Hang Jughead and Tabitha’s ‘Riverdale’ Season 7 Premiere Kiss in the Louvre

What makes a good TV kiss? You need the basics like proper lighting, a camera angle that highlights both of the actors involved and ideally a solid story reason for why the two are kissing.

What makes a great TV kiss, though? That’s trickier to quantify because it almost always comes down to two things: chemistry; and emotion. Those are two aspects of a series that often vary viewer by viewer, which is why the great TV kisses are so heavily debated… If you don’t love the couple, don’t think they have chemistry, and don’t care about the emotion infused in the scenes, even the most well-filmed TV kiss won’t work for you.

But frankly? It doesn’t matter what you think about Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) and Tabitha Tate’s (Erinn Westbrook) final kiss in the Riverdale Season 7 premiere, because it unequivocally deserves a space in the Louvre.

Here’s the setup, which is actually the most complicated part of the otherwise simple and fun episode. Last season on Riverdale, the town was almost destroyed by a comet called down by a vengeful sorcerer in his dying moments. Thanks to Tabitha’s chronokinetic powers, which allow her to travel through time and ultimately revealed her to also be Riverdale’s literal Guardian Angel, the gang knew that if they didn’t try something drastic, that would be it for The Town With Pep. So they all gave their powers to Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch), who essentially turned into the Scarlet Witch, blew up the comet, and sent them all back to 1955.

In this new, bygone era, the former adults are now all teens again in their Junior year of high school. Nobody remembers their past lives except Jughead, who is desperate to find some way of getting his friends’ memories to return — and then to figure out some way back to 2023. In the process, he digs up a time capsule they all buried after high school graduation (how was it still there in 1955? Who is to say?), and draws the attention of Tabitha. Not the Tabitha who lives in 1955, who doesn’t recognize Jughead when they first meet in Pop’s Diner. But the Tabitha who is the Guardian Angel of Riverdale; the one who remembers everything, including being in love with Jughead, and Jughead being in love with her.

What follows is somehow even more complicated to explain than the previous two paragraphs, but the short version is that Tabitha needs to erase Jughead’s memories so he can safely live an innocent life in 1955. Meanwhile, she’ll be out somewhere in the multiverse trying to figure out how to get them back to the present. The way Tabitha erases those memories? You guessed it: a kiss so incredible it could even make the Mona Lisa smile.

There are a couple of elements that make this kiss iconic enough to hang in one of the greatest museums in the world, not least of which is the chemistry that Sprouse and Westbrook exhibit in this scene, something that comes from the ease of working together so closely for the past few seasons. There’s also the emotion behind the kiss, which carries the weight of a magical goodbye — and the promise that they’ll find each other someday again.

But what actually takes this to the next level is the direction from Ronald Paul Richard. The shot starts in the wide as Jughead and Tabitha stand up, ready to do what needs to be done. At that moment, after an episode filled with music straight from the ’50s, “A Real Hero,” by College & Electric Youth off the Drive soundtrack begins to play. The style also switches from shooting with a pseudo-Happy Days lighting scheme to one more modern, more music video. Light seems to seep in from every corner of Pop’s; blasting out the background and making sure our focus is on Jughead and Tabitha as the only two people who matter in the world — to each other, and to us, the viewers. As this happens, the shot also ramps into slow-motion, because this is a moment that needs to exist forever; a feeling that will stay until the end of, and out of time.

Then Richard’s camera cuts to a close-up of just their lips. This serves a dual purpose. The first is the camera angle we mentioned earlier, the one that highlights both actors. Extremely hard to actually do in camera given how human beings’ faces are constructed, this shot draws the focus directly on the part that matters most to us: the kiss. The second, and more important purpose is that this emphasizes what the characters are going through. When, in real life, we have one of those rare kisses that feel like our hearts are exploding, our brains are going haywire, the world has faded out and you feel like, “this is it, this is one,” isn’t the sum total of your body funneled directly into the space between your lips and the lips of the one you love? That’s what we get here, in this extreme close-up of Jughead and Tabitha.

This is followed by the most important part of the sequence, which is the end. Cutting back to the close-up shot, we see the enchanted Jughead hanging there, stuck at that moment. That’s where he will continue to be until Tabitha comes to get him again. But she’s moving backward. She’s saying goodbye. She pulls away from the kiss, slowly, carefully, savoring the moment, knowing the difficult task she’s about to embark on. She gives one last look at the man she loves and then backs out of the frame. Gone.

There’s more that happens in the episode afterward, and a number of dangling questions when it comes to both characters going forward in the series. Not least of which is: will Westbrook return to Riverdale, and if so, when? But in these scant 45 seconds, we get to see Tabitha and Jughead run the gamut of emotions — love and heartbreak, joy and loss — through the lens of one perfect kiss. Isn’t that what art is? Images that capture the complexity of humanity as simply as possible, channeling something that a clumsy journalist might use over a thousand words to describe when one scene is certainly more than enough? If only there was a simple expression to get that thought across; one about pictures, and a certain amount of words. But alas! There is not.

Regardless, what we are left with is one of the most iconic kisses — not just in Riverdale history, but TV history, period. The Venus de Milo. Liberty Leading the People. These are known as great historical works of art. To their number, we can now add Jughead kissing Tabitha in the Riverdale Season 7 premiere. You hear that, Marie-Laure de Rochebrune, curator of The Louvre? Time to make some space on the walls.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW.