‘Riverdale’ Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa Breaks Down That Insane Season 3 Finale

How about that Riverdale Season 3 finale, folks? The reliably insane episode, titled “Chapter Fifty-Seven: Survive The Night” featured huge twists, big reveals, multiple cliffhangers, and a shocking ending that is sure to keep fans speculating all summer long.

Spoilers for the Riverdale Season 3 finale past this point.

Here’s a rundown of what went down in the episode, on the off-chance you missed any of it (hey, a lot happened!). There have been two main mysteries this season: the villainous Gargoyle King, a creature at the head of a deadly role playing game called Gryphons & Gargoyles; and The Farm, a cult led by the enigmatic Edgar Evernever (Chad Michael Murray) that is super into harvesting people’s organs.

On The Farm beat, after multiple escapes including Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch), everyone in the cult “ascended,” meaning they disappeared from Riverdale leaving only a sobbing Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) behind. Oh, and turns out Alice Cooper (Mädchen Amick) wasn’t part of The Farm at all… She was working with the FBI to help take down their organ harvesting operation. There was one thing she was telling the truth about though, and that was that she was actually talking to her presumed dead son Charles Smith (Wyatt Nash), as he’s actually an FBI investigator and her contact.

Meanwhile, Penelope Blossom (Nathalie Boltt) turned out to be the mastermind behind everything that’s happened to Riverdale this season (or at least 50% of it). She created the first Gargoyle King back in 1992, killed Principal Featherhead (Anthony Michael Hall), and groomed Chic (Hart Denton) to become the next, modern-day Gargoyle King. And everything she’s done has been revenge on the other parents in town, who according to her didn’t offer enough sympathy when her son Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines) was murdered, way back in the pilot.

In order to exact her revenge, she puts Archie Andrews (KJ Apa), Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart), Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) and Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) through a series of trials looping back through their history, challenging them to… Well, survive the night.

One of those challenges? Hal Cooper (Lochlyn Munro), a.k.a. The Black Hood. Penelope murders him in cold blood as Betty watches, and it’s only after Cheryl rallies the troops that they’re able to fight back the Gargoyle Gang. With Chic behind bars, Penelope on the run, and Hal dead, things go back to relative normal (other than The Farmies being missing, and Veronica’s father selling her mother out to the FBI, and Cheryl hanging out at home with the corpse of her brother). The four kids vow that Senior Year will be different, no murders, no mysteries, no gargoyles. They all clink milkshakes and…

Flash-forward to spring break, Senior Year. Archie, Betty and Veronica are standing in front of a fire in their underwear, in the woods, covered in blood. Betty tells them they have to burn all their clothes — including Jughead’s signature beanie — and never, ever talk about what happened, or they’ll get caught.

Then it’s back to the smiling teens, laughing and drinking milkshakes, unaware of whatever is waiting for them next year.

It’s a lot, right? Luckily, Decider talked to Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa about some of the biggest moments in the finale, from Jughead’s disappearance, to the Penelope reveal, to who of the couples really is endgame:

Decider: I want start at the end, with the flash-forward. Burning the beanie is such a huge, symbolic moment… At this point, how much have you planned ahead? Do you know where Jughead is? 

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: We have a couple of options. We certainly have started talking about the events leading up to that … which is going to happen halfway through the season, I’d say. Then we have a couple of options on what happens on the other side of burning the beanie.

Revealing Chic as the Gargoyle King, Penelope as the mastermind… How long has that been in the works? Did it change at any point in the process, or was that always the plan for the end of the season?

Aguirre-Sacasa: Very early on, we landed on the idea that this season was going to tie all previous seasons together, and that the root of evil in Riverdale was going to be associated with the Blossoms. We may have talked about Nana Blossom being the ultimate villain, and that she would stand up and be revealed to be able to walk and all this stuff. [Then] we settled on Penelope. That’s why she was in the flashback, so prominently in the flashback episode… So, it was pretty early on.

I’m curious as to what went into Penelope’s tests for The Core Four. Some of them are pretty clear, like the bear is the most horrific thing that’s happened to Archie. But how did you choose each of those moments to call back to?

Aguirre-Sacasa: Yeah, so that’s obviously clear, Archie had faced a bear and barely survived. Veronica’s test is two-fold. One is, a game of chance and she’s been running a casino all season. And it’s sort of Russian roulette. And again, that does invoke her first night in Riverdale when she played spin-the-bottle. For Jughead, he spent most of the season wrestling with Gryphons & Gargoyles, and trying to find out the identity of the Gargoyle King. We liked the idea that it would be The Serpent King versus The Gargoyle King. And we liked that it picked up on the animosity between Jughead and Chic from last season. Betty’s struggle has always been with her father. Last season, for sure, she wrestled with The Black Hood, and she helped get Hal arrested. That was a really natural, and resonant conflict.

One of the bigger twists in the episodes was that Alice was working for the FBI the whole time! Was Mädchen Amick aware of the reveal? And if she did, how much did it affect her acting choices over the course of the season?

Aguirre-Sacasa: We did not have that twist from the very beginning. I think we landed on that about halfway through the season. We were like, “Oh, should we call Mädchen?” We didn’t, partly because we were worried that it was going to start affecting her performance, that she was going to start playing like she was undercover. And it felt like the truest version of this was for her, was to play it as totally invested in The Farm and that that would make the illusion stronger.

The other big thing the finale reveals is Charles Smith finally joining the cast. Fans have speculated about every character that shows up on set at some point is secretly Charles… Why was this the right way to introduce him, what will it do to the cast? Specifically, Betty and Jughead as he’s related to both of them. And is Wyatt Nash joining the cast now?

Aguirre-Sacasa: It’s funny, in the comic book Betty’s brother is an FBI agent. So, that was strangely something we didn’t have to change from the comics. It felt like, given The Farm’s story and the FBI’s involvement, “Oh, this could be a really fun way to bring him on.” Obviously, that’s been a big mystery through the seasons, about who Betty’s brother is. Whether he will affect Bughead… Yeah, I think it will. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to affect their relationship, because I don’t think it’s incest-y or anything like that, it’s very clear. But I think he’s really gonna have a deep connection with Betty.

This episode clears out a bunch of the parent cast: Hal, Hermione, Alice, Penelope, at least for the time being. So basically, FP and possibly Mary are around. Why was it important to leave the season with the kids on their own?

Aguirre-Sacasa: I don’t think that was a conscious decision. It just so happens that a lot of the parents on the show are sketchy, and all the chickens came home to roost. We wanted the episode to end with a win for a lot of the characters. Veronica beating Hiram was a huge thing … after being beaten [by him] so many times. So, it wasn’t necessarily like “Oh, we’re going to get rid of all the parents!” It just happened that way.

Is Riverdale going to turn into “Lord of the Flies” next season?

Aguirre-Sacasa: Oh, I think we’ll be seeing the parents. We’ll probably be seeing the parents [again].

Cheryl taking Jason’s body to Thornhill is an extremely creepy scene and, with everything that’s happened with her mother and father at this point, is she broken? Will Toni at all be able to bring her back from the edge?

Aguirre-Sacasa: We’ve been having a lot of discussions in the room about this particular choice. Weirdly, we don’t think it means she’s broken. This is someone who’s been defined by her relationship with her brother. That’s why she joined The Farm, was because she got to see him again. We really trusted that. We thought, “Okay, now she gets to see her brother again.” Which, she really gave that up so quickly [in the episode] and we kind of thought, “maybe not.” Is this completely healthy? No, it’s not completely healthy. But we don’t necessarily think it indicates that she’s in the worst place of her life.

Speaking of which, Alice is gone with The Farm. I assume this means that The Farm is almost the uber-Big-Bad of the series… Are they coming back next year?

Aguirre-Sacasa: We still have pretty major characters [missing], Alice and Fangs… But I don’t think it’s gonna be nearly as central as it was this season.

With Alice now firmly on the side of the good guys, are we ever going to see an FP/Alice kiss on the show? I know you guys filmed one, but it got cut from an episode.

Aguirre-Sacasa: Yes, for sure we will be able to explore that.

Sticking with couples for a second, fans talk constantly about, “Is Bughead endgame?” “Is Choni endgame?” You played with that a lot this season, using it as Varchie’s word. Is there, at this point, a couple that is endgame for the show? Or do you more treat that aspect season by season?

Aguirre-Sacasa: We treat it season by season. I always get killed whenever I use “endgame” in the script, the fans hate me when I do that. I think it’s funny, but there you go! I think we’re open to things changing, for sure.

Last but not least, now that you have Sabrina, Riverdale, and Katy Keene has been picked up, are we any closer to having a “Crisis on Infinite Archies”?

Aguirre-Sacasa: I would love that! I actually wanted to do that story in the comic books, but we never got around to it. Maybe we will on the show, that’d be great.

Riverdale will return for Season 4 this Fall on The CW

Where to stream Riverdale