Choni Won ‘Riverdale’

Riverdale is over. The final episode has aired. And with it, we’ve discovered who the endgames are, which couples rode off into the sunset, and which were never destined to be. And though it’s not a contest, one thing is very clear: Choni won Riverdale.

To be clear, the fan-favorite couple of Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) and Toni Topaz (Vanessa Morgan) weren’t the only ones who were left standing as the final credits rolled. Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) and Clay Walker (Karl Walcott) lived long, happy lives together. Fangs Fogarty (Drew Ray Tanner) and Midge Klump (Abby Ross) got married and had a kid, though Fangs died four weeks after graduation in a bus crash. But the other couples went their separate ways as they moved through their lives, essentially ending things after high school.

…Except for Choni, who we’re told died peacefully after living “full, gorgeous, sexy lives.” Who else did it like Choni? Nobody, baby. Nobody.

That’s been a basic truth, though, the entire time the couple has been together — and maybe even before they officially kissed for the first time in Season 2. In fact, you can trace it all back to Petsch petitioning series creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to let Cheryl have a girlfriend as early as Season 1 of The CW series. And then Petsch again putting in the good word when she heard her friend Morgan was auditioning for Toni.

Did they know back then the bomb they’d drop on the TV landscape? The iconic couple they were about to create? Smart money says “yes,” because these two savvy actresses have been their own biggest fans over the past six seasons. They weren’t just the ‘ship captains, constantly reposting fan art, making YouTube videos together, heavily promoting big Choni episodes on Instagram, and talking each other up in interviews and at conventions… They were the shipyard owners, the deck hands, the galley chefs, the whole damn crew. Petsch and Morgan were the ones who steered and guided these two characters that meant so much to so many for over half a decade.

It’s funny to think that when Toni was first introduced, she was initially seen as a threat to the popular relationship between Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Jughead (Cole Sprouse). Perhaps not “ha ha” funny, because the cast and crew, including Morgan, were battered with abuse by so-called fans for sticking Toni between Betty and Jughead. But the goal was never Tughead. The goal was always Choni, though perhaps other than Morgan and Petsch nobody knew it would become the most important relationship on Riverdale. Sorry, every other relationship: it’s finale night, and at finale night time, you tell the truth. Choni, to me, you are perfect.

Things really heated up after the first half of Season 2, when it became clear that Cheryl was confused about her feelings towards girls, and Toni was clearly very into helping Cheryl figure out her sexuality. After a townwide screening of Riverdale producer Greg Berlanti’s Love, Simon (synergy, baby!), Cheryl came to an awakening while sharing milkshakes with Toni at Pop’s. Her mother, as we come to find out, had discovered a younger Cheryl experimenting with her friend Heather, and called her deviant, lashing out at Cheryl and forbidding her from ever seeing the girl again. That’s when Toni spouts one of the most iconic lines in seven seasons of the series.

“Cheryl, I am so sorry,” Toni says. “But you have to know your mother’s wrong. You’re not loveless. You’re not deviant, okay?”

Toni takes Cheryl’s hand, looks her in the eyes, and says, “You’re sensational.”

Did I just watch this scene five times in a row and cry every time? Who is to say? Not I.

Things got worse before they got better as Cheryl was thrown into gay conversion therapy at the local nunnery by her mother. Mounting a desperate rescue, Toni barged into the middle of a conversion film showing while Cheryl sobs in the back of the room, thinking she’s been essentially left to rot. Instead, Toni pulls her to the front of the room, into the light of the projector, and in a sequence gorgeously lit and shot by director Alexis O. Korycinski, the two kiss for the first time. There have been excellent kisses on the show before, and excellent kisses since, but when we create a monument to Great Kisses On Television, Choni’s first kiss in the Sisters of Quiet Mercy will be smack dab in the middle of the arch of this new Sistine Chapel. Right where god and Adam are touching their little fingers together in the other, less important Sistine Chapel? Cheryl and Toni will be smacking lips.

From there, Morgan and Petsch continued to change the show, using the importance of Choni to the series and its fans to push the envelope. While things got rocky for the couple in Season 3, a midseason hook-up in the show’s fiftieth episode was supposed to be a relatively play-by-the-numbers sex scene, before the couple broke up. Only Morgan and Petsch, working with director Gabriel Correa, decided to see how far they could go with an LGBTQ+ love scene on broadcast TV. The importance of this in terms of representation can’t be understated. It’s not just about titillation, it was about how the heterosexual characters on the show regularly got these sorts of scenes. Why not the lesbian and bisexual characters, as well?

The scene in question is a jaw-dropper and really did set the tone for how far Riverdale could go. But equally as strong were scenes like those in the next episode, where the on-the-rocks Choni sang a stunning duet as part of the show’s annual musical episode; or comedy scenes like an insane storyline in Season 4 where Cheryl was living with her brother’s corpse and talking to a sailor doll she thought was inhabited by her other brother’s ghost. Riverdale ran the gamut of tones, both through genre and emotion, and no relationship ran with them more than Cheryl and Toni’s.

Then, the dark times. Thanks to high school graduation and a time jump, Cheryl and Toni broke up, for real this time. Vanessa Morgan became pregnant in real life, and the show wrote that pregnancy into the story, with Toni eventually marrying her baby’s father Fangs Fogarty (Drew Ray Tanner) — even getting Cheryl to officiate the wedding. Magnanimous of Cheryl, uncomfortable to watch for everyone else.

Whether through the repeated protests of arguably the entire Riverdale fanbase, or by design, early in Season 6 it became clear that not only were Cheryl and Toni destined to be together, but they were literally immortal soulmates. A time-hopping episode during the show’s supernaturally themed “Rivervale” event showed how Abigail Blossom (also Petsch) had loved Thomasina Topaz (Morgan) through multiple lifetimes — and those themes and ideas reverberated through the rest of the season as Cheryl embraced magic, and a body switch led to a night of torrid love-making for Abigail and Thomasina, in Cheryl and Toni’s bodies. For Cheryl, this was a dream come true. For the married Toni, unclear exactly how she felt about the whole thing, but savvy viewers knew what was up. And to put a point on it, in the final episode of the season, which found Cheryl going toe-to-toe with a comet about to destroy the town, a closing musical number brought together the inhabitants of Riverdale with their loved ones. While Cheryl was alone and Toni was with Fangs and her baby, Anthony, who was now a full-grown adult, it was clear during the number that Toni and Cheryl were singing to each other — a fact the director of the episode (once again Correa) later confirmed.

Pretty much from the opening moments of the final season, which sent the cast back to the 1950s, and their teen years, one thing was clear: Choni was going to be endgame. While there were question marks around other ships, and the very real homophobia of the ’50s to deal with, based on this rebooted Toni immediately gunning for the once-again in-the-closet Cheryl, it was obvious where things were headed.

That doesn’t mean the journey toward Choni endgame wasn’t thrilling to watch. It was, and even more so by how these “new” versions of Cheryl and Toni dug into the core theme of the season… Freed from the arch, gothic trappings of the first six seasons, how could they become more fully realized, actual people? For Cheryl and Toni, that meant addressing the long-standing imbalance of power that in earlier seasons led to Cheryl going hog wild while Toni rolled her eyes and sighed, “Babe.” And as the two grew closer together, that’s exactly what we got: actual discussions about their issues, actual solutions, and ultimately the realization that between Toni’s photography and Cheryl’s painting, the two could make a life together with art and love.

How special is that? To have two LGBTQ+ TV characters able to live the entirety of their lives through happiness and art; to have a child together; to go through multiple lifetimes of trauma, only to come out on top?

Add in that for the most part, the Choni fanbase was drama-free. There was angst, of course, and hand-wringing during the dark years. There were also often appropriate amounts of championing of the couple, and Vanessa Morgan in particular when the stories leaned too far in Cheryl’s direction, making Toni more of a prop than a character. But even that is something that, after Morgan and fans spoke out, the show worked to rectify. Your mileage may vary, but ultimately we ended with a satisfying place for Toni and Cheryl separately, as well as together. What more could you ask for?

So all apologies to the other major ships on the show. You tried hard. You put in the effort. But ultimately, you did not go the distance. Choni, though? Choni won Riverdale. Congrats to the fans, and most of all congrats to Petsch and Morgan, who are hopefully taking a victory lap right now. They’re not loveless. They’re not deviant. They’re sensational.