CW's teenage high-school drama Riverdale starring KJ Apa and Lili Reinhart is the subversive take on popular Archie comics. The series kick-started with the mysterious murder of Jason Blossom, which now turned out to be the most anticipating question of the series.
Also read: No new episode of Riverdale on Thursday; when will episode 8 'The Outsiders' air?
As soon as Jason's dead body washed up on the shore, CW's Riverdale fans started coming up with their countless theories. Amongst those, one theory suggested that Jason had become a zombie. As fans know, Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa actually wrote Afterlife with Archie, in which Jughead Jones turns into a zombie because of the wrong spell of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
In the 2013 comics, Jughead pleads with Sabrina Spellman (of Sabrina the Teenage Witch fame) to help bring his pooch back to life after it's hit by a car. But she accidentally turns Hot Dog into a zombie that bites Jughead, thus starting a zombie plague.
On the other side, we already have discovered an Easter egg in the Riverdale series where dead Jason Blossom turned into a zombie. And, his sister Cheryl also had a vision of her zombie brother before the funeral.
While the fans are dying to know whether there will be some zombies in the series or not, show runner Aguirre-Sacasa recently hinted in an interview that "There's a chance that happens."
In an interaction with Entertainment Weekly, Riverdale show runner disclosed that there is a possibility of zombie storyline.
"Obviously I can't confirm or deny anything, but I will tell you that Afterlife or not, there definitely will be a big genre element to season 2. It won't suddenly just be a coming-of-age drama. There will definitely be a very strong, bold genre statement. If season 1 is a murder mystery, it won't necessarily be another murder mystery. We're telling, for us, kind of the best version of a murder mystery: Who killed Jason Blossom? So whatever twist in genre element that we add in season 2, it's going to be different from that and probably, I think, it's going to make people go, "They're not really doing that, are they?"
As it is quite well known that Afterlife with Archie is the passion project of Aguirre-Sacasa, he was quite eager but doubtful of adding the supernatural element in the series. "It's funny, when Greg Berlanti — who of course is the godfather of all these shows and my boss — and I were talking about possibly doing Afterlife with Archie, or introducing the character of Sabrina, I said, "Yeah, but we can't just suddenly have magic and supernatural elements on the show," and Greg, without missing a beat, said, "Of course you can." I was like, "Wait! Yeah, we can."
Moreover, Riverdale already dropped some Easter eggs during the previous episodes of the series. Sacasa explained that "absolutely when we have zombie Jason creeping up on Cheryl, it's an homage to Afterlife with Archie the way that Afterlife with Archie is an homage to Creep Show. Do you know what I mean? So definitely we were doing specific nods. There are even things in the pilot and episode 2, like after Betty invites Cheryl over and Alice is sage-ing Betty's room, Alice says, "You know, I bet you the Blossoms are up there worshipping some dark pagan god." It's an allusion to Lovecraft and those old gods that are in Afterlife with Archie.
While dropping a few hints about the finale, he said, "The finale that we shot is not the finale that we started in mind. It has probably three or four giant set pieces for us. If Jason Blossom's death changed Riverdale in a fundamental way, what happens at the end of the season yet again fundamentally changes what kind of town Riverdale is again, and it's probably not going to be for the better."
Riverdale episode 8, Chapter Eight: The Outsiders will be aired on CW at 9 pm EST on March 30. It also airs on Colors Infinity at 7 pm on every Friday. You can also catch up with the new episode on Netflix every week.
