I was a junior in college when the first episode of Riverdale released. Strange, mysterious, dark, and so unlike its progenitor’s “wholesome, inoffensive” aesthetic and tone, I couldn’t turn away. I was enthralled with the ongoing adventures of these kooky teens and the mystery of who killed Jason Blossom. Sexy Archie, as it became known, quickly became appointment TV. I rarely went a full week without watching the latest episode. In fact, I think this finale may be the only episode I did not watch before the next episode aired and because it’s the finale, not even that’s true.
To be fair, I have been reviewing the show for the majority of its run, beginning with my three-part, season 2 fill-in coverage for our previous reviewer Ken Godberson III before taking over in full on Chapter 26, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” I will not comment on whether that is a confession as to where Ken went.
The point remains. Riverdale has been with me, week after week, year after year, for nearly seven glorious, sometimes frustrating, years. Now it’s time to say goodbye in the most Riverdale of ways possible: with a good ol’ fashioned riff on It’s a Wonderful Life.
As always, spoilers ahead.
1. The Years Start Coming and They Don’t Stop Coming
I’m very happy they chose to not have Mädchen Amick nor Lili Reinhart play Old Woman Betty or her granddaughter. It may have been a nice nod to Riverdale’s use of the younger generation playing the older generation in flashbacks but by giving us wholly new faces, it sells the passage of time and further reinforces the season’s themes. Plus, it’s always weird when they just gray-up someone’s hair and then say “OK. You’re old now.”
I was shocked we only got one glimpse at an older version of the characters. I was fully convinced we’d end up getting at least versions of Archie, Veronica & Jughead. I mean, we kind of did but Jughead with sideburns doesn’t really count. It was a great look, though. Love me some good ‘burns.
Facial hair aside, beyond a few glimpses into their futures in the 60s-70s, that’s our lot. Snippets and flashes. We don’t know any of that at the beginning, of course. Just that Betty is the final survivor of the Riverdalians sent back in time, now elderly and reminiscing about the town she left long ago. One would expect us to take a visit through the town as it is now and use that as a springboard for exploring the past but no. This is Riverdale. Things have to be at least a little funky.
2. Didn’t Make Sense Not to Live For Fun
You all don’t know how happy I was to see Narrator Jughead sitting in that chair in Betty’s room. I nearly squealed. The best thing to come out of Rivervale, he’s here to escort Betty (and us) through one final day long-past. His presence is a soothing throughline, creating a true sense of completion. I’m really fighting hard not to dive straight into my observations about Betty’s reactions as she agrees and inhabits her former self’s now-mumps-less body. I will resist. Let’s talk conceit instead.
Instead of purely revisiting “Graduation” and reworking it into the season finale it was always meant to be, “Goodbye, Riverdale” uses the supernatural elements of season 6 to craft a framework by which Riverdale can have its cake and eat it too. We not only say goodbye to the characters as we knew them here, just as we said goodbye to the characters as we knew them pre-comet last time, we hear the arc of their lives. We’re finally given the final chapter of the book, full of closure and reflection.
This gave Lili Reinhart the opportunity to do my favorite thing actors can do: pretending to be someone else. In this case, that someone else is the older version of Betty trying to be the younger version. You can feel it in every word, every mannerism. There’s not a lot of attention brought to it but I thought it was fun.
By doing all this, “Goodbye, Riverdale” is changed from being just another Riverdale episode to something special. It’s less beholden to the trappings and structures of a typical episode and doesn’t have to be as concerned with placing us alongside these characters.
We only have to be alongside the one.
3. I Could Use a Little Fuel Myself
I know I’m going to struggle with the rest of this review. Everything I have to say could fit into one or two very long thoughts, or 20 micro thoughts. It’s a shockingly straightforward episode and yet densely packed.
The events of Graduation Day are exactly as you would expect. Bittersweet, still kinda kooky, and infused with meaning. There’s a palpable sense of finality in the air that becomes harder and harder to escape, initially papered over by the joy of shared bonds and the promises of the future. Each of the characters talk about, or struggle with, their plans for after graduation, recount for us a few of the developments that senior year brought, and display the culmination of their work during that year.
Structurally however, it’s entirely focused on Betty, leading to a single A-plot. OK. There’s technically two plots but they’re related. The first is Betty experiencing one last day in the past, dipping her toes into all the events above that would have been B, C, D, plots in a regular episode, and the second is her finding out about the futures of each of the characters, the former always directly informing the latter. There’s no big problem to solve, no interconnecting bastions of intrigue or character arcs to resolve. Just a series of check-ins set against the backdrop of an ending.
Of course, this being Riverdale, we still get plenty of great moments. Cheryl & Toni’s Beefcake Meets Cheesecake painting show was beautiful, Archie’s poems poking fun at all the batshit nonsense they went through in their “prior lives” and thus the show’s past was a joy, and finding out that Betty ended up in a quad with Veronica, Archie, and Jughead was the perfect way to solve their tangle of confusion in a queer, affirming manner. Take THAT love triangles.
4. My World’s on Fire, How About Yours?
All that graduation stuff is well and good but the real meat of “Goodbye, Riverdale” is the future stuff. Finding out what happens to the characters is such an interesting process because for some of them, Betty clearly knows and for others, she’s learning about them through Narrator Jughead. In every case though, Aguirre-Sacasa goes right for the jugular, be it to warm the heart or wet the eyes.
Toni & Cheryl, Clay & Kevin, and Molly Andrews & Bette all get the happy endings they deserved with each other and were denied repeatedly for no good reasons throughout the previous seasons. We already saw Ethel ride off into the sunset so no need for her to resurface. Veronica becomes a studio mogul, Jughead the founder of “Madhouse Magazine,” fully turning into the Al Jaffe parallel he was, and Reggie becomes a high school basketball coach after a few years in the majors. Of course Nana Blossom gets reincarnated a number of times too.
But it’s not all happiness. Polly has a family but has to give up her career as Polly Amorous. Fangs dies in a bus accident while on his first major tour. Julian dies in Vietnam while Frank & Sheriff Keller are killed by Chic (blessedly his only mention.) And to top it off, Pop had died in between their junior and senior year.
Contrary to what you might think, this was a good move. Life is more than positive outcomes. It is tragedy and loss as well as love and success. Nowhere is this more apparent than in what happens to Archie.
You’d think, from the set-up at the start, that Archie & Betty would have ended up together, that after Veronica left for Tinseltown and Jughead to the Big Apple, the boy and the girl next door would settle down and start their family. As it turns out, graduation day is the last time Betty would see Archie. He finds a new family out on the west coast, after letting his feet take him a’wanderin’ out thataway.
Continued belowTo say I was a sobbing mess through that scene would be an understatement.
In fact, I was blubbering through most of “Goodbye, Riverdale.” There was something to the structure and tone that predisposed me to waterworks, brought home by Lili Reinhart’s acting and Sacasa’s scripting & directing. The first moment that really got me is when Jughead was recounting what happened to Betty’s mom. She eventually lived her dream of seeing the world after landing an out of control plane and meeting a rich man. Betty remembered receiving postcards from her wherever she would go “until one day the postcards…stopped.”
The other moment that really got me was when Betty is going to Cheryl’s afterparty and is terrified of going in. She knows that this is the last time they would all be together. She knows and the weight of that, of having to say goodbye AGAIN, only this time with the knowledge of its finality, is crushing her.
And wouldn’t it crush you too?
5. Somebody Once Told Me
Betty’s struggle here is born not only from her knowledge but also from nostalgia. Remember, she began the episode by looking back on a time she called “perfect,” discovering a screaming yearning within her that only grew more anxious the longer she spent in the past. Of course, the past isn’t quite as she remembered it. There is hardship and difficulty she had forgotten just as there are moments of joy she’s missed.
There’s a reason high school holds such a special place in the popular American imagination. It’s a shared experience, sometimes the last shared experience, of a time before one “became an adult.” It is an easy period to romanticize, yet it is also often with good reason, as once one graduates, the close bonds forged through daily proximity evaporate and it is only upon looking back that you realize what was lost.
This happens to Betty as she visits everyone. She cries not because she knows she doesn’t really see Veronica again after the move but because she realizes she never made the effort to truly stay connected. Once they all began living their lives, the connections they shared, once so strong, snapped like a thread.
Betty’s journey is a proxy for our own relationship to Riverdale.…or at least my own. As I said at the top, Riverdale was one of the few shows I had as appointment viewing. I have been close to this show for a long, long time and it’s hard to let it go. For as much grousing as I’ve done, I, like Betty, wish I could remain for longer in the town with pep.
It’s weird to realize this, to wish I wouldn’t have to say goodbye, knowing that no more is to come, and all that remains is memories of a time together. Yes, all things must come to an end, something Betty learns and so must we. Yet it is hard all the same, made easier by knowing this was the ending the show needed: slow, reflective, and with just the right level of self-awareness to remain true to what the show actually was, helped along by its extended length, with scenes that apparently couldn’t make it to the original broadcast.
In a season built on confronting nostalgia, redemption for past mistakes by the creators, a reimagining of the reimagination, and a celebration of the good, the bad and the Riverdale, its fitting that the finale was all those things and more, finally closing on a rendition of “Goodnight Moon” rewritten for Riverdale, played over empty sets, before Betty is escorted to the Sweet Hereafter with a final coda from Narrator Jughead.
No longer will I be able to say hello to the Riverdale crew and laugh at their latest misadventures. No longer will I be wondering what new spore of madness awaits me at the end of each episode. No longer will I write these reviews, dissecting and discussing what I just watched for you all.
So goodbye will-theys, goodbye wont-theys. Goodbye palladium and the mines they came from.
Goodbye drug rings, goodbye jingle jangle. Goodbye fizzle rocks and rocket ship cult leaders.
Continued belowGoodbye serial killer genes, goodbye sadistic preppies. Goodbye windows and the teachers that jump out of them.
Goodbye yearly musicals, goodbye horror vignettes. Goodbye cheezy cronch trianglesTM and mobster fathers.
Goodbye bears, goodbye “Mothmen.” Goodbye murdered siblings and the best fathers gone to soon.
Goodbye epic highs, goodbye epic lows. Goodbye weirdo hats and even weirder outfits.
Goodbye football, goodbye basketball. Goodbye all that made you special Riverdale.
And thank you all.
Good Night Riverdale.
Good Night.
Best Line of the Night:
Narrator Jughead: “You say hello. You walk alongside them for a while. Then you say goodbye. That’s the arc of a life.”
