Riverdale Series Finale Recap: The Way We Were — Grade It In Our Poll!
Riverdale wrapped up its seven-season run on Wednesday with a tender (and even moving!) series finale that saw Archie and the gang enjoy one last day of high school together.
Wednesday's finale starts in the present day, with an 86-year-old (!) Betty, played by Superman & Lois' Michele Scarabelli, reading the obituaries and seeing Jughead's name among them. She waxes nostalgic about her old pals to her granddaughter Alice: "We had such marvelous adventures." Now she's the last one of the gang who's still alive, and she wants to go back to her hometown of Riverdale one more time before all her memories are gone, too. She falls asleep reading her high school yearbook — and wakes up to find a young Jughead sitting at the foot of her bed.
He's an angel, actually, and he offers to take her back to relive one day of her youth in Riverdale. She chooses the day of senior year when they got their yearbooks, and when she walks through a door in the wall, suddenly she's young again and in her teenage bedroom. Through her window, she sees Archie, who tells his mom Mary he'll be building highways this summer all the way to California. She's worried he won't want to come back, but he assures her he'll never forget about Riverdale. In the years to come, Archie's mom meets a woman at her dress shop, Jughead tells Betty, and the two of them move in together and live together for years. Wait, so Mary is gay, too? Get it, Mary!
Betty finds her mom Alice and her sister Polly downstairs, and she's overjoyed to see them in the flesh again. Alice divorced Hal and became a stewardess, and Jughead reveals that she ends up marrying one of her passengers and traveling the world with him. Polly, meanwhile, will have her twins and never go back to her burlesque act. At school, Betty marvels at how young and beautiful everyone is, and Toni reads a poem by Langston Hughes over the loudspeaker: "Hold fast to dreams/For if dreams die/Life is a broken-winged bird/That cannot fly." Betty gets her yearbook signed by Fangs, who's about to head out on tour after releasing a hit single. Sadly, his tour bus crashes and he dies, Jughead says, making Fangs the first of the gang to pass away.
Kevin invites Betty to join him and Clay for lunch, and they share that they'll be roommates next year in New York City while they both go to college. Jughead foresees that Clay becomes a professor at Columbia and Kevin starts an off-Broadway theater company, with the two growing old together and dying just weeks apart. Kevin slyly asks Betty what's up with her, Archie, Jughead and Veronica, referring to them as "a quad." Betty confesses the truth to Reggie: Since they saw their futures where she finds romance with Jughead and with Archie, the four of them decided not to make a choice at all — so they just dated each other all senior year, with Betty and Veronica swapping between Archie and Jughead from night to night and even getting busy with each other. Alrighty, then! Riverdale High's first proudly poly foursome. (Oh, and Reggie goes on to coach the high school's basketball team, blah blah blah. Sorry, we're still reeling from the whole polyamory thing.)
Veronica has some news for Betty: She's moving back to L.A. to try her hand at producing movies, with an eye towards running a studio someday. And she does just that, Jughead tells Betty, winning two Oscars and getting buried at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. Cheryl and Toni invite the gang to the Dark Room for an exhibition of Cheryl's paintings, and Jughead says Cheryl will become a celebrated artist, with her and Toni moving out west and living "full, gorgeous, sexy" lives together. Archie and Jughead are bummed when they hear Veronica's news — the end of the polycule! — but Betty reminds them to appreciate all the great times they've had together. "If I had to live through high school twice... which we did," the real Jughead says, "I'm glad it was with you three yahoos."
The four of them take one last ride in Archie's jalopy over to Cheryl's, where Archie reads a poem he wrote to his friends — that kind of doubles as a roast? He pokes fun at their silliest moments from the series, telling Reggie: "But there's that other Reggie, so how do we even know you're legitimate? I'm gonna need to see some kind of birth certificate." (Ha!) But he ends it on a sweet note, thanking them for being his "best friends, forever and ever." He also says a private goodbye to Betty, letting it slip that "I've always felt that it'd be you and me at the end of the road." Oh!
But that's not what happens, Betty tells him: He goes to California and never comes back. "You meet a sweet, strong girl who makes you laugh... and you have a beautiful family," she adds, and he works construction while writing poetry on the side. He's happy, and when he dies, he asks to be buried in Riverdale, next to his dad. They share a final kiss, and Betty tells Jughead she wants to visit one more person. They head to the graveyard, where Betty lays flowers at Pop Tate's grave. He died during senior year — and we never heard about it until now? Anyway: Jughead goes on to start his own magazine, Jughead's Madhouse, which sounds a lot like Mad magazine and becomes a beloved institution. Betty's book becomes a bestseller, and she starts a magazine, too: She Says, which becomes a feminist icon that's still publishing to this day. And yet, neither of them ever married.
Betty doesn't regret it, though: She adopted a daughter named Carla and became a grandmother. "That's my true legacy: my family," she decides. She holds hands with Jughead and wistfully says: "I wish that we could stay in Riverdale forever, with all of our friends, as we were, young and beautiful, full of hope, bursting with love for each other." But she knows she has to go back. Back in present day, Betty's granddaughter drives her back to Riverdale — but by the time they get to Pop's, Betty has peacefully passed away. We see her young and beautiful again (with her signature ponytail!), walking into Pop's and greeting all her friends with warm hugs. She ends up in a booth with Archie, Jughead and Veronica, and they have a milkshake ready for her.
"We'll leave them here, I think," the angel Jughead decides. "Where they're forever juniors, forever 17... in the Sweet Hereafter." The four of them raise their milkshake glasses in a toast as Jughead reminds them (and us) that "Riverdale will always be your home."
Whoo boy... is anyone else misty after that? Give the finale a grade in our poll, and then grab a booth — one last time! — in the comments and share your thoughts.