‘Riverdale’ Boss Teases Choni Fans Will Be “Very, Very, Very, Very Happy”

After this week’s episode of Riverdale, fans of Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) have the right to be up in arms. Spoilers past this point, but in “Chapter One Hundred Twenty: Sex Education”, after it became clear that Toni Topaz (Vanessa Morgan) is “playing the long game” when it comes to grabbing Cheryl’s heart, Cheryl panicked and pushed back in the opposite direction. More on this in a moment, but for those fans of the couple — called Choni — no need to worry, says Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.

“Choni fans will be very, very, very, very happy,” Aguirre-Sacasa teased on what’s coming down the road for the series.

It’s important to clarify here for those viewers who have been off the show for a while that the cast is all teenagers again in their Junior year of high school, and living back in 1955. That means out and proud characters like Cheryl are now firmly back in the closet (the same with Casey Cott’s Kevin Keller, who is grappling with similar feelings of his own this episode), and it’s nowhere near as easy to talk about sexual preference out loud as it is in some parts of America in 2023.

Back to the plot of the episode, though. First, Cheryl agreed to go on a date with Archie Andrews (KJ Apa) to a poetry reading at The Dark Room. Once there, Toni’s seductive dancing awakened something inside of Cheryl, leading to an orgasmic revelation that she may, in fact, have sexual feelings for women. Storming out of The Dark Room, she impulsively kissed Archie at the end of their date, before closing the door behind her and sobbing, confused and distraught about her feelings and actions.

That night, after Toni’s sexy dance, the entire town essentially had a group sex dream where they all pictured themselves graphically making out and writhing against their preferred partner. For Archie, that meant Cheryl. For Cheryl, that meant Toni. Still, the next day the two publically came out as a couple at Riverdale High, holding hands and raising Toni’s eyebrows dubiously.

Things escalated dramatically at a make-out party held by Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) where, after splitting off into separate rooms, Archie confessed he was encouraged to date Cheryl by her brother Julian Blossom (Nicholas Barasch). Julian had essentially said that she was easy because she had a lot of experience with college guys. Cheryl confessed right back that she has no experience, and decides to rectify that with Archie. Cut to later on when she shows off a hickie to Julian and her mother Penelope (Nathalie Boltt) and explains that she and Archie went all the way at the make-out party.

This is a wild turn for the show that some would argue played into the comedy of the situation instead of taking Cheryl’s homosexuality, something that is dearly important to LGBTQ+ fans of the show in particular, seriously. That said, as Aguirre-Sacasa explained, this plotline was not something taken lightly; and despite how things seem now, there’s plenty more to come with this story, continuing into next week and beyond.

To find out more about how the show tackled a make-out montage after several seasons of COVID lockdown, and what’s next for Cheryl — and Toni — read on.

[NOTE: This interview was held before Season 3 began airing.]

Decider: Episode 3 has a straight-up sex montage, which is I think the best way of putting it. After several seasons of COVID rules locking things down, what was involved in first writing this, and then actually getting this to happen on set?

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: That scene was directed beautifully by one of our directors James DeWille. We love playing with the mores of the 1950s. We looked at a bunch of 1950s videos, black and white videos of sex education movies or film strips that were shown to kids in the 1950s, and now when we see them they’re completely hilarious and insane. And a big book that had come out around that time was the Kinsey Report on male sexuality, and then the Kinsey Report on female sexuality, those came out in the late ’40s or early ’50s, and they were obviously huge books and everyone was trying to read them, adults and teenagers alike. We thought it would be kind of great if our characters or one of our characters at least got a hold of our version of that book. Then all of the kids go to The Dark Room and see Toni do her very provocative bongo dance, and then that night they all have a very– they’re so repressed that that night they have a Garden of Eden-like erotic dream. But it is a classic Tour de Force Riverdale sequence. For sure the COVID restrictions, I mean they’re still in place and we’re still being really, really careful, and that’s something we’re still wrestling with, but they are– they have been relaxed, for sure. But yeah, I think the cast had a blast doing that. They’re all really loving their scenes together, they get playing into the tension of what Riverdale has been and what Riverdale was like in the 1950s. 

People are reacting very strongly to the Cheryl and Archie relationship. Now obviously your show is set in the 1950s, but you’re also making a show that’s made and broadcast in 2023. Was there any concern in terms of closeting characters like Kevin and Cheryl again, even if it is historically appropriate?

Yeah, I mean, oh, for sure. That’s been an ongoing discussion in the writer’s room… It goes back to the reality: were we going to pretend that in the 1950s people could be open and out and proud and gay, and were we going to pretend there was no racial tension and no racial strife, and things like that? And it felt like it was a needle to thread, and that’s kind of how we saw a lot of this stuff. That said, we did a lot of research in the 1950s, there absolutely were safe havens for queer people, there were outlets for queer people, and there were queer relationships that were quite fulfilling and quite joyful, but still had to be open secrets, or more secretive like that, and it felt like we had to find our way through that. How many episodes have you seen yet?

I’ve seen the first three episodes.

I mean yeah, then those stories are just beginning.

So fair to say you are potentially going to get to those joyful parts at some point later in the season?

Oh, for sure. I don’t know if you’re asking specifically about Choni, or Kevin?

…I’m asking about Choni.

Choni fans will be very, very, very, very happy. But those were the conversations that we had and continue to have in the writer’s room, 100%, about what do we, how do we depict the 1950s, and how do we depict our character’s struggles. And by the way, Kevin and Cheryl, even in Seasons 1-6, they absolutely struggled with their sexuality and coming out. And you know Cheryl, the Blossoms were never supportive of Cheryl being gay. Never, even in Season 1-6, you know what I mean. So that, in that way, the Blossoms haven’t changed that much, let me put it that way.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW.