Saying Goodbye to the Most Beloved Father in <em>Riverdale</em>
Luke Perry, the <em>Beverly Hills, 90210</em> star who died Monday, found new life on TV as the dad of Archie Andrews on The CW’s teen drama—a role that he was perfect for.
by Jason Heller
Mar 07, 2019
4 minutes
Generation X wasn’t supposed to have icons. Of course, we wound up with plenty of them anyway—Whitney Houston, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, Heath Ledger. A humbler one showed up on our television screens in 1990 in the form of Luke Perry, who rolled into the cast of the teen drama like a James Dean–haired thundercloud. With smoldering looks and a poetic soul, Perry’s character, Dylan McKay, became not only a sex symbol for Gen Xers, but also an early springboard for a new role. As Fred Andrews—the father of Archie, the red-headed protagonist of The CW’s far edgier teen drama —Perry took his and, with quiet virtuosity, flipped the script, becoming the wizened patriarch instead of the
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