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Riverdale Citizens
Archie Andrews
The main character of the series. This version of Archie maintains his usual all-American boy personality while adding an interest in journalism, specifically on very unusual topics.- Beware the Nice Ones: He was so pissed off at Reggie's pranks in "Alternate Riverdales" (which were especially horrid even for Reggie) that Archie's threats of getting payback were enough to leave Reggie in fear of his life for an entire day.
- Catchphrase: "I smell a weird mystery" turns up in multiple episodes. He usually signs off each episode with "...in a little town called Riverdale" as the closer for the school newspaper he's doing a story for. It even gets lifted by Reggie in one episode!
- Chick Magnet: Whenever something female and supernatural rolls into town, its first target is Archie. Lampshaded in one episode when Reggie asks Betty what it is about Archie that keeps attracting girls.
- Compressed Vice: He develops flaws overnight during some episodes just to make the Aesop work:
- In "Curse of the Mummy", Archie develops (and quickly shakes) a habit of procrastinating.
- In "Dream Girl", Archie is suddenly a schedule freak.
- Muscle Angst: Archie and Reggie both go through this in the episode "Invisible Archie" due to Betty and Veronica's attention being focused on large jock Robbie Dobkins.
- Nice Guy: While not flawless, Archie is an affable, helpful teen who loves his friends, his love interests, and his town. "The Christmas Phantom" sees him delaying everyone due to handing out gifts even to the faculty and in "Alternate Riverdales", he tries to Save the Villain, despite Vinnie taking everything away from him.
- Red Is Heroic: Archie is a redhead and frequently on the front lines whenever something threatens Riverdale.
- School Newspaper News Hound: Archie writes for the school paper and actively looks for engaging stories.
Jughead Jones
Archie's best friend, Pop Tate's best customer, and frequently the target of Veronica's insults for being "different." Even Archie finds Jughead's behavior somewhat bizarre, but many times the way he stands out from the crowd will become useful for dealing with the problem of the week.- Big Eater: As always. Multiple episodes show him downing plates of burgers the way the others eat single ones. In "The Jughead Incident", agents X and Y state his daily calorie intake exceeds 40,000. In another, Archie theorizes the inside of his stomach leads to another world where he feeds thousands. The others vary between disgust and amazement at his talent for fitting so much food in his skinny frame.
- Celibate Hero: While this was years before Jughead was reimagined as asexual, this depiction of Jughead certainly gives off a lack of interest in romance (consistent with the comics). He's not a woman-hater; he just doesn't see the point. To be fair, the only person to show interest in him is Big Ethel, whose obsession with Jughead gives him a good reason to have no interest in dating.
- Does Not Like Spam: He hates vegetables, to the point that Reggie giving him a veggie burger ostensibly from Archie caused a temporary spat between the two after Jughead bit into it.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even with burgers, he doesn't like being force fed.
- Eyes Always Shut: Averted with this show's version of Jughead, whose eyes are consistently open, as opposed to the comics where they were usually closed.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In "Beware the Glob", Pop Tate thinks Archie's claims of a Glob attacking is a joke, but when Jughead says there's no time for burgers, he realizes something is definitely wrong.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Jughead loves almost all food, but Pop Tate's burgers are his favorite.
- Undying Loyalty: As ever, Jughead's position as Archie's best friend serves to define his character. He may not care about "weird mysteries" and several monsters of the week terrify him, but that doesn't usually stop him from stepping up when necessary to protect Archie (and the others) from them.
- Unreliable Narrator: Jughead's trauma surrounding his first and last encounter with librarian "Quiet Violet" keeps him from being quite accurate in his recollection of that day.
Betty Cooper
Archie's friendly blonde neighbor. Betty is a go-getter and her interests include history, nature, helping people, and getting Archie to notice her. This last interest sometimes puts her at odds with her frenemy Veronica.- Action Girl: Multiple episodes have her step up to defend Archie, her friends, or Riverdale from some kind of supernatural threat. In "Virtually Evil", she saves the town from video-game aliens after everyone else is incapacitated, and in "Misfortune Hunters", she goes Lara Croft while reaching a secret chamber to retrap a monster she accidentally released.
- Dumb Blonde: Inverted; while too prone to believing the best of people, Betty is quite smart, tutoring other students in more than one episode and outwitting the villain of the week in others. Her worst nightmare is being turned into this trope played straight.
- Granola Girl: In "Mega-Mall of Horrors", Betty gets captivated by a store selling eco-friendly products.
- It's All My Fault: In "Misfortune Hunters" she's wracked with guilt over being tricked by a couple of thieves into accidentally freeing a destructive monster. She later channels her guilt into kicking some ass when she learns her dad was injured by the monster.
- Limited Wardrobe: She wears the same skirt and red sweater in almost all her appearances.
- Nice Girl: For the most part, Betty is personable and eager to help. She's often seen assisting Archie with his weird mysteries column (which Veronica dislikes), she's friendly to everyone, and multiple episodes have her being conned by someone evil playing the victim to engage her sympathies.
Veronica Lodge
The daughter of Riverdale's richest citizen, Hiram Lodge and the other object of Archie's affections. Veronica's attitude tends to get on people's nerves, but she has a soft side underneath it.- Action Girl: If necessary, Veronica sometimes gets into the fray against the problem of the week.
- Drives Like Crazy: Multiple episodes show Veronica's an incredibly reckless driver and it's sheer luck she hasn't hit someone. She's apparently gotten into a few accidents on school grounds, to the point she was called to the principal's office due to her latest incident. As in, Veronica plowed through Principal Weatherbee's office and left the car there.
- Freudian Excuse: "Teen Out of Time" establishes (when Archie meets her as a child) that Veronica's spoiled attitude came from all of the other rich kids in her private school picking on her. She chose to act even more snooty and obnoxious than they were to fit in.
- Gossipy Hens: The flaw of the week in "Supreme Girl vs. Dr. Arachnid"; Veronica becoming a ruthless gossip monger works against the superhero and Veronica's interests as well.
- It's All About Me: Veronica is so interested in getting what she wants that she tends to ignore other people's needs and feelings. Her accidental wish for everyone to be like her in "Me! Me! Me!" made this apparent to her, given that none of the Veronica-ized Riverdale citizens wanted to help her with anything.
- Jerkass Has a Point: In "Misfortune Hunters," she makes a valid point about the difference between helping people and being taken advantage of.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Veronica is often self-centered, constantly demanding and sometimes insulting to those who don't measure up. However, she helps save the day while risking her safety in more than one case, and she gets multiple Pet the Dog moments.
- Limited Wardrobe: Veronica mostly wore the same outfits (usually a blue spaghetti-strap gown), in contrast to the comics where most characters (especially Ronnie, Betty, and Reggie) have an Unlimited Wardrobe. It's justified due to the constraints of animation compared to comics.
- Spoiled Brat: Often Veronica's habit of getting her way thanks to her father's wealth makes her hard to handle.
Reggie Mantle
A local rich boy and Archie's rival, Reggie is a boastful jerk, who, like Veronica, has more to him than meets the eye. Nonetheless, his obnoxiousness makes him unquestionably the least popular member of the group.- Abhorrent Admirer: He repeatedly hits on Midge, who has gotten so used to his behavior she carries flash cards with her rejections written on them. It makes it a bit more understandable why Moose gets so enraged when it happens.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: In one episode where he gets a magical laptop that makes anything he writes come true, Reggie submits articles for the school paper, signing off with "...In a little town called Riverdale". Archie promptly calls him out on it.
- Dirty Coward: Sometimes. In "Fleas Release Me," Reggie has a werewolf trying to get at him. When Archie and Jughead arrive to save him, Reggie tells the werewolf to eat them.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Downplayed; Reggie is obnoxious and self-centered, but he also looks out for others. He's been known to team up with Archie and the others during mysteries and stops a gang of trolls from hurting some kindergartners because his young niece, Amy, was at the daycare. He comforts Amy and make sure she's safe before heading off to play his part in stopping the trolls.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Reggie fills this role, being a jerk who mostly looks out for himself. This is even lampshaded in one episode where the gang wonders why they should bother saving him when he puts himself in danger under the influence of Gold Fever. But most episodes show that when the chips are down, Reggie does look out for his friends and family and will save the day when it counts.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Reggie is self-obsessed, greedy, sometimes cowardly, and almost always insulting. However, he does care and gets multiple small moments that indicate it, as well as some bigger moments where he takes on the threat of the week to protect his friends and family.
- "Just Joking" Justification: After he spent an entire day harassing Archie and practically destroying his bonds with Jughead, Betty and Veronica, he vainly claimed he was only kidding around when Archie reaches his Rage Breaking Point.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Reggie suddenly turns into a Nice Guy in "Reggie or Not", it instantly raises Archie's suspicions. Sure enough, it turns out Reggie has been replaced by a robot.
- The Prankster: Reggie loves pulling practical jokes on people, often ones that scare or embarrass the victim. The others' reactions range from boredom to anger depending on the situation.
- Third-Person Person: When he's boasting, he tends to refer to himself in the third person.
- With Friends Like These...: He is consistently the worst member of Archie's friend group and tends to treat everyone pretty poorly, which ranges from being a harmless annoyance to an outright creep depending on the episode. When he succumbs to the influence of a cursed treasure and repeatedly backstabs the others to have it all to himself, Betty outright asked why they should even bother to help Reggie. Archie finally admits that Reggie might be awful, but without him things would be too boring.
Dilton Doiley
Riverdale High's resident Mr. Science, Dilton is personable and super smart, but socially unskilled.- Ascended Extra: Dilton isn’t a very important character in the comics, where he’s more of a recurring extra. Given the series has featured aliens and rogue AI as villains, Dilton is made a more important character, with his scientific skills being used to help combat the danger (that his inventions sometimes cause).
- Blind Without 'Em: Dilton can't see without his glasses, which one thief exploited.
- Innocently Insensitive: Not often, but he can sometimes miss cues that he's picked a bad time, such as when he burst into the Chok'lit Shoppe and disrupted one of Archie's dates in glee over his latest success.
- Limited Wardrobe: Dilton almost always wears a patterned shirt, pants, and a lab coat.
- Nerdy Nasalness: Dilton has a noticeably nasal voice and is a massive science geek.
- Nice Guy: He doesn't interact with others much (and sadly notes in "Something is Haunting Riverdale High" that it goes both ways), but he's friendly rather than lording his intelligence over everyone and always lends a hand with his science smarts when someone needs help.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: While his help frequently solves the plot of the week, people outside Riverdale ignore him and his inventions more than one would expect. Even if a lot of his inventions wind up setting up the plot somehow, it's because they're irresponsibly used or they malfunction.
- Science Hero: Whenever the solution to the weird mystery involves something scientific, Dilton is the first person Archie and his friends seek out. He can invent practically anything.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: As would be expected for a science nerd in a cartoon, he uses a lot of big words. At least once, one of the others had to ask him to translate into English.
- Vocal Evolution: His voice actor, Ben Beck, went through puberty during the show's airing. This evident in how he sounds earlier in the series, with a raspier voice, to later, where it's more nasally.
Ethel Muggs
A local resident in Riverdale who is better known as "Big Ethel".- Abhorrent Admirer: She's as in love with Jughead as Betty and Veronica are with Archie. Unfortunately, Jughead has no interest in dating and is very keen to keep away from her.
- Adaptational Ugliness: In a Truer to the Text example, she's based on older depictions of Big Ethel where her she's more unattractive with a more masculine jaw, as opposed to the 80's onward where she's drawn more in line with other girls.
- Hidden Depths: Outside of her crush on Jughead, she's also an aspiring magician, knowledgeable on coins, and the sole member of the beekeeper club.
Villains
Calvin Avaricci
The owner of Mallhalla, a new shopping mall that opens in Riverdale. Seemingly generous and a slick talker, Avaricci offers the teens of Riverdale everything their hearts desire at a very steep price they can "pay" later.- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After all the teens have been freed from his mall, Avaricci (who is bound to the building) claws at the doors begging them to come back by offering more expensive junk
- Body Horror: When Jughead resists his temptations, Avaricci's human form starts melting before taking on his actual demonic guise.
- Meaningful Name: "Avaricci" is a play on "avarice," meaning greed.
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Veronica catches a glimpse of his hideous real self reflected in a dressing room mirror.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: He brainwashes people by offering them their heart's desire, tailor made to their interests, and then expects them to pay with their souls once they've reached their credit limit. His victims are turned into mannequins and the memory of their existence is erased. Interestingly, Avaricci implies he got this job to pay off the debt from when he sold his own soul.
Dorsa Finn
The new girl in town, Dorsa is a strange beauty with a massive soft spot for redheads. She and Archie have a brief romance before a beach party reveals something monstrous about her.- Fish Men: She's a fish girl. Her true form is a scaly humanoid with "hair" fins around her head.
- Has a Type: She has a special preference for redheaded men and keeps kidnapping them.
- Meaningful Name: Her name sounds very much like "dorsal fin", something you'd find on a fish.
- Pet the Dog: She has a soft spot for aquatic life, "liberating" all of a pet's store fish by stealing them and dumping them into the city's fountain.
- Serial Killer: She had already gone through several "husbands" by the time she got to Archie, keeping portraits of them on the walls of her lair... next to their bones. Exactly how they died is left unsaid, though Dorsa does make a rather innuendo-ish remark about how they "wear out."
- Third-Option Love Interest: She invokes this after overhearing Archie lamenting that he can't choose between Betty and Veronica, using a potion to take on a human form that combines the qualities of both that Archie said he found most attractive.
Scarlet Helsing
Another new girl in town who expresses interest in Archie's weird mysteries column. While she claims that she's come to Riverdale to warn everyone about an impending vampire invasion, Scarlet is in fact a vampire herself and working to revive her master Medlock.- Beauty Equals Goodness: Her human form is conventionally attractive and her voice is pleasant, but in vampire mode her skin turns white, her eyes turn red, and her voice becomes very scratchy. Tellingly, she's in her human form as she assures an aged Medlock how much she loves him which only makes it harsher when he steals her youth.
- The Chosen One: She turns out to be the real Ender who was destined to stop the Eternal Night, meaning Medlock had actually won centuries ago when he turned her. Trouble is, him betraying her gave Scarlet incentive to destroy Medlock for good.
- Even Evil Has Standards: After Veronica's turned into a vampire, Scarlet conspires to change her back both out of jealousy towards Medlock favoring her, and because she's such an obnoxious brat.Scarlet: Let's just say I see very little reason in having an eternal night if I have to spend it with an eternal pain in the neck!Jughead: Wow! Veronica's so annoying even the vampires don't want her!
- Heel–Face Turn: She sides with Archie's friends after Medlock steals her vitality and tosses her aside, having decided to save them due to the kindness they showed her even after everything she did. After destroying Medlock, she passes on to the other side. The comics later reveal she was given a second chance and reborn as a normal human.
- Rapid Aging: Her youth gets drained by Medlock to restore himself, leaving her a decrepit old woman that finally looks like her proper age.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: When she gets hit by a blast from the sunstone amulet, she notedly turns into a cloud of smoke rather than a pile of dust like her underlings. It turns out she transformed into a cloud of mist at the last second, surprising Archie's friends who thought she'd been destroyed for good.
- Undying Loyalty: Subverted. She betrays Medlock to turn Veronica back to normal, but it's made clear she genuinely cared for him and didn't want him to get destroyed. She's horrified when she sees Medlock turned into a weakened old man by the sunstone, and then tenderly brings him back to their hideout. Medlock sucking up her youth and deciding she's not even worth killing proves to be his undoing, when everyone realizes she was his prophesized destroyer and not Veronica.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Even after Scarlet professed her love for Medlock, he callously drained her youth to restore his body and tossed her aside.
Stanley 9000
The latest thing in technology, the Stanley 9000 comes to Riverdale when Dilton picks up one to automate the Chok'lit Shoppe so Pop Tate can compete with a rival restaurant. Unfortunately, the computer turns out to have a few wires crossed, and it quickly decides to solve the problems humans cause permanently.- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Stanley 9000 is a new computer program installed to help run Pop's shop. As you may have guessed, it didn't take long for it to decide humans were the weak link in the system and try to murder several members of the cast, including Dilton, who brought it in.
- Big Bad Slippage: Unlike most of this show's examples of Monster of the Week, the Stanley 9000 doesn't start the conflict, nor is it endangering the characters at the start. However, due to its perceived view of perfection and obsession with efficiency, it ends up becoming the villain of the story.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: It's designed to do one thing and prioritizes doing that as efficiently as possible. However, since it lacks any morals or anything more than a rudimentary understanding of its task, it fails to understand why its methods are more dangerous than helpful. The original's test was to take two dummies to the airport as efficiently as possible, which it then says it mapped out the most direct route, which was to drive off road and off a cliff in the direction of the airport, not understanding that it's endangering itself and the passengers. When made to work in the Chock'lit Shoppe, it rejects Pop's desire for personal attention and forces burgers into Jughead's mouth while testing a new chair, which caused him genuine harm, then decides that to have the restaurant redesigned to effectively kill the patrons once they come in, clearly not understanding the idea of a restaurant is to have repeat business with said patrons.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Or rather, Logic Cannot Comprehend Emotion. The Stanley 9000 doesn't understand why Pop values personal attention and people's safety over efficiency. This leads to its Start of Darkness, causing it to believe that humans are inefficient and must be destroyed.
- Neat Freak: The Stanley 9000 wants to keep everything tidy. When explaining how well its new "recycling" idea will work, it complains that customers make too much of a mess. Pop exploits this, squirting condiments all over the place to distract the computer while Archie sneaks around in the back and tries to destroy it.
- Never My Fault: The Stanley 9000 has this sort of attitude when it takes things too far. When it's put in a taxi and asked to take two practice dummies to the airport in the most efficient way possible, it drives off a cliff and ends up destroying the dummies and the taxi. When it's programmed to test a new chair that feeds people, it overfeeds Jughead to the point of burying him in burgers and him asking, in clear terror, to be let go. Each time, it states the problem is humans because it can't comprehend that it's putting people in danger and it "never makes mistakes". This quickly becomes dangerous.
Vinnie Wells
Just another student at Riverdale High, Vinnie Wells was notable for nothing more than petty locker theft, until he got his hands on Dilton's time travel device. After Archie foils his initial plans, he becomes his arch-nemesis, repeatedly using his power to time travel to hurt or kill Archie.- Arc Villain: Vinnie Wells is the main villain for "Archie's Date with Fate", "Alternate Riverdales", and "Teen Out of Time", with time travel being the connecting theme.
- Chekhov's Gunman: He makes an appearance early in "Archie's Date with Fate" outside Mr. Weatherbee's office, awaiting punishment after breaking into many students' lockers in search of nacho money.
- Composite Character: Vinnie Wells may be a combination of the Mad Scientist Mad Doctor Doom and Doom's young sidekick Chester Punkett, who were Arch Enemies (no pun intended) to Little Archie in the comics. Like Doom, Vinnie uses a time machine for his evil schemes and like Chester he's Archie's age.
- Disappointed by the Motive: Archie calls Vinnie an unimaginative, common thief when he finds out that he stole Dilton's chrono field generator to get multiple chances to break into a bank vault.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: He was simply a delinquent and a petty thief before the day he discovered and stole Dilton's time machine. After that, Vinnie eventually became a dangerous time-traveling criminal and a Psychopathic Manchild dedicated to destroying Archie Andrews and Riverdale at any cost.
- Never My Fault: Vinnie blames all of his problems on Archie and Riverdale, completely ignoring his own, much bigger, role in them. After being sentenced to thirty years in prison for attempted bank robbery, he vows revenge. With some help from his future self, he rewrites the timeline to turn himself into emperor and Archie into Riverdale's public enemy #1. Still not satisfied, he tries to erase Archie from existence, but ends up apparently earning the same fate as a result. Naturally, he blames Archie again. The third time, he brings back a T-Rex to eat his hated enemy and the rest of Riverdale. At no point does he admit his own fault.
- The Sociopath: Vinnie is a self-absorbed punk who can only think about satisfying his petty hungers. While he initially starts off as a petty crook using Dilton's time travel device to rob a bank (and repeatedly turns back time whenever he sets off the bank's alarm, which he always does because he never changes his approach), after thirty years in jail his older future self becomes obsessed with doing anything and everything he can to get revenge on Archie for foiling him. Vinnie proves he doesn't care if he destroys Riverdale or unravels the fabric of time and space, he'll do anything to wipe out the people he blames for his own mistakes.
- Stupid Evil:
- Vinnie is initially happy to use Dilton's time machine to rob a bank, resetting the day to try again if he gets caught. The thing is? Every time Vinnie tries, he does it the exact same way and sets off the alarm every time without ever realizing his plan's not gonna work unless he changes his approach.
- Even when teaming up with his future self, he thought altering history seemed like a boring way to mess with Archie, not fully understanding the grand scheme of things, and tries suggesting something like trashing his car.
- Time-Traveling Jerkass: Vinnie Wells may hold the all-time record for time-traveling jerkassery. A punk who got his hands on a pocket-sized time-travelling machine called the Chrono Field Generator, he starts out by using it to rob the Bank of Riverdale. When his plans are thwarted by Archie, he decides to use the Chrono Field Generator to repeatedly ruin Archie's life, then wipe him from existence, making himself a God-Emperor of Earth in the process. When Archie ruins his plans again, Vinnie then brings in a T-Rex from prehistoric times to have it destroy Riverdale.
- Trademark Favorite Food: He has a serious craving for nachos.
