As if Marvel and DC weren’t enough, another hit series has joined the shared universe craze. Roberto Aguirre Sacasashowrunner of ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’, has confirmed that he shares a universe with another of his series: neither more nor less than ‘Riverdale’.
Notice of spoilers from the latest episodes of ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’
“Liarverse” and “Archiverse”
‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ is the fourth spin-off of ‘Pretty Little Liars’., after ‘Ravenswood’, ‘Perfectionists’ and the webseries ‘Pretty Dirty Secrets’. The successful Freeform series (what was ABC Family at the time), created by I. Marlene King, adapts the Sara Shepard book saga and already had her own universe.
This new series came from the hand of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, creator of the successful ‘Riverdale’ on The CW and ‘The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ on Netflix. These two series they started the “Archieverse” (expected, considering that the character of Sabrina was born in the ‘Archie Comics’ that adapts ‘Riverdale’) despite not being from the same chain that, since then, has been growing.
The question of whether ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ and ‘Riverdale’ shared a universe arose as a result of the last broadcast episode of ‘Original Sin’, in which the protagonists question Eddie Lamb (a character from the previous series, played by another actor ) and he tells them that various patients of the Radley Sanitarium in Rosewood were sent to the Sisters of Silent Mercy in Riverdale.
Aguirre-Sacasa confirmed that both series take place in the same universe:
I guess so. We simply include that line of dialogue. At first, I assumed that we wouldn’t be allowed to make a ‘Riverdale’ reference because it was in another universe, but in the end we let it. So yes, we could say that they exist in the same universe.
At the moment, it’s just an easter-egg and no real crossover is raised but the showrunner assures that he would love it:
Alex (Aiono), who plays Shawn, is obsessed with the rivalry between the Millwood Steppenwolves and the Riverdale Bulldogs. I would love to see a football match between the two. However, who knows? If we had pushed, I don’t know to what extent they would have allowed us to merge the universes. It would be great, that’s for sure.
This connection would have its peculiarities, considering that Lucy Hale plays Aria in the original series of ‘Pretty Little Liars’ and the protagonist of ‘Katy Keene’, the spin-off of ‘Riverdale’. Lindsay Calhoon, one of the writers of ‘Original Sin’, commented that would love to see a world where Katy and Aria lived togetherboth performed by Hale.
Another hidden wink: in the same episode, Tabby (Chandler Kinney) says that Ash (Jordan Gonzalez) “looks like a teenage Cole Sprouse.” Effectively, the actor who plays Jughead in ‘Riverdale’ also exists in ‘Original Sin’: “It’s a multiverse” concludes Aguirre-Sacasa.
‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ is currently being broadcast and in Spain it can be seen on HBO Max, where you also have ‘Riverdale’, ‘Katy Keene’, ‘Pretty Little Liars’ and ‘Pretty Little Liars: Perfectionists’.