If You Gave Up on Riverdale but Still Want to Know If Its Ending Is Completely Bananas, You Won’t Be Disappointed

This article contains spoilers for “Goodbye, Riverdale,” the final episode of Riverdale.

Riverdale, the CW’s soapy teen adaptation of the Archie Comics, finally came to an end on Wednesday after seven seasons and 137 episodes about murderers, cults, whodunits, and superpowers. When the show began, the main crew were bright-eyed high school sophomores who were getting entangled in love triangles when they weren’t busy solving the small-town murder of teen Jason Blossom. But afterward, the hit show that once enraptured massive audiences in earnest took a few too many narrative risks, eventually driving away almost all but the most dedicated of TV completists and ironic watchers.

For everyone else who just wants to know how this roller coaster of a show ends: We’ve got you covered. In Riverdale’s final season, due to a mixture of natural and supernatural circumstances, our ensemble are sent back to 1955 as high school juniors, with their memories of the past seasons’ events erased (but later restored). In the finale, 67 years have passed, and we’re back in the present day. Upon Jughead’s recent death, an 86-year-old Betty is the last of her friends living, and wants to remember her glory days, clearly suffering from memory loss. In a surprisingly touching and straightforward finale, the spirit of young Jughead visits Betty and brings her back to the last time everyone was together, then walks her through the final fates of her friends. Below, a comparison between Riverdale’s main characters’ humble beginnings and how they meet their ends as elderly people in 2023.

How It Started
Riverdale’s main lead, Archie (KJ Apa), is the quintessential teen jock when we meet him in Season 1. He’s a talented football player who bulked up from helping out with his father’s construction company over the summer, and has secret dreams of becoming a singer-songwriter. However, he’s not that normal: He’s been having a summer-long affair with his music teacher, Ms. Grundy. After that absolute train wreck of a relationship, early Archie romantically links with Veronica.

How It Ended
A lot has happened between the first and final seasons; if you want any indication of just how much, just know that Archie learns in the penultimate episode—when the 1955 version of our pals get their 2023 memories back—that he has been “a boxer, prisoner, football player, [and] soldier.” But in the 1955 timeline, the main sport at Riverdale High is basketball, not football, with all its epic highs and lows, and Archie is a valuable player who becomes team captain and dates around until finally going steady with Betty. He also harbors dreams of becoming a famous poet, particularly a Beat poet like Jack Kerouac. In the end, he moves to California to build highways and write. He settles down in Modesto after meeting an unnamed woman, starting a family and becoming a professional construction worker and amateur writer. He asks to be buried in Riverdale next to his father.

How It Started
We’re introduced to Betty (Lili Reinhart) as the typical girl next door. She’s fresh off of a writing internship where she organized a book-release party for her favorite author, Toni Morrison. Betty is dealing with a lot: Her mother is incredibly overbearing, her sister was recently sent away to a group home, and she harbors unrequited feelings for Archie. She becomes besties with the new girl, Veronica, who convinces her to join the cheerleading squad, known as the River Vixens. Betty also revives the school paper, the Blue & Gold, and becomes interested in solving the murder of Jason Blossom. She falls in love with Jughead, who becomes her partner in sleuthing.

How It Ended
After several seasons of capers beyond comprehension—Archie’s final-episode poem about his friends’ “wild endeavors” includes this ode to Betty: “I grew up next door to Betty Cooper/ Who everyone thinks is super-duper/ Just don’t mutter the word ‘tangerine’/ Because it sets off her serial-killer gene”—in 1955, Betty is a dedicated writer who still runs the Blue & Gold and is focused on feminism, progressive ideas, and sexual liberation. She creates an underground feminist magazine, the Teenage Mystique, which we find out later inspires her bestselling self-published novel. She’s dating Archie, but Riverdale drops the bomb that, after regaining their memories of the modern timeline in which the couples were swapped, Betty, Archie, Veronica, and Jughead decide to become a sexual foursome. (Veronica and Betty are apparently open with each other’s bodies, as well, but no mention of the boys’ getting cozy with just each other.) We find out that during her life, Betty makes a successful advice column, “Betty’s Diary,” and freelances and protests in New York. This is where she would go on to create the magazine She Says, a “go-to source for feminist and progressive causes, exposing hard truths,” which is still being published after her retirement. She doesn’t marry, instead choosing to adopt a daughter.

How It Started
Veronica (Camila Mendes) arrives as a newcomer to Riverdale from New York, where her father was recently imprisoned for fraud and embezzlement. As she tries to turn over a new leaf as a retired mean girl, Veronica immediately captures the attention of Archie, and vice versa. She lives in the swanky Pembrooke apartments with her mother Hermione, becomes a Vixen with Betty, and joins Josie and the Pussycats as a singer.

How It Ended
The ’50s version of Veronica is a new student from Los Angeles, where her parents live as the stars of America’s top-rated television program, Oh Mija. She has a flair for entrepreneurship that has been carried over from her life pre–time travel. (Archie’s poem about her is: “Veronica Lodge, always in pearls/ There isn’t a business you haven’t given a whirl/ Funny to think you were never prom queen/ Then again, you were once upon a time a human dialysis machine.” OK!) Her business venture in this timeline is owning a movie theater, which she buys by trading an original Edward Hopper painting. She’s dating fellow movie- and book-lover Jughead. We learn that, after high school, she moves back to Hollywood to become a studio executive, first starting in the summer as an assistant and eventually running the place in a few years. Known for her “impeccable taste” and for taking gambles on young, raw talent, she wins two Oscars and produces some of “the most iconic films of our time.”

How It Started
Riverdale begins with the voice of Jughead (Cole Sprouse) as he narrates the goings-on of Riverdale. In Season 1, he’s writing a novel about Jason Blossom’s death, which he tries to solve with Betty, who recruits him to write for the Blue & Gold. Jughead is the opposite of his former best friend Archie (they quickly reconcile): He’s the kid from the “wrong side of the tracks,” the estranged son of a gang leader—which leads to him living at the Twilight Drive-In, where he works—and a self-professed “weirdo.”

How It Ended
After adventures that apparently included teachercide (per Archie: “Jughead Jones needs no intro/ He made his teacher jump out a window/ Thinks himself a private eye/ Chained himself to Southside High”), Jughead’s main goal in the ’50s is to write and publish comics, which he does as an apprentice at Pep Comics, his favorite publisher (and the real-life originator of the Archie Comics). He starts up a relationship with Veronica, who helps him solve crime. In a wink to the audience, he comes up with comic ideas like Sabrina the Teenage Witch. In the end, he becomes a prolific editor of Jughead’s Madhouse Magazine, which becomes an institution, despite publishing what Jughead calls “juvenile satire, at best.” He never marries, and dies at 84.

How It Started
Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch) is the HBIC of Riverdale High, the rich heiress to a maple syrup fortune, and the leader of the River Vixens. However, she also starts off in Riverdale as its most tragic character, as the premiere season details the murder of her beloved twin brother, Jason.

How It Ended
After her tragic beginnings, Cheryl goes on to date Toni and get into a whole bunch of witchy hijinks; Archie’s line for her goes: “Cheryl Blossom, you’re as rich as a Rockefeller/ You also kept your beloved Jason down in a cellar/ But I’m glad to see you and the Serpent Queen back together,” which suggests an attachment style that is not the healthiest. In 1955, Cheryl is a talented painter who is still with Toni, though their relationship is kept under wraps for fear of homophobia. She ends up having an incredible career, and her work is shown in galleries and museums across the country. She moves out west with Toni, where they settle in the Oakland Hills in a Craftsman house and live as artists and activists. They have a son, Dale, named after Riverdale, and they pass “peacefully, after living full, gorgeous, sexy lives.”

How It Started
Toni (Vanessa Morgan) comes into the show in Season 2, but becomes an essential character. When we first meet her, she’s a member of the Southside Serpents gang who serves as Jughead’s primary guide when he’s forced to transfer to Southside High. When Jughead starts up their school paper (the Red & Black), he recruits Toni as a photographer, knowing that she cares about social issues. Upon the closing of Southside High, Toni transfers to Riverdale High, where she becomes Cheryl Blossom’s partner and future Serpent Queen.

How It Ended
In the ’50s, Toni is an activist who, after returning from Emmett Till’s funeral in Mississippi (yes, you read that correctly), tries to tell his story in the Blue & Gold. She meets pushback from the principal; this inspires her to create the Black Athena literary club for Black students, which eventually becomes a literary magazine. Toni also acts as senior class president. She goes on to settle down with Cheryl and continues to fight for social justice throughout her life.

How It Started
Kevin (Casey Cott) begins in the recurring role of Betty’s gay best friend. It’s Kevin who discovers Jason Blossom’s body as he’s having a tryst with football player Moose by the river. He’s also the son of the local sheriff and a talented musical director.

How It Ended
After getting upgraded to series regular, Kevin gets richer storylines, including a critically commended gay cruising plotline that Archie references in his poem about the songbird: “Kevin’s voice is so beautiful he belongs in a chorus/ But he spends his time cruising Fox Forest.” In 1955, Kevin is initially closeted, dating Betty and subsequently assuming a few different beards while he secretly settles down with his partner, Clay. He eventually comes out and moves with Clay to Harlem, where he studies theater writing at NYU. He runs an off-Broadway theater company and stays with Clay for the rest of his life, until he dies in his sleep at the age of 82. Clay dies weeks later.

How It Started
Reggie (played by Ross Butler in Season 1 and Charles Melton after that) is captain of the football team, a classic bullying jock, and a frenemy to Archie Andrews.

How It Ended
Reggie lives many lives (enough for two actors, you could say) and holds various jobs over the seasons, including as a drug dealer, running his family’s used car dealership, working at Veronica’s nightclub—and becoming romantically involved with her—and running errands for Veronica’s criminal father. Archie’s line for Reggie is: “Mantle the magnificent/ Pound for pound, you’re my closest equivalent/ But there’s that other Reggie, so how do we know you’re even legitimate?/ I’m gonna need to see some kind of birth certificate”—a reference to the time the show cheekily brings Ross Butler back as “Reggie Prime” as a result of the parallel universes. Meanwhile, in the ’50s, Reggie comes into Riverdale as a basketball recruit from Duck Creek, where his family owns and operates a farm. He is taken in by Archie’s family and they become close friends. Throughout the final season, he remains focused on basketball and winds up playing for Kansas State before getting drafted to the Lakers. In the off-season, he works on the family farm until his parents die. He sells the farm and moves back to Riverdale, becoming the basketball coach at Riverdale High. He is eventually buried next to his wife and parents in Duck Creek, leaving behind two sons who run Mantle Motors.