Gritty sci-fi webcomic where partway through the third major arc the protagonists get trapped in some sort of utopian false reality by a mysterious godlike being, except they never escape and the comic just changes genres to quirky coffee-shop slice of life until it’s unceremoniously cancelled six years later.
Oh like the Riverdale TV series
Strictly speaking, the Riverdale version is an audience fakeout – it initially appears as though the gang is trapped in an idyllic false reality, but after a couple of episodes it’s revealed that everything is real and the gang just got sent back in time; the show’s framing later returns to the present just in time for the last of them to die of old age.
I… what? The fuck even was that show holy shit. That happened??? In “sexy edgy teen drama Archie”?
Maybe i should watch more tv…
Yeah, they all go back in time in an apparent excuse for the writers to spend a season doing a pastiche of the original Archie comics from the 1950s, though this is soon derailed by a Cold War spy drama subplot involving a sinister milkman, and then the show just ends.