It’s Official: “Riverdale” River Vixen Cheryl Blossom is Bisexual!

I am not the kind of person who gets off on saying “I told you so.” But there are few things I enjoy more than being right about a fictional character being queer. A few months ago, I declared that Riverdale’s Cheryl Blossom is probably queer. Well my little River Vixens, I told you so. Cheryl Blossom is canonically bisexual according to Madelaine Petsch, who plays the fiery maple goddess herself.

Yesterday, Madelaine posted a video on her YouTube channel answering fan questions that didn’t necessarily seem like anything special. But buried in that video was the answer to the question we have all been asking ever since Cheryl locked eyes with bisexual babe Toni Topaz. “What’s Cheryl’s sexuality?” a hero asked Madelaine via Twitter. (Fast-forward to 5:28 if you want to see it all unfold for yourself.)

“She’s still figuring out what her sexuality is,” Madelaine replies in the video. I thought she was just going to leave it at that somewhat vague answer, but nope!!!!! Madelaine thankfully left no room for ambiguity, doubling down on her statement about Cheryl’s sexuality: “Cheryl is definitely interested in both women and men, so I would say she’s bisexual.”

CHERYL BLOSSOM: CONFIRMED BISEXUAL! Madelaine teased that we’ll be seeing more of Cheryl exploring herself and her identity when the show returns for the second half of its season. I have a feeling I was right about Toni being the person Cheryl is making Gay Eye Contact with in this still from next week’s episode:

Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre–Sacasa also tweeted out THIS still:

Heather Hogan astutely pointed out that the lighting in the background appears to evoke the bi flag in a very “Make Me Feel” music video type of way.

Is the CW becoming the most bisexual network on television? Just within the past month, Jane The Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend introduced queer storylines for two main characters who previously only had romantic storylines with men. Arrow has the bisexual character Sara Lance (who also appears in Legends Of Tomorrow). Grace on Black Lightning is bisexual. The Originals and The 100 have bisexual women as main characters. And then Supergirl, Jane The Virgin, Valor, and Black Lightning all prominently feature lesbian characters. Maybe The CW should change its name to The QW as in QUEER WOMEN. They should probably at least change their slogan from “dare to defy” to “dare to BE BI.”

Will Cheryl Blossom smooch a lady this season? (Probably!) Will it be Toni? (Hopefully!) Have I made a meticulous chart of all the times I’ve noticed on social media that Madelaine and Vanessa Morgan (who plays Toni) have been filming scenes together? (Definitely!) Cross your fingers for some queer action when the show returns on March 7th.

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 885 articles for us.

10 Comments

  3. While I’m glad (so, so glad) that “Riverdale” is FINALLY taking the dive into Cheryl’s sexuality that they’ve been talking about since the end of last season, I disagree that Toni should be Cheryl’s girlfriend. While Toni may be good for Cheryl, Cheryl would never stoop so low as to date a poor person. I hate it because it smacks of so many things wrong: They’d be changing Cheryl’s personality to make a ship, they’d be hooking up two characters because if they’re both queer, then they must be into each other, and finally, it does the thing of there can’t be more than one queer couple on a show. If Cheryl and Toni are in a relationship with each other, then that ties both of them up.

    • hmm, i actually don’t think it would be changing cheryl’s personality at all. i hear what you’re saying about cheryl being rich and snobby, but i also think she’s shown that she’s capable of embodying many things and that she’s a teenager trying to like, figure things out, and she’s done enough “out of character” good deeds to make me think she’s multi-faceted (or at the least charitable conclusion, confused). i mean, she was obsessed with archie even though he’s obviously from a very different class background than she is. i just don’t think it would be that far off for her to like toni.

      • I agree that she’s a teenager trying to sort things out, but this is the same thing as her deciding to date Jughead. I just don’t see that ever happening.

    • She did jump sides to join the protestors speaking up against colonizers so there’s that.

  4. “Maybe The CW should change its name to The QW as in QUEER WOMEN. They should probably at least change their slogan from ‘dare to defy’ to ‘dare to BE BI.'” do you ever read something and become furious that you weren’t the one to come up with it? i love this so much

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