CW Boss On ‘Riverdale’ Ending With Season 7: “We Want To Make Sure It Goes Out The Right Way”

After months of rumors, it’s official: The CW’s Riverdale is ending with Season 7, which will air some time next year. But according to  Mark Pedowitz, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The CW Network, despite the slate of recent cancellations from the network, ending the Archie Comics based series wasn’t an easy decision.

“I am a great believer in attempting to give series that have long legs an appropriate send-off,” Pedowitz told Decider during a press conference to discuss the new, Fall schedule. “We had a long conversation with [showrunner] Roberto [Aguirre-Sacasa] yesterday, who’s thrilled by this news, and we are really going to treat this show in the manner it deserves. It is an iconic pop culture star, and we want to make sure it goes out the right way, that is the decision. I think they, too, found seven years is the right amount, and we want to do the right thing. Again, that’s a personal thing, as a fan myself, I want to do what’s right for the shows.”

Riverdale ending with a seventh season stands in stark contrast to other CW series, who were canceled over the past several weeks. Those include: the long-running DC Comics based Legends of Tomorrow; Legacies, which will bring 13 years of The Vampire Diaries to a close when the series finale airs in June; and Batwoman, which was only three seasons in, but has inspired a passionate fanbase to launch a campaign to get HBO Max to pick up the series.

Pedowitz was careful to add over the course of the call that these decisions, too, weren’t easy, and not based on “content” but other financial considerations. He also added that for shows on the bubble like Legacies, showrunners were given enough time to wrap the stories up, so that episodes could act as both a season and series finale, if need be.

Though Riverdale has been declining in broadcast ratings for years, the dark Archie Comics reinvention has remained a social and streaming hit. Take, for example, the recent plot twist that Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Archie (KJ Apa) among others got superpowers, an event that led to several viral tweets and lapsed fans of the show freaking out, and you can see that even as the internet’s frequent punching bag, it’s clear Riverdale is a cultural hit.

Still, seven seasons is a long time for any show, and with the stars venturing out on careers of their own, it’s clear that Riverdale has run its course. The series was a defining hit for The CW, and TV as a whole, leading to shows taking formerly earnest properties and adding a dash of sex and murder to capture some of that Riverdale cache. None really came close, though, and over the course of seven seasons the show has purposefully gone off the rails with the aforementioned superpowers plot, dark cults, alternate universes, stick monsters, serial killers, and incestual woods dwellers, among many other things.

So how will Riverdale wrap things up? There’s still plenty of episodes to go in the currently running sixth season, and though there have been no determinations yet, Pedowitz did add that, “We have not declared how many episodes yet, but I do not believe it will be a shortened season.”

Another 20+ episodes of Riverdale before the end? Bring it on.