Once upon a time, the camp teen angst drama Riverdale had an abundance of gay/lesbian characters: Kevin Keller (Casey Cott), who is gay in the comic books, was dating the closeted Moose Mason (Cody Kearsley, left) before settling down with gang member Fangs Fogarty (Drew Ray Tanner, below).
Meanwhile, maple-syrup heiress Cheryl Blossom and former gang member Toni Topaz were the Riverdale High power couple.
Season change, and so do I. In Season 6 (2020-21), 7 years have passed since graduation; Fangs and Kevin are still together, until Kevin's jealousy and penchant for hooking up with strangers drives them apart.
Toni broke up with Cheryl long ago. She is pregnant. Sperm doner? Surrogate?
No, turns out that she has been straight or bisexual all along. She had sex with Fangs, who suddenly decided that he was bisexual, too. Now they're Riverdale's new male-female power couple.
Nothing wrong with being bisexual, but suddenly deciding that you are bisexual seems contrived. And when you never mention any same-sex interests again, for all intents and purposes you are heterosexual; it sound suspiciously like the old myth that the right man or woman can "cure" your gayness and make you straight forever after. Fangs and Toni are not actually bisexual; they are gay people who have turned heterosexual.
That leaves Kevin and Cheryl, who are apparently still gay, but only mention it once: Cheryl's ex girlfriend comes to visit, and Kevin overcomes his sex addiction by joining Cheryl's new religious cult (which sounds uncomfortably like "praying the gay away" . They have been erased, too, as surely as if they were written out of the show.
Cheryl does adopt a queer teen, but Riverdale High has changed. All the girl does is state "I'm queer." She never actually dates anyone or expresses any same-sex interest.
The last episode features a roundelay of heterosexual couples: Archie-Betty, Veronica-Reggie, Jughead-Tabitha, Betty's Mom-Archie's Uncle Frank (Ryan Robbins), and of course Fangs-Toni, male-female couples extending to the horizon, while Kevin and Cheryl stand alone.
I'll bet in the next season they decide that they were bisexual all along, and become Riverdale's new power couple, and the gay erasure will be complete.
They really did not know what to do with either Kevin and Moose which were a hot couple- even in the earlier seasons Kevin was barely part of the story line- the show reached the height of homo eroticism when Archie was sent to the juvenile prison which was populated by extras from a Falcon video. The show did tease us with an Archie- Jug Head bromance but that went no where.
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