The CW has released an extended trailer for its upcoming Riverdale spinoff, Katy Keene. Created by Archie Comics CCO Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Riverdale premiered in early 2017 and will begin its fourth season this fall. The show puts a decidedly darker spin on characters like Archie Andrews and re-imagines their eponymous hometown as a noir-flavored setting populated by murderous parents, violent gangs, and various corrupt figures in positions of authority.
By comparison, Katy Keene (which Aguirre-Sacasa developed with Michael Grassi) takes place about five years after the events of Riverdale and shifts the action to NYC. From there, the story follows four characters - wannabe fashion designer Katy Keene (Lucy Hale), aspiring Broadway performer and drag queen Jorge/Ginger Lopez (Jonny Beauchamp), mysterious socialite Pepper Smith (Julia Chan), and the singer-songwriter Josie McCoy (Ashleigh Murray, reprising her Riverdale role) - as they pursue their dreams in the Big Apple. And while the series doesn’t premiere until midseason, The CW has now released a three-minute preview online.
Unlike the teaser that dropped in May, the newly-unveiled Katy Keene trailer offers a close look at the show’s main characters and storylines. You can check it out in the space below.
Katy Keene will look and feel very different from Riverdale, as the extended trailer illustrates. The spinoff has already been compared to series like Gossip Girl in terms of tone, as well as the fifth season of Glee (which, appropriately, partly took place in NYC), and this new footage confirms as much on its own. Similarly, as illustrated here, Katy Keene aims to focus as much on its leads’ social lives, romances, professional rivalries, and friendships with each other as it will their career pursuits, much like the shows that inspired it. Due to its timeline, however, the series isn’t expected to feature any familiar faces from Riverdale (Josie aside) during its first season and will focus on its own set of Archie Comics characters, instead.
All things considered, Katy Keene has a good shot at taking off on The CW. The network doesn’t have any other shows (currently-airing or incoming) that fill the same niche, and the success of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix proves there’s room for more than one corner of the Archie universe to thrive on the small screen. Plus, the shows Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, iZombie, and Jane the Virgin finished their runs this year and Arrow, Supernatural, and The 100 will follow suit in 2018-19, so the network may be all the more inclined to pick up the new slate of freshman series to help fill their old spots. With a little luck, then, Katy Keene will stick the landing.
Katy Keene premieres midseason on The CW.
Source: The CW
