The problem here is the fact that Riverdale doesn’t do enough with these Archie characters to even justify the adaptation.
Doing something different with the Archie universe isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and there’s ample precedent for it.
After watching Riverdale, I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised to learn that someone at The CW heard a pitch for an original dark murder mystery series and said, “You know what this needs?
After all, this is a comic book series that has turned Jughead into a zombie, made Archie the victim of an assassination, and forced its central ensemble to face off against The Predator.