from cults with floating babies, to stick monsters called The Gargoyle King, to a lack of Fridays. But there’s also plenty more to explore with the duo, plenty more to be delved into, in a relationship than just the initial tentpoles. Even avoiding any sort of normal teen drama emotional development, if the show can mine drama from Archie getting sucked into a secret prison fight club and Veronica opening a speakeasy in the basement of a diner, why not Cheryl and Toni? Morgan and Petsch are supremely talented actors, and it would be great to see them flex their muscles.

To the credit of the writers of the show, there’s a clear effort this season to give as many characters screentime as possible. In earlier seasons, characters who were regulars on the show would disappear for episodes at a time. This season has made strides to balance the cast, and get as much out of the talented ensemble as possible. That should include Cheryl and Toni, with a real plotline, real emotion, and the real depth afforded to anyone else on the show.

The foundation is there, the interest is there, and most of all for a show steeped in murder and sex, giving the focus to Cheryl and Toni would be something positive and good. So bring on more Choni: the show deserves it, and so do we.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW

Update: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Cheryl is bisexual. Though she’s kissed men before on the show, it hasn’t been established whether she is lesbian or bisexual. We’ve updated the article to reflect that change.

Where to stream Riverdale