‘Riverdale’s Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa Breaks Down the Midseason Premiere

Riverdale is finally back! The hit CW show returned tonight in, as usual, wild fashion, with maple mushroom trips, Batman style stunts, and even a corpse in a trunk. At at the end of it all, Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) may be in a lot of trouble — even more than usual.

“We’ve seen Jughead on the threshold of death, but I don’t think we’ve seen him as rock bottom before as we have in this episode,” Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told Decider. “And he’s still got ways to fall before he starts crawling back out.”

Spoilers for Riverdale Season 5, Episode 11 “Chapter Eighty-Seven: Strange Bedfellows” past this point!

In the hour, Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) and Tabitha Tate (Erinn Westbrook) team up to try and find what happened to Jughead after he tripped on maple mushrooms and left only a bloody handcuff and a “gibberish” manuscript behind him. Unfortunately for them, Jughead’s ex-girlfriend Jessica (Phoebe Miu) also becomes interested in his whereabouts, and “helps” by getting the duo high on maple mushrooms themselves.

Meanwhile, Jughead is wandering around a homeless camp, and ends up saving the life of a man he left for dead years earlier, leading to a revelation: he needs to head to New York and un-repress his memories from his time there. And he does that by hitching a ride with a trucker, something that we already know has led to the disappearance of multiple people in the Riverdale area. Whoops.

Over on the other side of the show, Archie (KJ Apa), after deciding to take a break from his relationship with Veronica (Camila Mendes) until her divorce is finalized, teams up with Kevin (Casey Cott), Fangs (Drew Ray Tanner) and ultimately Reggie (Charles Melton) in order to collect the bounty on a bunch of escaped prisoners. That brings them directly into conflict with a rogues gallery of villains from the show’s past, and a fateful conversation between Archie and Veronica.

And finally, there’s Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch), who is grappling with her own escaped convict: her mother, Penelope (Nathalie Boltt), who took the time in prison to start a ministry based on worshipping the spirit of her dead son, Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines). Though initially dubious, by episode’s end Cheryl has seen that spirit, revealed that she’s been keeping the burnt corpse of Jason in a trunk in her room, and is basically co-priestess with her Mom.

To find out more about this, as well as a small tease for what’s coming down the road in Season 6, read on.

Decider: I know you finished shooting these back nine a while ago, but given filming, COVID, the extended hiatus, multiple cast members having kids, it’s been, I think over a year since you started working on season five… What’s it like to finally have these episodes out on TV?

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: It’s so funny because I don’t think we’ve ever had as much of a break, and certainly not a break halfway through the season. The biggest thing is excitement for the fans to watch these episodes, they’re some of the best we’ve done, they’re some of our strangest episodes, and they’re going to provide a lot of answers to a lot of questions fans have had… I mean, they’re really, really special. So I’m mostly just excited to get them out, and re-engage with the fans. It’s been way too long.

Jumping into Episode 11, fans are always, of course, very focused on the ‘ships, but there seems like a real effort in this hour to focus on the friendships, particularly with Betty and Tabitha.

One of the biggest gifts of 5×11 is that friendship between Betty and Tabitha. At the beginning of the season, we didn’t exactly anticipate that, but Erinn, who joined us this season and plays Tabitha, is such a wonderful actor, as is Lili. And we thought, well let’s bring them together and kind of see what happens. It just worked, and works so beautifully. We didn’t want to tell a traditional love triangle where Betty and Tabitha were sort of wary or jealous of each other.

We felt like them being together as friends and trying to find this person that they both care about would be really, really cool. And I’m really happy to say that we continue that friendship into subsequent episodes. Then there is just some fun of seeing Betty and Tabitha and Jughead’s New York friend, Jessica, it’s sort of like the ghost of a girlfriend past, present and future all in one story. There’s fun there, but I’m really glad that more than anything that Betty and Tabitha are there for each other, and are there for Jughead, despite whatever has happened or not happened between them.

Tabitha has been helping Jughead search for the Mothmen, and at the end of this episode she offers to help Betty search for the missing girls on the Lonely Highway. Is she just a helpful, nice person or is there a more personal motivation there that we might find out later?

Tabitha is a good person… She’s more guarded than some of our other characters. She’s slow to let people into her life, but once she does, she’s kind of all in, and she feels responsible for Jughead. He said look out for me, I’m going to take these maple mushrooms, and make sure I don’t do anything crazy. And of course, Jughead being Jughead, Jughead does something crazy. So she does feel responsible. But no, she’s got a real integrity to her, and that’s been one of the guiding principles about that character.

Let’s talk about Cheryl. In Season 4, she finally moved beyond Jason with the whole Viking funeral scene, but now I believe she’s keeping his burnt corpse in a trunk and seeing visions of him maybe as a parrot, I wasn’t 100% sure. What’s going on here?

[Laughs] Okay. Well, to be fair, that computer generated bird is a red bird, though it does look parrot-like, you’re right. But that’s supposed to be a cardinal. It’s funny, one of the things we talk a lot about in the writers’ room is that we want to evolve the characters, and we want the characters to change over time, but that there are certain fixed touchstones in their personality. And Cheryl, however much she has moved beyond Season 1, she will always be the girl whose beloved brother, whose soulmate, died when she was young. And there’s always an absence there.

She does see that vision of Jason, but the story really grows beyond that and becomes a story of Cheryl finding something that fulfills her, and fills her, and comforts her in a way that she hasn’t been comforted since the death of Jason; and that’s this ministry that is started as a sham by Penelope, that becomes something profound for Cheryl. I’ll also tease that it is a big story for Cheryl and it leads to a very surprising redefinition of that character in a way we haven’t seen before.

At the end of the episode, Jughead gets in a truck and ostensibly heading to New York, but we know trucks on the highway can be big problems from this season. Should we assume that eventually he is going to get to New York and confront his suppressed memories? Or is he in for a load of trouble on the Lonely Highway?

Can the answer somehow be both maybe? [Laughs] Jughead’s big mystery is him wrestling with and unpacking the repressed trauma, what happened during those seven years. That’s his quest, this back half of the season, is to solve the mystery of those seven years, solve the mystery of what led to him leaving that horrific message for Betty, and dig out of the rock bottom he’s in. We’ve seen Jughead on the threshold of death, but I don’t think we’ve seen him as rock bottom before as we have in this episode. And he’s still got ways to fall before he starts crawling back out.

Moving to Archie and Veronica, Archie seems to be approaching his relationship with her in a really mature, non hot-headed way, which is slightly atypical for Archie. Is this part of his overall growing up arc, over the course of the season and beyond?

Yeah, hopefully, right? That just speaks to Archie’s code of honor, he was in the army and he says, listen, as much as I want to be with you again and have a relationship with you, you’re married, you’re still untangling whatever that is, I think we need to wait before we dive back in, I think that that’s the mature thing to do. And Veronica somewhat grudgingly agrees. I loved that scene in the diner towards the end of the episode where Veronica and Archie are like, so are we truly not getting back together right now? And it’s so clear, they both want to, but they know what they should do. That will be a very fateful decision that they make. And it will have huge fallout in subsequent episodes — really, really big consequences.

I mean, a lot of fans have speculated based on footage that potentially Reggie and Veronica might be sparking out something up again. They certainly are working together in this episode. Should we potentially expect that this fateful decision might lead to a resparking of Veronica and Reggie, or are we looking in the wrong direction?

Episode 5×11 and 5×12, are a nice turning point for Reggie. We understand why he’s been working with Hiram and what his life has been like the past seven years. It sort of hints at a bigger redemption. It hints to a bigger role for Reggie… Charles is such a great actor, and usually Reggie is almost a comedic character, or like a bro antagonist, frenemy of Archie. But we do enter deeper waters with him.

And yeah, listen, Veronica has chemistry with a lot of guys, what can I say? I mean, that’s how gorgeous and captivating Cami is as an actor. I would say nothing’s off the table at this point.

This is far out, but given you’re already in pre-production on season six, how much of season five, if any, will bleed into it; versus that being its own story?

Yeah, good question. I will say that we’re definitely picking up on a lot of the emotional relationship stories in season six. So a lot of the friendships and relationships and redefinition of relationships that we get to at the end of season five, continue into season six.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.