Riverdale is known for allowing its many characters to explore their sexuality, resulting in almost
every combination of pair-ups, hookups, and totally unforgettable moments. Here are all
the times a kiss on Riverdale made viewers' stomachs churn, brains metaphorically explode,
or tweens sit up and scream, "What?!"
On Riverdale, Archie is primarily stuck with Veronica, but in the first season, one of
Archie's storylines almost seemed to suggest to viewers that the show wasn't afraid to
go absolutely anywhere. His first romantic entanglement on the show was with Ms. Grundy,
his music teacher at Riverdale High School. In a big departure from the Archie comics,
the Riverdale Ms. Grundy was a twenty-something who engaged in torrid, graphic encounters
in her car with one of her teenage students.
Not only was their brief affair illegal, it was also gross and qualifies as assault. As
Cosmopolitan put it,
"Make no mistake, Ms. Grundy and Archie's season 1 relationship constitutes assault
and possibly rape."
When Ms. Grundy is discovered by Archie's father, she's forced to leave her job. As
KJ Apa told USA Today,
"I guess that's a really inappropriate kind of romance he has going on there.”
Riverdale ended its first wild and wacky season on a sad and shocking note: Archie's sweet,
kind, and doting single dad, Fred Andrews, was gunned down in Pop's Chock'Lit Shoppe
by an unidentified assailant. The blood poured as he was seemingly about to die in his son's
arms. When Riverdale returned for Season 2, the action picked up where it left off — Fred
survived, just barely, while Archie was left understandably shaken to his core. Archie
coping with the ugly, brutally violent near-killing of his beloved parent then led to an even
weirder and possibly even more unexpected moment, albeit one with a lot more unclothed
bodies writhing around.
Only after he leaves Fred at the hospital, and then goes home to walk his dog, does Archie
decide that he should maybe wash off his father's blood that's all over his body. It's when
he's in the shower that love interest Veronica comes over and they engage in some very wet
physical romance. To each their own, but sloppily kissing, groping, and making love to someone
hours after their dad almost died — and when his blood is circling the shower drain
— isn't the hottest of prospects. Also, as Vulture noted in an article solely about
this scene,
"Why does Veronica keep her pearl necklace on?"
In the Season 2 Riverdale episode "The Hills Have Eyes," core four characters Archie, Veronica,
Jughead, and Betty retreat from the crime-and-angst-fueled shenanigans of Riverdale proper for a romantic
getaway to a forest cabin. "Romantic getaway" is actually what Hiram Lodge calls it when
he offers the trip to his daughter, Veronica, and her beloved Archie-kins, which is a bit
of a creepy thing for a parent to do.
But drama still plagues these teens on what's supposed to be a chill weekend. Chock’lit
hits the fan after Cheryl Blossom calls Jughead to stir the pot and tell him about that one
time that his girlfriend, Betty, shared a furtive kiss with Archie. How does the gang
deal with this cross-couple canoodling? Well, the other two not involved in that illicit
encounter have to smooch in order to make things right, of course. And so, while everybody
is hanging out in the hot tub, Jughead and Veronica exchange a contrived, non-romantic,
workmanlike kiss, which seemingly makes everything right in the Riverdale world again.
One of the first of many Riverdale mysteries also involves some near-incest, which makes
for some less-than-wholesome kissing sequences. Take Jason Blossom and Polly Cooper, for example.
Found dead in Sweetwater River at the beginning of Riverdale, Jason is depicted primarily
in memories and flashbacks and as the boyfriend of Betty Cooper's older sister, Polly. He's
a jock who initially just wants to add Polly to his list of conquests, but then they truly
fall in love and they get pregnant, with Polly eventually giving birth to twins named Juniper
and Dagwood.
Their nostalgia-and-grief-flavored relationship isn't quite so innocent when it comes to pass
that their love was forbidden, Romeo and Juliet-style, by their respective families. Generations
prior, some of the Blossoms broke away and changed their name to Cooper to disassociate
with the weird and criminal clan. This all means that Jason and Polly are third cousins.
"Gryphons & Gargoyles” is an immersive fantasy role-playing game which casts a hypnotic,
self-destructive spell over a number of high school students in Season 3 of Riverdale.
Jughead is intrigued and aims to investigate by heading to the secret, unofficial "G&G"
headquarters where kids engage in the game's creepy gameplay.
It's inside this bunker that Jughead meets up with probably Riverdale's most fervent
G&G aficionado, Ethel, fully embodying the spirit and costume of her game character,
"Princess Etheline." Jughead plays as "Hellcaster," and after surviving a drink from a poisoned
cup, Ethel insists that the Hellcaster kiss the Princess, meaning Jughead has to kiss
her. Coerced into it by a brainwashed classmate under extremely shady circumstances while
inside of a dead kid's bunker, Jughead begrudgingly gives up a smooch.
After the Jughead and Ethel kiss happened, Bughead shippers went nuclear, and the actor
behind Ethel eventually called out the trolls. She tweeted,
"I'm not stressed about it, trust me. I just wonder what these people will think in like
10 yrs when they remember their twitter and realize they insulted and attacked real human
beings for their character on a tv show.”
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