Spoilers ahead for the series finale of Riverdale, called "Goodbye, Riverdale."
A long, unpredictable, and often bizarre era has ended on The CW with the series finale of Riverdale, which spent its seventh and final season with the characters transported into a 1950s timeline with them all back in high school again. The penultimate episode with its pilot callbacks explained why they could never go back to where the Season 6 finale left off for them in 2022, and "Goodbye, Riverdale" delivered a time jump to finish the story with an 86-year-old Betty revisiting a day from senior year with the help of angel Jughead before dying and arriving in The Sweet Hereafter. It was an emotional hour of endgame reveals, but fans who tuned in on The CW haven't seen the full finale story yet.
How Riverdale Revealed The Core Four Endgames
It was hard to imagine how Riverdale could possibly deliver endgames that would please everybody, not least because Season 6 ended with Betty and Archie engaged while Jughead and Tabitha were going strong (comet notwithstanding). The core four characters were basically hopping from partner to partner for a fair amount of the season, with a surprise love connection between Jughead and Veronica. So, how did the show tie off loose ends?
Well, the first bombshell reveal about the core four came before Riverdale actually revealed their ultimate endings, as Betty rediscovered in her trip back to the '50s how she, Archie, Veronica, and Jughead had dealt with remembering their tangled relationships after recovering their Seasons 1 - 6 memories.
Instead of just pairing off, they became a romantic quad, with Betty revealing hookups between her and Archie, Veronica and Archie, and her and Veronica. She didn't say anything about Archie and Jughead, though! She and Archie did share a sweet final scene together, however, including a kiss after he confessed that he'd always felt it would be the two of them at the end of the road. (Me too, Archie. Me too.) Alas, it wasn't meant to be in Riverdale.
As for the final endgames, those were bittersweet. Betty, who looked back from present of 2023 to relive a day she'd missed from her senior year, became a successful author and founder of a popular magazine that is still going. She never married, but adopted a daughter and became a grandmother, telling angel Jughead that her family is her legacy.
Archie, whose decision not to remember the bad memories in the penultimate episode makes it a little hard to swallow some of what he mentioned in his big poem, went out west for the summer after senior year and never came back to live in Riverdale. He met and built a family with a woman there, and became a professional construction worker and amateur writer. When he died, he asked for his body to be returned to Riverdale so he could be buried alongside his dad.
Veronica moved back to Los Angeles to become a movie producer after her success with helping Josie premiere her movie a few episodes ago. She would be a hit there, winning two Academy Awards before dying and being buried in the Hollywood Forever cemetery.
Jughead, like Betty, never married but became a huge professional success when he established the Jughead's Madhouse magazine, which is still beloved by kids and teens into the modern day. Betty read her former flame's obituary early in the episode.
How Riverdale Handled Other Important Endgames
Of course, Betty, Archie, Veronica, and Jughead aren't the only important characters from Riverdale, and the series finale took some time to establish the endgames for many of the others. Not all of them were happy, however!
Betty learned early on that despite his musical success and high hopes for the future, Fangs would die in a bus accident not too long after high school. His hit song was enough to support Midge and their daughter for the rest of their lives, however, so there was at least a silver lining to how his (and presumably Midge's) story ended.
Kevin and Clay stayed together, moving to New York after high school to become roommates while going to different colleges. They would live their the rest of their lives in Harlem, with Clay becoming a professor at Columbia and Kevin establishing an off-Broadway theater company. Kevin died peacefully in his 80s, and Clay followed a few weeks later.
Cheryl and Toni stayed together as well, and they moved out west where Cheryl became a successful painter. Angel Jughead didn't drop details about what Toni was up to professionally, but did reveal that they had a son named Dale – for Riverdale, of course – and they died peacefully after living full lives.
Reggie went on to play basketball in college and eventually be drafted by the Lakers, although he returned to Riverdale after the deaths of his parents. He became the basketball coach at Riverdale High and father to two sons.
As for the non-high schoolers of the show, Pops died in the teens' senior year, passing away in his sleep. Mary fell in love with a woman who came to her dress shop, and she moved into the Andrews house where they would remain together for the rest of their lives. Alice divorced Hal, became a stewardess, and married a man who helped realize her dreams of traveling the world. Polly gave birth to twins and never went back to her Polly Amorous burlesque life.
Why The Story Isn't Over Yet
While the series finale ran for the normal hour with commercials when it aired on The CW, there were a number of scenes that had to be cut for time. KSiteTV reports that an extended version of "Goodbye, Riverdale" will become available on August 24 via The CW app and CWTV.com. It remains to be seen if the extended episode will be available to fans with Netflix subscriptions if/when the final season arrives on the streamer, which is currently host to Seasons 1 - 6.
The extended cut will include the fates of some characters whose endgames weren't revealed within the version of the finale that aired on The CW on August 23, as well as visit some Riverdale locations. None of this is to say that the extended episode will change anybody's endgame, but the storyline can be fleshed out a bit more.
You can find the extended episode starting on August 24, the day after the final episode aired on The CW. Netflix is the place to be to revisit earlier seasons, and you can also check out what Riverdale stars shared about working with Luke Perry as Fred Andrews prior to the actor's death. An era has truly ended with the conclusion of Riverdale, and it seems safe to say that no other show can recreate the epic highs and lows (for better or worse) that this show hit over the years.
