This article contains spoilers for Riverdale
In case you missed it, the Archie comics-inspired television series Riverdale aired for its final time on August 23.
The show premiered on January 26, 2017, and had seven seasons. It started out as a show not many knew about, a show about a small town with a murder case on its hands. Then in the summer, the show blew up on Netflix. Since then, the series has been known for its crazy plots (cults, serial killers, magic powers, and ending with being sent to the 1950s) and had people questioning why it would go on for so long.
I won’t lie and pretend I wasn’t one of the people who thought its plots were getting out of hand. However, when it aired six years ago, I was a freshman in high school and now, I’m a senior in college. As wild as it got, I stayed with it until the end.
The final episode opened with Jughead (Cole Sprouse) narrating the final chapter of Riverdale. According to him, it has been about 60 since the 1950s and everyone has grown up, had careers, and died. Even though he is our narrator, the character the episode focuses on is Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart). When the audience sees her, she is in bed, reading the obituaries. Jughead has died, leaving Betty to be the last one alive out of all her friends. She asks her granddaughter Alice to take her back to Riverdale the next day.
In the middle of the night, the ghost of season one Jughead visits Betty and takes her to the last day of high school – which she missed originally due to having the mumps. The episode shows Betty seeing all her friends and family again, and remembering their memories as well as how they died.
Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) and Toni (Vanessa Morgan) stayed together, accomplishing art and activism throughout their life before passing away peacefully. Kevin (Casey Cott) and his partner Clay (Karl Walcott) move to New York, becoming professors and creating an off-broadway company. Veronica (Camila Mendes) moves to Los Angeles to produce movies. Jughead started his own magazine (Jughead’s Madhouse Magazine) that is still in use. Betty’s book which she self-published in high school became a bestseller. She went on to create her own magazine called ‘She Says’ which stayed in production even after she left. As for Archie (KJ Apa), he moved to California, had a construction business, wrote on the side, got married, and had a family.
The episode ended with Betty passing away in the back of her granddaughter’s car after entering the town limits of Riverdale. It shows her young self entering Pop’s and seeing everyone again. They are young, happy, and together again. Jughead finishes narrating the episode, saying, “That’s where we’ll leave them for now.”
It all seems like a pretty simple ending if you think about it. For me, it was a tear-jerker. The episode was more than a show about high school. It was about living certain moments and having experiences that are special; moments that go by in an instant if you don’t slow down. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize said moments or appreciate them. With the pace of everything, it is important to take a step back and take time for the little things. As the episode showed, people grow up, enter each other’s lives, and then they die.
Having gone through my senior year of high school during the COVID-19 Pandemic and now entering my senior year of college, moments and memories like these are very important to me. Everyone goes down their own route and paves their own path, and that’s life. However, keeping in contact and reminiscing, as well as creating new memories and experiences are just as important. It is what makes up life; it adds to who we are.
Riverdale’s final episode also had references (yes, the epic highs and lows of high school football), familiar faces (Jason Blossom, Polly Cooper), Vanessa Morgan’s son as Choni’s baby, and of course, milkshakes. If there’s anything to take away from Riverdale, I’d say it’s to not take oneself too seriously, take risks, and live life to the fullest.