Why Charles Melton Replaced Ross Butler As Reggie Mantle On Riverdale

Charles Melton's critically acclaimed performance in "May December" put Hollywood on notice, and since then, he's been on the rise, with a number of other high-profile projects on the horizon. He's now set to star in the upcoming Alex Garland film "Warfare" alongside the likes of Cosmo Jarvis and D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and is also slated to appear in the Elizabeth Olsen film "Love Child" and season 2 of Netflix's "Beef." With so many major roles coming up, it's easy to forget that Melton wasn't even the first choice to play Reggie Mantle on "Riverdale," the role that began his onscreen ascension.

In the show's first season, Reggie was played by Ross Butler, a veteran of teen drama shows who left "Riverdale" to focus more on his "13 Reasons Why" role as Zach Dempsey. "We love what Ross did with the role of Reggie [this season], but because of his commitments to other projects, we couldn't use him nearly as much as we would have liked," "Riverdale" creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told TVLine in 2017. "We want more Reggie on our show."

According to Butler, he had the choice of either continuing to play both characters in smaller roles or choosing one and becoming a bigger part of that show. "Reggie's a great character, but it's a different tone," he explained in a 2017 interview with Vulture. "I connected with Zach on a much more real level where I didn't have to create so much of a character for him." But while Butler may have had the option to stay on as Reggie, once the role was recast, Aguirre-Sacasa altered the character significantly.

Recasting a role is always a tricky proposition. You can either look for someone who can closely mimic what the previous actor did, or you can go in a different direction to avoid undue comparisons. In the case of Reggie, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa chose the latter.

"I watched the show to kind of get a feel of it," Charles Melton told Business Insider in 2017, "and Roberto was like, 'Don't watch anything. Don't watch what Ross [Butler] did. What you're doing is completely different.'" Given the showrunner's previous comments to TVLine about wanting Reggie to have a bigger role, this curious direction may have been intended to help create a more fully formed character. "He was steering me to not throw myself off by trying to emulate somebody else," Melton said.

The switch ended up being positive for both actors involved. With Melton in the role, Reggie became a fan favorite and a major player in core storylines throughout the show — a level of prevalence that surely helped land him parts in movies like "The Sun Is Also a Star" and "May December." "13 Reasons Why" also continued to be a huge success for Butler, who's since appeared in projects like "Swimming with Sharks," "Shazam! Fury of the Gods," and Netflix's "To All the Boys" films.

While Charles Melton was told from the jump to create a distinct character from Butler's, the two Reggie's did finally get a chance to meet in the infamous 100th episode of "Riverdale" — a fourth-wall-shattering collection of cameos, references, and inside jokes. If you're reading this, you probably know exactly what we're talking about, and if you haven't seen the episode, it's honestly too bizarre to explain in totality. But the gist is that a multiversal mix-up throws multiple versions of various characters together in a sort of cosmic hodgepodge, which allowed for Butler to briefly reprise his original Reggie and trade barbs with Melton.

It's that exact brand of nonsensical chaos that lifted "Riverdale" from "Twin Peaks" wannabe to a truly beautiful and unique mess of high camp, meta humor, and soapy teen drama. And while Melton quickly established himself as the definitive Reggie on the show, it's great that Butler got a chance to return and take part in the abject nonsense that had risen up on "Riverdale" in the wake of his departure.