Riverdale might be coming to an end, but do not worry, fans of CW-affiliated chaos and whoopee caps: if you thought the show might somehow get less batshit in its final season, you’re in luck. Also, there was already time-travel involved, how did you think they were gonna tone it down?
Deadline has word that the CW has cast two new regular stars for the Archie Comics adaptation/wild fever dream’s seventh and final season, which will see our heroes wake up back in high school after the bananas events of the last season, except for the fact that it’s now 1955. Karl Walcott will play Clay Walker, described as a “teen renaissance man” who “is very open-minded in his art and his sexuality,” and just like his namesake in the original comics, where he is the eventual husband of Kevin Keller, he’ll have “an impactful friendship” with Casey Cott’s version of the character.
The second bit of casting is a bit more out-there. Hadestown’s Nicholas Barasch will join the regular cast this season as Julien Blossom, Cheryl and Jason’s brother. Who, up to this point in the series, has been a creepy doll.
Julien — in doll form — appeared throughout Riverdale’s fourth season, in which Cheryl, convinced her house is haunted by Jason’s ghost (he died in season one, remember when that was the weird thing about the show?), conducts a séance and finds that the spirit could be Julien, the third triplet in their mother’s pregnancy, but was seemingly absorbed by Cheryl in the womb in a case of twin resorption. Their mother, distressed by the loss of her third child, raised Cheryl and Jason alongside a horrifying doll she pretended was Julien. Long story short, it turns out that Cheryl did not absorb Julien after she takes a chimeric DNA test that results in a negative, and the mystery of Julien’s ghost or even if Julien was ever actually real is left up in the air… until now! Because now he’s a real boy!
And a right arsehole, apparently. “He’s preppy, rich, and extremely entitled. Handsome, athletic, and cocky, he always gets his way, but in the rare times he doesn’t — like with Veronica — he makes life miserable for everyone around him,” the character description provided to Deadline reads. “He often butts heads with his twin sister, but is also an antagonist to all of our teen characters, most especially Archie.”
Is ‘50s school bully Julien Blossom the big bad of Riverdale’s final season? Will he team up with the doll somehow? Will this show continue to be pants-on-its-head doolally right up to the very end? We’ll find out next year, presumably.
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