Whoever said you can’t have your cake and eat it too could not have imagined the magnificent power of Riverdale. The amount of ground this show had covered before the final season was already staggering: there was the bear attack and the organ harvesting cult and the Uncut Gems homage and the real estate scheme and the jingle jangle crisis and the supernatural superpowers plot and a half-dozen or so serial killers. The seventh season reset everything by sending the gang back to the 1950s, keeping the show’s lovable zaniness intact while also grounding it back in high school. Tying all of that up in a bow was a tall order for the series finale, but of course Riverdale did it in the most Riverdale way possible, honoring the show’s “endgame” romances while still managing to blaze its own completely original path forward.
The series was, of course, obsessed with its own “endgame,” playfully winking at fandom shipping culture as it mixed and matched the cast in sometimes odd but usually compelling combinations. Archie’s mom (Molly Ringwald) was on record that he and Veronica (Camila Mendes) were endgame; Riverdale’s time-traveling guardian angel Tabitha (Erinn Westbrook) told Veronica there were equal chances he’d end up with her or Betty (Lili Reinhart). The final season shook everything up, flirting with a lot of fun possibilities: Betty and Archie (KJ Apa); Ronnie and Reggie (Charles Melton); Betty and Reggie; Ronnie and Jughead (Cole Sprouse); Ronnie and Betty; even Archie and Reggie. (Choni, the portmanteau for the couple played by Madelaine Petsch and Vanessa Morgan, made it all the way to the end, as the witch in season six foretold.)
But why choose just one combination when you can have them all? The finale revelation that rocked the Internet is that Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead spent the entirety of their senior year in a four-way romantic relationship. It’s a bone thrown at fans of the series’ OG couples (affectionately called Varchie and Bughead) while also honoring the show’s campy roots (and the queer sensibility that ramped up even further in the final season). It solidified the bond shared by the “core four” main characters—and yet it ultimately circumvented the “endgame” altogether, sending the characters in separate directions after graduation. Archie became a construction worker in California, Veronica a studio executive, Jughead created their universe’s MAD Magazine, and Betty became their universe’s Gloria Steinem.
Veronica & Archie & Betty & Jughead
The romantic relationships (or really, lack thereof) isn’t the only way the Riverdale finale played both sides. In the penultimate episode, the teens regained their memories of their previous lives in the present day, yet still remained and lived out their lives in the 1950s. You still get the ’50s aesthetic and “swell” dialogue, but you also get Archie’s comic poem in the finale that acknowledges all the adventures that came before—Betty’s serial killer gene, Jughead’s Stonewall Prep teacher’s suicide, the fact that there were multiple Reggies, even his own “epic highs and lows of high school football” speech.
But that’s Riverdale for you: always working on multiple levels, a rich metatextual layer hiding underneath the kooky surface that always puzzled and delighted Twitter. “I know it’s impossible, but I wish that we could stay in Riverdale forever,” Betty tearfully tells Narrator Jughead in the show’s final moments. “With all of our friends, as we were. Young, and beautiful. Full of hope, bursting with love for each other.” It’s the wish of an 87-year-old Betty looking back on her favorite memories at the end of her life. It was also, clearly, the wish of a writers’ room that boldly decided to send its stars back to high school for one final season hurrah. And it’s no doubt the wish of many fans who delighted in the series’ many twists and turns over the years.
It’s not possible to stay in Riverdale, Jughead informs Betty, except that it kind of is. When Old Betty dies, Young Betty gets sent to the big Pop Tate’s Chock’lit Shop in the sky to enjoy the Sweet Hereafter with her high school chums, young, beautiful, and bursting with love for each other. “Forever juniors, forever 17,” Narrator Jughead observes from the outside. “It’s where they’ve—where we’ve—always been, and always will be. In this diner, in this town.”
It’s true for Betty’s afterlife with Archie, and it’s true for the audience that may return to the show in years to come. Riverdale will always be there to welcome you back, forever 17 (and then 17 again). Still, the end of Riverdale is a huge loss for television. There’s never been anything quite like it before, and there will probably never be anything like it again. At the very least, no other show could ever pull off a polyamorous quad as a romantic endgame and simultaneously no romantic endgame at all. That’s the bonkers beauty of Riverdale. Thanks for all the memories.