Riverdale Season 7 Ending Explained: What Happened to Betty, Archie, Jughead and Veronica
Lili Reinhart wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Riverdale, but sadly after Riverdale Season 7 and total of 137 episodes ended. In light of the last episode, let’s retrace together how the iconic saga ends in seven seasons. After seven seasons and 137 episodes, Riverdale aired the series finale, titled “Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Seven: Goodbye, Riverdale”, on The CW in the USA. If you’re wondering what happened at the end of the series, and need an explanation of the ending, we’ve got it covered. Before seeing how Riverdale ends and what happens in the finale, let’s quickly summarize what happened throughout the episodes. If, like many of us, you’ve stopped by Season 3 and are wondering what’s been going on in the last few years on this TV series merry-go-round, buckle up.
Riverdale Season 7: The Story Plot
Let’s start by saying that, due to an evil sorcerer in the sixth season, the city of Riverdale was destroyed by a comet. At the last second, however, Tabitha Tate, who can manipulate time and is something of an angel, brought the city inhabitants to 1955, to keep them safe. Plus, the now-teen characters are back in their teens, in their freshman year at Riverdale High. Tabitha then untangled the timelines to try and take the boys back to 2023, erasing everyone’s memories, and gave Jughead a mission. If they could have made Riverdale a better place, then the circumstances leading up to Warlock’s arrival would never have happened.
The exploits of the protagonists worked, in fact in the penultimate episode of the series, Tabitha returns to reveal that they have been able to improve the timeline. However, while the timeline is safe, Tabitha has eliminated all others. This means that the protagonists can never go back to 2023. To try and fix things, the woman offered her friends the chance to remember their past in the future. Jughead and Betty have chosen to remember everything, the good and the bad. Everyone else decided to only remember the good times. As a reminder, the characters watched episodes of Riverdale, inside Riverdale, in the city of Riverdale.
Riverdale Season 7 Ending Explained: Betty’s Last Memories
But how does Riverdale end then? In the series finale, we jump forward 67 years from the last episode. Betty is now 86 and on her deathbed. She is reading an obituary in the newspaper, which we later find out concerns Jughead, who recently died at the age of 84. Betty tells her granddaughter Alice that she would like to visit Riverdale one last time. That night, she is visited by an angelic version of Jughead, dressed like her in the first season of the series. He offers to take her on a day of her choosing, and she decides to come back at the end of senior year when she didn’t go to school because she was sick. For this reason, she never made her friends sign her yearbook and always regretted it. So they flashback to that day, the older Betty getting to revisit high school in her younger body. Over the day, we learn exactly how everyone, but not only, died. We discover that over the past year, with their memories restored, Betty, Jughead, Archie, and Veronica have been in a polyamorous relationship all four of them together.
What Happened to All the Characters?
As for their lives after school, what do we find out about the four protagonists?
Veronica went on to become a Hollywood producer, won two Academy Awards, and was buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Betty attended some of her sneak peeks, but she wished they’d kept in touch more.
Archie moved out West, where he met someone, settled down, and started a family. In addition to his work as a construction worker, he also pursued a hobby of writing. When he died, he was buried in Riverdale next to his father. (He and Betty kissed goodbye before saying goodbye).
Jughead moved to New York City, where he founded Jughead’s Madhouse Magazine, a humor magazine, and never married.
Betty moved to New York and founded She Says Magazine, a feminist and progressive magazine. She has never married and does not regret it, however she has adopted a little girl, named Carla, who gave her a granddaughter, named Alice.
Instead, Cheryl and Toni stayed together and became activists. The two had a son named Dale and both died peacefully at a later date.
Clay went to Columbia, while Kevin attended New York University, after which the two lived together in Harlem. Clay became a professor at Columbia and Kevin started an off-Broadway theater company. We are also told that Kevin died at 82 and Clay a few weeks later on a Central Park bench.
Instead, Polly had twins and led a happy life with her family. We then continue with Fangs, who married Midge and had a daughter, then goes on his summer tour. However, four weeks into the tour, his bus crashed, and he died.
Reggie joined the Kansas State basketball team before playing for the Lakers. He then became a coach at Riverdale High and had two sons, one of whom still runs Mantle Motors.
We discover that Nana Rose has been reincarnated several times, while Pop Tate died in his sleep. In an extended version of the finale, due out Thursday the 24th in the US, it is revealed that Julian enlisted and died in Vietnam, while Frank Andrews and Tom Keller were murdered by a man named Chic.
Moving on to parents, Mrs. Andrews bought a clothing store and then fell in love with a woman named Brooke. The two remained together forever.
Alice on the other hand finally divorced Hal and became a stewardess. She once had to safely land a plane when its pilot had a heart attack. She then married a passenger on that flight and they traveled the world together.
The Final Scene!
After finding out what happened to all the characters, we see Alice take Betty back to Riverdale, where she dies in the back seat of the car as it pulls into Pop’s parking lot. So the younger version of Betty gets out of the car and into Pop’s. It’s the 50s all over again, she’s got her classic ponytail and is dressed much like we met her in Season 1. To welcome her to the club we find Jason Blossom, the boy whose murder started the events of the first season. Inside the diner, all of her friends are waiting for her. Toni and Cheryl are together, Pop Tate works the counter.
There is Reggie and Julian, who are playing pinball. Also featured are Dilton Doiley and Ben Button. Betty greets everyone and then heads over to the armchairs where Archie, Veronica, and Jughead are sitting. Archie hands her a strawberry milkshake, her favorite. Everyone smiles and laughs, while another Jughead is outside, the angel who guided Betty. This Jughead walks away from Pop’s in the dark after an intense closing speech, as we hear the familiar clicking of his typewriter keys. The screen fades to black, and we hear the sound of the typewriter carriage, signaling the end of a story. The iconic Riverdale logo flashes across the screen for the first time this season, but also the last. So, here’s how Riverdale ends.
Riverdale Season 7 Ending Explanation
If you’re looking for an explanation for Riverdale‘s final scene, we dare say it’s something very similar to Lost. The characters have not died for the duration of the last few seasons, but it almost seems that Pop’s, like the church in Lost, is a place where everyone has found each other after death, perhaps the Sweet Hereafter that both Chilling Adventures of Sabrina that Riverdale. It seems that Betty, once she dies, joins her friends in this place to spend eternity with the people who meant the most in her life. Jughead’s narration also remains a matter shrouded in mystery, but we can understand from the ending that he is an omniscient narrator, who is telling the eternal story of Riverdale‘s girls.
The series is over, but Betty, Jughead, Archie, Veronica, and the others are icons, who will live far beyond the story. But who is the angel Jughead in the Riverdale series finale? There are two Jugheads in the final episode, the one inside Pop’s and the narrator outside the club. There have been multiple versions of the character throughout Riverdale, and again the series has provided us with one last twist. We can’t tell you who the Jughead outside the diner is, but he looks like a version of the character who has all the memories of his multiple lives. According to two theories, it could be either the Jughead angel who guided Betty, or the previous Guardian Angel of Riverdale, Raphael. However, it is much more likely that it is Jughead, and that he is the new Guardian Angel of the city. But we may never know the real answer.
Unfortunately, however, the postgraduate period drastically changes the cards on the table. Archie moves to California and becomes a construction worker (as well as an amateur poet), marries, and has children; Veronica works in a film studio and wins two Oscars; Jughead is editor-in-chief of Jughead’s Madhouse and remains single; Cooper self-publishes a book that becomes a worldwide best-seller. Finally, let’s go back to 2023 when Betty’s niece takes the old woman to see Riverdale for the last time. After saying goodbye to the small town, Betty dies peacefully in the back seat of the car. But the end of a chapter often coincides with the beginning of a bigger one: while she arrives in the longed-for afterlife, she finds herself at Pop’s together with all her deceased friends. The series hints that she will be able to have endless fun with all her high school friends.
