Winter Watchlist Warmers - Riverdale - Season Seven/Series Finale

Riverdale has now ended after 137 episodes, seven seasons, multiple random AF storylines, the teen drama is now officially RIP.

Mocked from season two onwards, at times this has been a tough watch. With Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead Jones getting up to god knows what.

It marks one of the final The CW series airing out a long run. When the writers strike a handful of original runs will air on The CW, however nothing like peak CW with all the Arrowverse shows, Riverdale, Nancy Drew and Dynasty.

The series starred NZ hottie KJ Apa (Archie Andrews) Lili Reinhart (Betty Cooper), Camila Mendes (Veronica Lodge), plus Cole Sprouse (Jughead Jones).

Last March, the series was renewed for a seventh and final season, which streamed in Australia (weekly) on Netflix between late March 29 and last night. Big finale night last night, this morning. And Just Like That... Season Two and the series finale of Nancy Drew! So how'd the series conclude? Well the ratings weren't great! However SPOILERS BELOW! Yes this season the team went back in time? I know right!

In the present day, Betty, now 84, reads Jughead's obituary, and tells her granddaughter Alice that she wants to go back to Riverdale one last time. That night, she wakes up to see teenage Jughead, who offers to transport her back to the last day of senior year. 

She finds that Mary bought her own dress shop and married Brooke, Alice divorced Hal, became a stewardess and later a pilot, and remarried, travelling the world, while Polly gave birth to Juniper and Dagwood and lived a long happy life, but retired from burlesque dancing. 

At school, she discovers Toni became class president, and Fangs and Midge married after one of his songs became a hit single, but Fangs died after his tour bus crashed, though the money from his songs took care of Midge and their daughter indefinitely. 

She finds Kevin studied musical theater writing at NYU, and Clay literature at Columbia, and they lived together in Harlem, with Clay eventually becoming a professor and Kevin starting a theater company, and died at 82 within a few weeks of each other. 

She also finds that she, Archie, Jughead and Veronica are in a polyamorous relationship. Reggie is revealed to have played for Kansas State, joined the Lakers, and worked at his family's farm until his parents died, after which he sold the land and became the basketball coach at Riverdale High, and had two sons who run the used car dealership. 

At the Babylonium, she finds Veronica moved to Los Angeles and ran a film studio, winning two Oscars, eventually buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery. 

At the Dark Room, she discovers Cheryl and Toni moved out west, lived as artists and activists, had a son named after Riverdale and passed away peacefully, while Julian enlisted and died in Vietnam, Mr. Weatherbee and Mrs. Thornton eventually married, and Frank and Tom were killed by Chic. 

At Thornhill, Archie reads the group a poem commemorating their time together, and at the end of the night, proposes that he and Betty may end up together, but she reveals he settles in Modesto, has a family, becomes a construction worker and writer and is buried in Riverdale next to his father. 

Before leaving Riverdale, she visits Pop Tate's grave, as he died the beginning of their senior year. She reveals Jughead was the editor of a successful comic, Jughead's Madhouse Magazine, and that she was editor of several successful magazines, and never married, but adopted a daughter. 

She returns to the present, and returns to Riverdale, now a ghost town, dying peacefully outside Pop's. 

In the Sweet Hereafter, Teenage Betty exits the car and walks into a functional Pop's, greeting her high school friends and sitting in a booth with Archie, Veronica and Jughead. Outside, Jughead gives closure to the series and notes that the gang will stay together, forever seventeen and happy, in the afterlife.

So the ending was much better than the lame ass 50's episodes previously. All 19 of them. I cannot believer they dragged out this season to 20 episodes. Something we will not see in the 2023-2024 network TV season, well that is if there is one!

Riverdale has tried to be cutting edge, dip into musical Glee moments whilst also being something to everyone. In the end the audience was so low it was almost nothing to nobody. It had a good first couple of seasons, however the constant genre bending, Sabrina popping by after her series was cancelled by Netflix.

I enjoyed seeing a ripped Archie shirtless, however the plot lines to lead to his chiseled body were so paper thin by the end. The attempt at covering all aspects of sexuality on network TV this season was also a little on the awkward side.

That said this was a sweet finale, an ode to friendship, high school and the people we meet in our short life time. You may say hello to someone, walk along with them for a while, then it ends. It was a decent finale, however this show should have really ended years ago. Good for the actors and writers I guess. Where will they end up next? That will be interesting!