The ‘Riverdale’ Finale’s Sneakiest Easter Egg Was That Choni Baby

In the middle of an episode where you got to find out about how every character on Riverdale ultimately dies, there was one sneaky little celebration of life. If you were wondering: yep, that was Vanessa Morgan‘s real-life son River making his acting debut as Toni Topaz (Morgan) and Cheryl Blossom’s (Madelaine Petsch) son in the Riverdale series finale.

In case you’re not extremely online, you might think, “Oh, cute,” and move on. But believe me when I tell you this two-second shot has multiple layers to it. Layers.

Here’s the gist of what’s going down… In the episode, an 86-year-old Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) has sort of traveled back in time to see her friends, one last time. Over the course of her journey with an angelic version of Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse), she also starts to remember how everyone lived the rest of their lives — and died.

That brings us to Cheryl and Toni, who are in the middle of an art show on one of the last days of school. What we discover through Angel Jughead is that they moved to the Oakland Hills, lived together as activists and artists, and as Angel Jughead states, died, “Peacefully. After living full, gorgeous, sexy lives.”

In the middle of this montage we also find out that they had a son named Dale, “named after Riverdale, of course.” And Dale, in the glimpse, is played by Morgan’s son, River.

…and you get it, right? River? Playing Dale? Again, cute, except there’s even more going on there. Morgan has — rightfully — been protective of her son. On an official announcement post about the pregnancy on Instagram, Morgan was pretty clear that she was keeping her kid out of the limelight as long as she could. “On a personal note, I have had the blessing of growing up in the public eye having started my acting career at age 6,” Morgan wrote. “While this has been incredible for me, I am very much looking forward to giving this little guy some room to grow up outside of the public eye, until he tells me otherwise.”

Riverdale wrote her real-life pregnancy into the storyline, but when she gave birth they did not use River on the show, per her wishes. Instead, they used a combo of an actor and a baby doll for what was then Toni’s baby, Anthony.

Back in 2021, Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa explained the decision to Decider. “It is not Vanessa’s real baby,” Aguirre-Sacasa said. “In some scenes, it is a baby, a real live baby. In other scenes, it is a very lifelike doll. We jokingly say that it’s a little bit like that Apple TV show, Servant, with that creepy baby doll. But no, it is not… She’s rightfully so, protective of her child.”

Now that River is a two-year-old, and the show is airing it’s final hour, it’s a sweet little treat to have her IRL son make his acting debut as Morgan says goodbye to a character that has been so beloved over the course of the past six seasons (Toni was introduced in Season 2).

But wait! There’s more! The last little sly joke here is that Morgan did not name River after Riverdale, and has been very specific about that in interviews and on social media. In a since deleted Instagram Story (because they last 24 hours, and this was posted over two years ago and that’s how time works), Morgan said, “Early on in my pregnancy, I was walking the River every day. I knew that was the perfect name for his lil soul.”

So Jughead saying that Dale was of course named after Riverdale is a goofy nod to a question one could venture Morgan has had to answer, and will continue to have to answer, for approximately every five minutes for the rest of her life, clarifying that River was named for a river, and not the show she was on for six seasons. Why she gave him the middle name Mybabysittersavampire, though, will remain a mystery. Just kidding.

There’s one last little (well, big) bit to talk about. The frosting on the cake if you will is that seeing Cheryl and Toni together, with a child, wraps up so many of their storylines over the course of the show, it’s tough to think where to start.

The short version is that when Cheryl and Toni broke up towards the beginning of Season 5, a time jump seven years later found Cheryl as a recluse, and Toni pregnant. It turned out that Fangs Fogarty (Drew Ray Tanner) was the father, originally meaning to raise the kid with Kevin Keller (Casey Cott). Instead, despite Cheryl desperately trying to win back Toni and her baby, Toni married Fangs. Also, they made Cheryl officiate their wedding, which was pretty messed up if you ask me.

Anyway, later on, we — the viewers — found out Cheryl and Toni were immortal soulmates destined for each other, and they found each other again in the 1950s. To see the two of them happily raising a child together, particularly after the show has drilled down on how Cheryl’s family was enormously messed up, and Toni’s parents rejected her for being bisexual, is pretty much the best possible ending you could ask for with the couple.

So there you go! A quick little shot that seemed cute and innocuous that we managed to turn into a nearly 1000 word murder board style connection of quotes and ephemera in order to solve a mystery that nobody asked us to solve. But would you expect anything less from the series finale of Riverdale?