‘Riverdale’ Was Always A Show About Death

In some ways, it’s tough to square up the first six seasons of The CW’s Riverdale, which ended its run last night (August 23), with the final season of the show. The bulk of the series followed dark, brooding versions of the classic Archie Comics characters. Season 7 thrust them to the 1950s for a sunnier, relatively more realistic take on the comics that barely touched on weird mysteries in favor of real-life issues like homophobia, racism, and sexual repression.

But then came last night’s finale, which reframed and brought into focus what the show has always, not so subtly been about… Confronting your own mortality. To steal a phrase from Beetlejuice in the musical of his own name: Welcome to a show about death.

Written and directed by showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, “Goodbye, Riverdale” follows an 84-year-old Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) as she returns to high school one last time, thanks to the machinations of an angelic version of Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse). Over the course of the episode, Betty reunites with her friends and says goodbye. As her foggy old lady memories start to return, we the viewers discover the final fate of all of the characters we’ve watched for the past seven seasons. Archie moves to California and lives a happy life with a family we never get to meet. Jughead becomes a successful humor magazine publisher. Veronica essentially takes over Hollywood. And Betty also becomes a magazine publisher; and though she never marries, she tells Jughead her greatest legacy is her family. Then she dies “for real” in the back seat of her granddaughter’s car. The episode ends with a once-again young Betty joining the whole cast in Pop’s Diner in The Sweet Hereafter, the show’s version of Heaven. It’s a neat way of giving the characters a happy ending of sorts together, while also showing the platonic ideal of how they appear in the comics. Or as Angel Jughead states in his closing monologue, “We’ll leave them here, I think. Where they’re forever Juniors. Forever seventeen.”

The bulk of the episode, on the surface, seems to be tying up the plot and emotional arcs of Season 7. Hang in there for a second if you tuned away from the show, but after some shenanigans involving a sorcerer in Season 6, the cast was thrust back to the 1950s, their memories wiped. They spent the bulk of this season growing up — again — as Juniors in high school; only this time more concerned with hot-button issues than whether they were all about to get murdered. Even the one murder plot in the season was mostly a non-starter… A few people died thanks to a killer milkman, but the storyline only popped up its head every three or four episodes and was wrapped up quickly with a classic Riverdale-style reveal that Cheryl Blossom’s (Madelaine Petsch) parents were Russian spies using the milkman as their hitman.

In the season’s penultimate episode, the gang got their memories back, but discovered they were trapped in the 1950s forever; or rather, wouldn’t be going back to 2023, and needed to live out their lives in normal, chronological order. That brings us to the finale where these people who lived two lifetimes now reach the final conclusion of their story. A poetry roast by Archie Andrews (KJ Apa) at Cheryl’s house touches on some of the show’s wilder plotlines; and in a discussion between Betty, Jughead (non-angel version), Archie, and Veronica (Camila Mendes) we get some pointed remarks about going through high school twice with”you yahoos.” But wither the return of villains like the Gargoyle King or Black Hood? What about tying up the dangling plots from the previous seasons, like those floating babies?

The reason, I’d venture, that didn’t happen is that the murder was never the point. It was a vehicle to sneak Riverdale in the door at The CW, to grab those headlines with shock and awe. Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines), a classic Archie Comics character, murdered in the pilot? Archie has sex? The characters talk like they’re halfway between a Tarantino movie and a classic CW soap? All of these elements are there on the surface, but it’s clear now that we’re past the finale, that were surface level only.

The murder of Jason Blossom in the first episode of Riverdale, we’re repeatedly told, was a loss of innocence moment for The Town With Pep. In particular, it was a moment where the teens realized for the first time they were in danger. And plenty of them did die over the course of six seasons, often in horrific ways: crucified on the back of the Riverdale High stage; shot in the head; having their heart torn out; killed by a bear; and so many, many more. But the important part to take away here is that these were 16/17-year-olds realizing for the first time that they were mortal.

When you’re a kid, you think you’re going to live forever. But for all of us, whether it’s watching a friend or relative die, or just the growing awareness of the realities of our world, realize eventually that life isn’t permanent. Death is the only constant. For the characters of Riverdale, Jason dying was that moment — and it was terrifying. They spent six seasons of this show running away from death, desperately trying to stay alive as a cadre of villains hunted them down in various ways. They fought back. They persevered. And eventually… They lost. We’re told that while the gang made a valiant effort to destroy a comet headed for Riverdale sent by that Season 6 sorcerer, they failed. Seconds before destruction, they were thrust back to the 1950s for safety and given one seemingly simple, but ultimately complex mission: bend towards justice. Make the world a better place. Improve their own lives, and the lives of everyone around them so that their town isn’t the sort of place where an evil sorcerer can thrive in darkness.

…And that’s what they do. They improve the world, and themselves, and ultimately after two go-arounds on Planet Earth (for the most part) live long, happy lives. That’s the crux of what happens here. We don’t see any of these characters begging not to go, making bargains in their final moments before death takes them. They live long, happy lives and pass away peacefully. Happily, even, or at the very least, content.

That’s how the finale ties back to the previous seasons and pays off on what Riverdale was really about: taking these characters from teens on the cusp of adulthood, terrified of dying; to adults twice over, fully actualized human beings who are prepared for the eventuality of leaving this mortal coil. It wasn’t about the relationships, which is why with few exceptions the characters don’t end up together. It wasn’t about the mysteries, which is why the final season mostly ignored them. Riverdale was about the ephemeral transience of human existence. The rest of that — the sex, the murder, the over-the-top musical numbers — were just ways of getting butts in the seats while the series wove a far more profound story about how you can achieve fulfillment in the face of imminent annihilation, in 137 easy steps.

The entire moral of not just the finale, but Riverdale itself is summed up neatly in a scene that was deleted from the broadcast version of the episode but shows up in the extended version which is streaming now. In it, a sobbing Betty doesn’t want to go into Cheryl’s house for a party because she knows this is the last time she’ll ever see her friends.

Angel Jughead calmly looks at her, and says the following:

“That’s life, Betty. You say hello. You walk alongside someone for a while. You say goodbye. That’s the arc of a life, isn’t it? Every minute counts.”

Look at the simplicity of that. It isn’t this angelic Jughead boiling down human existence so much as driving home that saying goodbye isn’t scary; it’s part of the process. It’s given equal weight with saying hello, and existing. We’re born. We live. We die. That’s the whole of it. That’s the arc of a life.

And you can extend this idea and place it on the arc of a TV show, as well, couldn’t you? There was a point back in Season 6 when Aguirre-Sacasa thought Riverdale could possibly continue for a much longer time.

“We’re still in the midst of writing and producing Season 6,” Aguirre-Sacasa told Decider back in March of 2022. “Things have only started! There’s so much more to come. There’s still juice in the tank, as far as I’m concerned, at least. As long as the show remains meaningful to people, and people are invested in it, there’s definitely, definitely, definitely gas in the tank.”

Two months later, The CW announced the series was ending. Perhaps a shock to Aguirre-Sacasa, perhaps not. But the showrunner and his company were given 20 episodes to wrap up the story and reflect on the journey they had all been on together for the past seven years of their lives. With plenty of runway, it’s hard not to think there’s a metatextual interpretation of that Jughead speech as well. Riverdale said “hello” in its first episode. We walked alongside it for 137 episodes, over the course of seven seasons. And last night, we said goodbye.

Endings are inevitable, but they don’t have to be terrifying, Riverdale tells us. They always come no matter how hard you try to stave them off. They are, just like beginnings, which you also can’t control. They exist. They happen. It’s what you do in the middle that’s important. And every minute counts.