'Riverdale' Season 4 Episode 17: [Spoiler] kiss happens finally, where does the series go from here?
Spoiler alert for 'Riverdale' Season 4 Episode 17 'Chapter Seventy-Four: Wicked Little Town'
All the #Bughead fans, we feel your pain, but let's be real, we saw this coming from seasons ago. 'Riverdale's' comeback episode may have been focused on 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' musical produced by our favorite performer Kevin Keller, but a kiss definitely stole the show. Conveniently, this wasn't in any of the promos.
It finally happened, Betty Cooper and Archie Andrews kissed for real this time, during a romantic song, ‘Origin of Love’, with Archie's trusty guitar. This relationship has been teased for quite a while now, anyone remembers the #Barchie kiss when the duo was on a mission to take down the Black Hood, Betty's father? That was not properly dealt with, might we add, hurting #Barchie fans everywhere. This kiss, although expected, doesn't really mean that the couple will become a thing because the show has managed to somehow make the couple's narrative a mystery when it comes to determining who they'll choose in the end. Now depending on which couple you ship, the #Barchie kiss could have you laughing or crying.
There is possibly only one person that can give us a hint as to where the relationships are going moving forward. Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa said, "It’s always fun to tell relationship stories and love stories with musicals. ‘Origin of Love’ is one of the great love songs in musical theater, and we had been flirting with the idea of the Betty-Archie romance… We sort of had started that while Jughead was dead. There were still residual feelings that had been awoken, and there’s such a great tradition of characters working on shows or songs and then their emotions getting the better of them." This episode most definitely played with our feelings, and that's what it seems that the makers of the show is going for.
The #Bughead and the #Varchie fight that leads to the #Barchie kiss happened during the intent song 'Exquisite Corpse,' from the 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' musical. While the musical episode did fall short of actual adaption to the broadway musical, this scene seemed to have worked out in its favor. It shows that throughout the series, even though some of us are in denial, they are real actual feelings between Betty and Archie, that weren't explored because the narrative took another turn.
If you want to bring the Archie Comics into perspective, in the #600 to #602 issue, Archie Andrews chooses to marry Veronica instead of Betty, but 'Riverdale' has far strayed from the comics, so we don't know how much trust we can put into that narrative. The series is attempting, we feel, to humanize high schoolers who now are in fear of graduation yet so desperately want to be together.
So as fans, we wait and watch. 'Riverdale' airs on Wednesdays at 8 pm EST on The CW.