It can be pretty jarring when an actor is recast between seasons of a show. Which is why, when I heard that Reggie Mantle is being recast for Riverdale Season 2, I got a little nervous. Did Ross Butler do something wrong? Was there some weird vibe that I didn't pick up on between him and the rest of the cast? These are the kind of questions that crop up in my mind when there's a recasting. But never fear, everyone, the reason that Ross Butler is being replaced on Riverdale comes down not to personality, but availability.
As you may have noticed, Butler also has a starring role as Zach on 13 Reasons Why, the Selena Gomez-produced Netflix series about the tragic side effects of high school bullying. It was overlapping so much with Riverdale Season 2 in the planning stages that it made it impossible for Butler to return as Archie's frenemy. But Riverdale's creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa wants to be clear that this is in no way a statement on Butler's performance; if anything, they were bummed they didn't get to use him more.
As he told Aguirre-Sacasa told TVLine in a statement:
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.
There hasn't been an official announcement yet about a second season for 13 Reasons Why, but the Riverdale recasting certainly suggests that there's a strong likelihood that the series will return for Season 2. Similarly, there's no word yet on which actor will replace Ross Butler as Reggie Mantle, but the CW show did such a great job casting the role the first time around that I have perfect confidence they'll be able to find someone great again.
It's a bummer that we won't get to spend any more time with Butler's Reggie, but being in high demand is a great problem to have — especially so early in your career.
