Riverdale’s Executive Producer Opens Up About Addressing The Loss Of Luke Perry In Season 4

Published on May 16, 2019.

Riverdale showrunner and executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa knows that there is a lot that fans want answers to when the series returns for its fourth season in the fall, and he plans on addressing it all.

When beloved actor Luke Perry unexpectedly passed away in early March, Hollywood lost an icon and the cast of Riverdale lost a co-star, a friend, and a mentor and Aguirre-Sacasa wants fans to know that the loss of Fred Andrews will be one of the first things addressed in season four.

‘We obviously are going to deal with Fred’s death on Riverdale. When Luke passed, we’d already more or less outlined the last two or three episodes, and we didn’t want to rush that or get it wrong. So we are 100% going to deal with it narratively at the beginning of season 4, and we want that episode to really honor the character of Fred and honestly, to honor the actor Luke and our friend Luke,” Aguirre-Sacasa told Entertainment Weekly.

He added, “I’ve read online that they’re like, “Ooh, Riverdale‘s not dealing with this. Is Fred going to just be on a business trip?” So I would be so grateful if you make it clear that we are 100% going to deal with Fred’s death. We didn’t want to rush into that at the end of the season and give it short shrift or not make that story as great and emotional as it needs to be to honor both the character and the actor. I think that’s going to be a big part of Archie’s journey next season, honestly.”

Aguirre-Sacasa also opened up about what to expect in terms of storylines after a crazy season three finale. “Next season is the kids’ senior year. It’s their last year in high school, and we really want to locate their stories in the high school world. We started talking about what the big mystery could be, and we said it would be great if we kind of kept it in the high school kind of world,” he explained before adding that he wants to see more of the “core four” together meaning Betty, Jughead, Archie and Veronica.

“The other thing that we wanted to do is, this year Archie and Veronica weren’t that involved in the Gargoyle King mystery — it was more Betty and Jughead. We loved the core four together in the finale.”