Fandometrics In Depth: Riverdale Edition
On January 26th, 2017, The CW (@cwnetwork) gave us the gift of Riverdale, the gritty Archie Comics (@archiecomics) reboot we had no idea we wanted. For 15 weeks, we’ve witnessed our newest faves write for the Blue and Gold, watch the River Vixens perform, and grab milkshakes at Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe. To help you recover from last night’s fiery finale, we analyzed millions of tags used between January 26th and May 11th, 2017 to identify the most talked about characters, episodes, and ships.
With nearly 15 million engagements (searches, original posts, reblogs and likes) during the first season run, Riverdale was the 44th most trending tag on all of Tumblr: that’s more popular than the tags #Harry Styles, #Star Wars and #Pokemon, to name a few. Among TV shows, Riverdale was the fourth most trending program, right behind Voltron: Legendary Defender, Steven Universe and Skam.
But what were the top performing episodes of Riverdale? Glad you asked:
1x02 “A Touch of Evil” had the most likes.
1x05 “Heart of Darkness” had most searches and the most reblogs.
1x11 “The Lost Weekend” had the most original posts.
Jughead Jones, played by perennial Tumblr fave Cole Sprouse, was the most talked about character. In fact, 28.8% of the conversation was focused on our behatted narrator. The full list breaks down as follows:
It was a big 15 weeks for Jughead. In addition to being the most discussed character, he was one half of the most popular ship: #Bughead. This canon relationship between Jughead and Betty dominated the show’s ship conversation, accounting for more than half that discussion. Even though Chip Zdarsky’s (@zdarsky) Jughead is canonically asexual, Riverdale’s Jughead is still trying to navigate the fluidity of his sexuality through this relationship.
Bughead (Betty x Jughead) | 51.17%
Beronica (Betty x Veronica) | 32.37%
Jarchie  (Jughead x Archie) |  8.63%
ArchieRonnie (Archie x Veronica) | 3.11%
Barchie (Betty x Archie) | 2.84%
Cheronica (Cheryl x Veronica) | 1.70%
Valarchie (Valerie x Archie) | 0.18%
Riverdale was renewed for a season two before the first season even ended. For amazing GIFs to tide you over until next fall, may we suggest:
Riverdale Source (@riverdalesource)
FYeahRiverdale (@fyeahriverdale)
Betty And Jughead (@betty-and-jughead)
The Official Tumblr of Riverdale (@thecwriverdale)
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