Spoilers ahead for the series finale of Riverdale on The CW.
Riverdale came to an end with a finale that not only didn’t return the characters back to the timeline of Seasons 1 - 6, but revealed that the core four finished high school in a quad to settle the romantic endgame once and for all... or so it seemed. As viewers took to social media following the final episode with plenty of thoughts about the love quad, some fans of Betty and Archie came up with an interesting theory about what the finale didn’t spell out, and there’s a surprising amount of evidence to back up the idea that Barchie were endgame after all.
At the very least, I want to believe that it’s true after a season of back and forth about Barchie! So bear with me and let's have some fun reading between the lines for what may or may not be there.
The Origin Of The Theory
Let’s start with what exactly the show told us about Betty and Archie’s endings. Riverdale found a pretty convenient way to drop exposition about how all the characters’ stories ended, with an 86-year-old Betty with fading memories being visited by a version of Jughead to go back to a day of senior year that she missed. Angel Jughead had to jog her memory on the endgames, and she seemingly never remembered everything.
At least, Jughead had to jog her memories on endgames other than Archie’s. In their final one-on-one scene, Archie told her that he’d always felt that they would be together at the end of the story since it started with them as “a boy and girl next door to each other.” A tearful Betty said that was a “lovely sentiment,” but had a different story to tell:
But that’s not what happens in the future. Your mom was right. You make it to California and you don’t look back. Then you meet a sweet, strong girl who makes you laugh. And you settle down in Modesto. And you have a beautiful family. You’re a professional construction worker. And you are so, so content and happy. And when you die, you ask to be buried here in Riverdale next to your father.
Instead of looking surprised or confused at Betty’s extremely specific picture of his future, he just kissed her lovingly, and KJ Apa's performance seemed to suggest that Archie knew more than he was letting on. Then, a couple scenes later, we got to learn Betty’s backstory, this time from both Betty and Angel Jughead:
- Angel Jughead: "First, it was the Teenage Mystique, a self-published bestseller. Then there was your advice column, Betty’s Diary… Then it was New York."
- Betty: "Freelancing and protesting. There was so much to be angry about back then."
- Angel Jughead: "Still is."
- Betty: "The same fights, but other people are fighting them now. The younger generation."
- Angel Jughead: "Who grew up reading the magazine you started. She Says magazine. The go-to source for feminist and progressive causes. Exposing hard truths. Still being published today, I might add."
When Jughead then asked if she had any regrets about not getting married, she replied that she had “none,” but she’s “so happy I adopted my daughter Carla.” She loved being a mother and grandmother, she said, and her family is her “true legacy.”
These are the stories of Archie and Betty's lives, with the former remembered by Betty and the latter filled in by Angel Jughead. If we take them at face value, Betty and Archie only ended up together in any way, shape, or form in The Sweet Hereafter. Barchie fans have a different idea.
The Theory And Evidence
And here is where I have to give kudos and credit to the eagle-eyed Barchie fans on X (formerly known as Twitter) who caught some details that I missed on first watch. One fan was already connecting some dots shortly after the Riverdale finale finished airing on August 23, posting:
unreliable narrator betty with alzheimer’s, never seeing her redheaded daughter, never seeing archie’s wife, picture frame of archie, driving back to riverdale because she lived in california, knowing every detail of archie’s life….she is the wife we have all been bashing omgAugust 24, 2023
While the episode technically never said that 86-year-old Betty's memory problems were due to Alzheimer's, that she ever lived in California, or that her daughter had red hair, there's no denying that she was an unreliable narrator for most of the episode, and she did know a suspicious amount about Archie's life. According to @PaceynJoey on X, Archie may have been more aware than Betty knew during her blast to the past, writing:
Afterlife Archie knowing how everything turns out but Betty doesn’t remember bc of her Alzheimer’s and he doesn’t want to upset her (you don’t correct Alzheimer’s patients) but is also trying to hint to her they’ll be together and always were… yeah.
There's also the point that while there were flashes to the futures of Veronica, Jughead, and Betty (professionally), there were no scenes of Archie in California with a "sweet, strong girl" who makes him laugh, as another fan on social media noted:
They didn't show Archie's future because it's Betty who is his wife. She told his future, not jughead. And she is not a reliable narrator as that old Betty.So yes, Barchie actually got married and had kids. Betty is that sweet, strong woman who makes him laugh. pic.twitter.com/6iEccC7kQVAugust 24, 2023
If reading between the lines of Betty and Archie's seemingly separate life stories wasn't enough, there are also some visual clues that could point to the full story not being told after all, including old Betty having a framed photo of him. With showrunner Robert Aguirre-Sacasa both writing and directing the series finale (via EW), this fan suggested:
betty not knowing anyone’s future but archie’s, old betty having a heart shaped frame of archie in her room, aa + bc at the movie theater, carla andrews initials, archie being the one that greets her in the afterlife, ba drinking each other’s favorite shakes in that last scene.August 24, 2023
A seat in the movie theater had some graffiti on the bottom, including "AA BC" within a heart and "CA WAS HERE." I hope that all Riverdale viewers – Barchie fans or not – can agree that "AA BC" in the heart is a reference to Archie Andrews and Betty Cooper; if this Barchie theory is correct, than "CA WAS HERE" refers to Carla Andrews, Betty's daughter with Archie.
Now, I would be remiss as a journalist – even if I'm also one who wants to believe in a completely unconfirmed theory about Riverdale, of all shows – if I didn't do some digging and rewatching of my own, and here's what I came up with!
Possible Supporting Evidence
When I rewatched Betty and Archie's final scene in the '50s and Betty's scene with Angel Jughead about her own story, I noticed some details that I missed the first time around. Betty told Archie that he would meet a "sweet, strong girl," settle down in Modesto, and have a "beautiful family." At no point in their conversation did she say that Archie married that sweet girl or how big his beautiful family was.
In Betty's story, we know from Angel Jughead – who does seem to have all the real information when he shares it – that Betty never married. Betty herself said that she adopted a daughter named Carla, and the existence of her granddaughter Alice gives me no reason to think that she was confused about adopting Carla.
Angel Jughead also explained that Betty went to New York after some professional success, and the episode established early on that she'd visited Kevin and Clay there. Jughead didn't say whether she spent her whole life in New York, and she even said that she'd attended some of Veronica's movie premieres, which were almost certainly in Hollywood.
So, we have Betty in New York for at least some of her time after high school, and Betty traveling to California at some point. If she went to some of Veronica's premieres, couldn't Archie have done the same and reunited with Betty there? Plus, in telling Archie's story, Betty said that he would "make it to California" and not look back, and then "settle down in Modesto." Who's to say that he wasn't elsewhere before settling down to build a family in Modesto? And is it important that only Betty and Archie were confirmed to be parents? Were Betty and Archie endgame, and she simply didn't remember in her old age due to her health?
Okay, I may be jumping to a lot of conclusions here for the fun of it, inspired by Barchie detectives on social media who caught some Easter eggs that I didn't the first time around, but I do think that there's a lot of wiggle room in Archie and Betty's endgames that could mean they ended up together after all... if you squint and nobody from the show comes out to debunk the theory, anyway.
Any word from Robert Aguirre-Sacasa may not come until after the end of the WGA writers strike anyway! Besides, this is Riverdale we're talking about. After all manner of crazy plot twists over the years, is any theory really too wild for this show? For now, you can always revisit the early days of Riverdale streaming with a Netflix subscription, as the first six seasons are available there. You can also check out our 2023 TV premiere schedule for some post Riverdale options.
