Riverdale's final episode marks the end of an era

Over seven seasons and 137 episodes, the epic highs and lows of Riverdale have given us everything from serial killers and cheerleaders to floating babies and sexy cult leaders. It's been a lot, but in the best way possible.

For those who gave up around the time a certain Gargoyle King showed up, know that season 6 was perhaps the show's most unhinged yet.

With newly developed superpowers, the gang tried their best to stop an evil sorcerer from destroying their town with a comet magically pulled from the sky. Tabitha, who's now become a time-travelling angel, pulled everyone back to the year 1955 so they could make Riverdale, and therefore the world, a better place – one where the events that led to this apocalypse could never happen.

With their memories of the old world wiped, our faves channelled the original Archie Comics this show is inspired by with a wholesome, yet still extremely sexy, final season that led up to the penultimate episode where Tabitha returned — but with a twist.

The former high-schooler-turned-angel revealed that her mission was successful, but none of the gang would be able to return to 2023. They'd still remember it though, or at least the good times - because Tabitha got them all to binge watch Riverdale. Yep, they watched Riverdale on Riverdale.

You can't make this stuff up, except, you can, and we're grateful that the writers did. No other show would ever dare go quite as far as Riverdale did in those six years. People can make fun of the show all they want, but everyone involved was fully aware of how wild things were getting, and in that respect, Riverdale is truly a camp masterpiece, one that people will undoubtedly come to appreciate more in years to come.

But how can anyone possibly wrap up all this beautiful madness in just one more hour? No matter how much you love or hate, or love to hate this show, we guarantee that no one could have predicted quite how Chapter One-Hundred Thirty-Seven would come to an end.

Riverdale's final episode explained

67 years have passed since the previous episode. We now find ourselves with Betty at the age of 86, who is living with her granddaughter Alice (aw). Jughead's obituary has appeared in today's newspaper, which means Betty is the last of the old gang to survive.

With her memory fading, she asks Alice to take her back to Riverdale one last time before she forgets everything completely. Alice agrees, but that night Angel Jughead (more on that later) appears and offers to take her back to one day of her choosing. Betty goes with the day everyone picked up their yearbooks because she was sick with mumps and off school, so she missed everything.

Back in the past, Betty sees Archie discuss the future with his mum. He plans to join a construction crew set to build highways all across America because this will hopefully inspire his writing. Mary gives him her blessing knowing full well that once Archie sees the Pacific Ocean, this three-month detour will become a whole new life for him.

With her yearbook in hand, Betty asks Fangs and Midge to sign their names first, and it's here that we discover Fangs is gearing up for a summer tour off the back of his first hit single. With the approval of Midge's parents, the pair are also planning their wedding now.

During her last lunch at school with Kevin and Clay, it's revealed that Betty is now in a "quad"-style relationship with Archie, Jughead and Veronica. With their memories restored, they realise that all four of them had love for each other, so why choose one person to be with when they could all enjoy their final year at school together? It's a bold move, especially given how obsessed the fandom is with shipping various combinations of the four leads, but this way the show gets to have its cake and eat it too, much like the characters themselves.

Later on, at the Babylonium, Veronica reveals to Betty that Josie's recent visit inspired her to return to LA in the hope of becoming a movie producer. At The Dark Room, Cheryl and Toni have ambitions of their own with the debut of their year-long art collaboration, which features various members of the gang in various states of undress. Classic Riverdale. While there, Toni's also selling collected editions of Black Athena, her now acclaimed literary magazine.

Betty cheers Archie and Jughead up after they don't take Veronica's news as well as she did, and then together they go for one one last ride in Archie's car to the afterparty that's being hosted at Cheryl's mansion. Betty doesn't want to go inside, though.

"They have no idea do they?" she asks Angel Jughead. "No idea how special this time is, how quickly it goes by in the blink of an eye" - so just like us, then, as we try to savour every moment of these final minutes with Riverdale.

Inside Thornhill, Archie gently roasts everyone, and even the show itself, with a poem that pokes fun at all the truly insane things they got up to in the previous universe - a.k.a. seasons 1 through 6. It's cheesy and playful and most importantly of all, camp in a surprisingly touching way that couldn't have come at a better time.

What happened to everyone in Riverdale?

Before he leaves, Archie tells Betty of his hopes that they'll end up together one day. But they won't and Betty knows it, so she explains to him then that his mother was right.

Archie doesn't come back to Riverdale. Instead, he starts his own construction company in California before settling down with a "sweet, strong girl" who he starts a family of his own with. And when Archie dies, he'll ask to be placed to rest back in Riverdale, next to his father.

Almost everyone else gets a happy ending too, but sadly, these endings take place all across America with the gang and even their parents pushed apart by time and circumstance.

While working at her new dress shop, Archie's mum Mary meets a woman named Brooke and the pair end up together for the rest of their lives. Alice Cooper, Betty's mum, finally sees the world as a stewardess, and one night she somehow manages to land a plane after the pilot suffers from a heart attack. What starts out as a thank you dinner from one of the passengers ends up becoming a marriage proposal, and then the newlyweds travel across the world together for real. Polly lives happily ever after too in a dramatic turn from her fate in the original timeline.

Meanwhile, Nana Rose reincarnates a bunch of times, because of course she does. Sadly though, Tom Keller and Frank Andrews are murdered by a hustler named Chic who they picked up one night together. Remember Chic? He was that guy pretending to be Betty's brother a few seasons back.

Back to the kids; Fangs is the first to die. Just four weeks into his tour, the bus crashed in the Rocky Mountains, but he was survived by Midge and his daughter, who were able to live off the money his music would go on to make after his death. Cheryl's brother Julian died too, although he lasted an extra 10 years longer than the original Julian whose death kicked off this entire show all the way back in episode one. This Julian wasn't murdered though, not exactly. He died after enlisting in the army and fighting in Vietnam.

In better news, Reggie is drafted by the Lakers, achieving his dream of becoming a professional basketball player. When his parents pass, he sells off the farm and becomes a coach at Riverdale High with a wife and two sons. Hopefully that makes up for the fact he never got to be a part of the gang's quad which he wanted to enjoy firsthand.

Thankfully, Cheryl and Toni stay together for the rest of their lives and even have a child together named Dale after, yep, you guessed it, Riverdale. #Choni fans would have lost their mind if the pair had enjoyed anything but a perfect ending, and it truly is deserved, given all the writers have put them through over the years.

Veronica finds great success with her move to LA, where she eventually runs Silver Shield Studios and wins two Oscars. We never find out how she died, though, or who she ended up with, if anyone. Same goes for Jughead, who ran an influential publication named “Jughead’s Madhouse Magazine,” which continues to be enjoyed by readers in the present day.

Betty takes a similar path off the back of her book and advice column as she goes on to create a magazine named "She Says" that impacts women across the decades. Amongst all that, Betty also found time to become a mother after adopting her daughter Carla, even though she never ended up getting married.

With all these revelations out the way, Betty has one last place to visit. It's the graveyard where Pop was laid to rest. He died in his sleep almost 12 months earlier at the start of senior year. His death hit the town hard because Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe was the heart and soul of Riverdale - quite literally, as you might recall when Percy tried to destroy it in season six. And that's what makes the next scene so sad but poignant too.

Here's how Riverdale ended

With her journey to the past now over, 86-year-old Betty takes a new trip to Riverdale in the present day with the help of her granddaughter. But when the car parks up outside Pop's, Alice discovers that Betty has passed away peacefully in the backseat.

The show then cuts to 17-year-old Betty again (looking a lot like season 1 Betty) as she enters The Sweet Hereafter, which is essentially Riverdale's version of heaven. Of course, this particular afterlife is set in the diner, where all of Betty's friends are already waiting for her, also young once again.

Betty says hi to everyone and then takes her usual spot in the gang's favourite booth where she's greeted by Archie, Veronica and Jughead. There's a strawberry milkshake waiting for Betty — her favourite — and then we head outside, where the Angel version of Jughead stands waiting.

As we watch everyone having fun in the diner one last time, we're left with this monologue from Angel Jughead who speaks directly to the camera:

"We'll leave them here, I think. Where they're forever Juniors. Forever seventeen. Always grabbing a burger, or a shake. Always going to, or coming from, some dance, talking about school, the big game, who's dating who, homework… Whatever movie's playing at the Babylonium.

"You know, the moments that make up a life. It's where they've— We're, we've always been. In this diner. In this town. In the Sweet Hereafter. So if you happen to see that neon sign, some lonely night, at the end of that long journey… That journey that every one of us is on. Pull over. Come on in. Take a seat. And know that you’ll always be among friends. And that Riverdale will always be your home. Until then, have a good night."

Read more:

• Why won't there be a Riverdale season 8?
• Riverdale season 7 cast: Meet the characters

As this version of Jughead walks off into the darkness and we see Riverdale's neon logo flash up one last time, you might be left thinking, 'Why didn't I buy more tissues to prepare for the sobs that now wrack my body?' And you might also be wondering, 'What's going on with this angelic Jughead? Who is he, exactly?'.

With the original Jughead now laughing and eating burgers in The Sweet Hereafter, this could be the alternate version from another reality who was forced to write about his friends for all eternity. But it could also be the Narrator Jughead from the Rivervale timeline who took that Jughead's place after he was consigned to his fate in the bunker.

But if we had to guess, Angel Jughead is most likely an amalgam of all these Jugheads - one who has been narrating the show with omniscient oversight since day one.

But now it's over. Except, not really, because as Jughead insinuates, these characters will continue to live on beyond Riverdale. They're the stars of Archie Comics, which have been in circulation since 1941, and they'll undoubtedly appear again one day on screen in other ventures, too.

But more than that, Archie, Betty and the rest of them will also live on with everyone who tuned into all seven seasons of this imperfectly perfect show. That doesn't mean bidding farewell hurts any less, though.

"I don’t want to say goodbye," says Betty at one point. "It’ll be too painful, too much to bear." And she's right. Because we're not just saying goodbye to Riverdale. We're saying goodbye to an era of TV where shows could run for 100 episodes and more. An era where long-running shows like this and the characters who live in them, end up becoming part of your life forever, sometimes without you even realising it.

But at least we had this one last episode, a series high that marks the perfect end for anyone who was lucky enough to enjoy the epic highs and lows of teen drama at its finest and most deranged.

Riverdale is available to stream on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

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