#riverdale series finale

[daphnefangirling]

I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve shed tears today reading all your emotional 'Goodbye Riverdale' posts. Seeing OGs from 2017 pop in to say farewell... If nothing else, Riverdale gave me friends for life.

I love everyone in this bar! 🥹

[outerspace-castaway]

Choni's son Dale was Played by Vanessa's son River..... I. CANT. EVEN....

[thedragonqueens]

Choni is endgame I couldn't be happier

[pettycooper]

I’ve solved your problem, RAS!

I was talking with my friend the other day and I’ve solved RAS’ problem of what to write for the series finale of Riverdale. Since apparently he still hasn’t written it yet with the show ending in… checks notes, 2 months! Oh and this even allows them to stay in the 50’s until the very last episode so that should make RAS happy. Here goes:

We find Jughead in a meeting with his editor where he gives him some super meta comments about how his last book (season 6) was too "out of left field with the genre change" and that the one before that (season 5) was "too depressing trying so hard to tell adult stories" and that he needs to recapture the magic of his first book (season 1), but with a fresh take. This will show how 'camp' they think they are that they know about our criticisms of the seasons, but it was "all part of the plan."

They can even throw in some flashbacks from previous season — you know to "pay homage to them" or as a "love letter to fans" or whatever bs they’ll spout about it. Then, Jughead sits down and starts writing what we know to be season 7 set in 1955 with high school stories, you know: same, but different. 🙄

The last scene is Jughead walking into Pops, he sees Archie sitting at their regular booth with Veronica and Betty. They wave him over. Archie asks: "how’s the writing, Jug?" Jughead replies: "I actually just finished!" The core four cheer to that with their milkshakes and we pan out.

Bonus points if Pop Tate is at the counter reading an actual Archie Comics, looks up, straight at the camera, and winks. Fade to black, Riverdale logo. The end.

No one knows what the ships are. No one knows what was real and what was part of Jug’s books. What could be more Riverdale than: "nothing matters and everything matters!" Which is exactly the kind of chaotic energy that I think RAS loves.

So there you have it, RAS, I’ve written it for you. I await my paycheck now since I did the job you can’t seem to do.

[crazymisscarly]

What I’ve uncovered about the Riverdale Series finale in ‘text message to my cousin who used to watch it with me’ format:

[uncleasad]

Farewell, Riverdale…

…and The CW, and perhaps TV…

I (finally!) just watched the series finale of Riverdale, and it wrecked me. In retrospect, it seems like it was still too soon, what with the recent rash of deaths (Mrs Carter, Norman Lear, among others) and the year’s losses in my own family. The series went out with a bang, wholly unlike the bang it entered on, but an emotional wallop nonetheless. The first season was gripping and, while I am no television aficionado, one of the most powerful seasons of TV I’ve seen. And then it promptly went off the rails, way off the rails, before finding its way back with the lovely, timely bookend that was this final season. The finale was imperfectly perfect, and while I’m sure we all have little things we’d have liked to have seen (what happened to 1950s Tabitha?) or done differently (Archie Andrews, poet extraordinaire, gave us a final poem that was far more schoolboy—middle school, even—than the meaningful poems he recited over the course of the season), it was, by and large, a fitting capstone to the series—as well as to the The CW that was… It was a poignant reminder that death comes for us all, and that those brief few years when we are all together, taking those first steps towards figuring out who we are and who we will become, neither last—nor can they be recaptured (unless, I suppose, you’re Grandma Betty Cooper and Angel/Narrator Jughead). People grow, move apart, befall tragedy, and never see each other again…

While I still feel that Season 1 was a tighter, more powerful season, this final season felt more timely and relevant. Not only was it a big middle finger to the values and politics of The CW’s new corporate overlord, but the season served as a reminder that our struggles for freedom and equality, to become a better people, are not over. This past year we’ve witnessed a steep backsliding in women’s liberty and bodily autonomy such that what we saw on the screen scarcely felt like a different, bygone era. Hate and discrimination have come roaring back, and while the kids at Riverdale High were making progress—small steps, the beginnings of an avalanche to come in the subsequent decade and beyond—that progress remains very fragile and in need of constant defense.

The series finale brought us happy endings for all three same-sex couples—two of whom were interracial, even!—a definite rarity. And then there was that Quad! On the one hand, I’m a bit miffed that they chickened out on picking endgame, but on the other, I’ve never seen a better, more productive way of chickening out! As someone who had no true ship or OTP in the series, I found most all of the characters’ relationships over the seasons compelling (even Archie and Cheryl, both times…something poignant about the way the two redheads supported each other through situations over which they had little control)…I started the series with that same longing for the BFF that Betty had, fell into Bughead, appreciated the complexities of Archie and Veronica, and enjoyed how Jughead and Tabitha supported and improved each other. Cheryl and Toni was perhaps the relationship closest to my OTP for the series. The chemistry this season between Veronica and Jughead was a revelation—even Jughead and Ethel were a great pairing, albeit far more platonic (at least on Jughead’s part) than Jughead’s other relationships. Could it be that intellectual loner Jughead (Cole) oozes chemistry?! This season also saw the return of Bee and Vee forever, as well as substantiation of the long-simmering attraction so many of us saw, topped off by Betty’s confirmation of their—“more often than you’d expect!”—core pairing within the Quad.

There was a note of wistful sadness to the post-high school lives of the Quad, but those lives felt authentic. Archie was always the one who was going to get married and have the traditional family, passing down the honest, hardworking life and kindness imparted on him by Fred and Mary. Jughead was the loner—and happy that way, surrounded by cultural criticism through his beloved medium of comics. Veronica would be driven, the businesswoman, still Hiram and Hermione’s daughter but with fewer of their character flaws, and perhaps that success was enough for her. Betty was always going to be the modern woman, smashing glass ceilings in a slightly different manner from her raven-haired BFF, and trying—and mostly succeeding—in having it all, a successful career and a family. Even the four best of friends were never all in the same place again, but they all lived full, happy, fulfilled lives, and it’s hard to complain about that.

As hard as it is to picture the put-together, uptight Cheryl Blossom in the hippie/activist scene in California, being with Toni helped her see her privilege and taught her to use it to move the needle, as well as softened her and helped her to free the woman trapped inside, so I can see a trajectory and path of growth that puts her there, arm-in-arm with the woman that she loved. After the ghastly mess after the first time jump, seeing Cheryl and Toni get a happy ending—along with some form of Bee and Vee forever—was my top hope for the final season.

Poor Fangs, lost in Riverdale’s own version of The Day the Music Died (the Ritchie Valens tune playing in The Sweet Hereafter was a nice nod to that, another memento from the town lost in time). But Alice Cooper finally broke the chains of conformity and an unhappy marriage, reconciled with Polly, and had her adventures, becoming the sort of woman she had longed to be, and, somehow, had imparted in her daughters as well. Mary Andrews, too, got her second act, with a woman who walked into her dress shop. Kevin and Clay, living the dream in Harlem, free to be themselves. The biggest shock to me was seeing the dates on Pop Tate’s headstone—1881, part of the first generation born into freedom, yet only two or three lifetimes removed from us. That’s how recent the 19th Century was, even now, a quarter of the way into the 21st. You may know someone living today who lived part of their life alongside a relative who was born in the 19th Century…in the aftermath of the Civil War, perhaps even before the Centennial of our Republic.

And so it goes. As Riverdale exits stage left after its most activist season, holding a mirror not just to our past but also to our present, so does The CW we knew and (mostly) loved. That network has been replaced by a vehicle for a bizarre mix of thinly-veiled right-wing and conservative-Christian propaganda, low-brow, sex-sells, low-budget knockoff reality shows, and cheap Canadian and British imports. (Sorry, Canada. But Burden of Truth was great, and Family Law is interesting—and probably the most progressive thing on The CW anymore.) And, with those exits, so goes the likelihood I’ll watch much television in the future. Broadly speaking, it feels like Hollywood has ceded the younger demographic The CW once programmed for to Netflix and its “20 episodes and cancellation” mantra, a horrible way to sustain a work of art or entertainment, but a fantastic way to poison a generation on episodic visual storytelling. I haven’t been aware of anything on SyFy (another former mainstay of mine) that seemed interesting in nearly a decade, and I’m not a procedurals and sitcoms kind of person. In tandem with the studios’ failure to negotiate, and therefore subjecting their fall season—and us—to a strike (which the writers and actors won, hooray!🎉), this may have been the longest period of time I’ve gone without watching a television series. What incentive do I have to seek out visual entertainment when I’ve survived for months without it? I suddenly see why so many people are eliminating their TV service….

But I’m not here to bury television, only to bid adieu to a lovely season of television and a series that, though uneven, in its moments was great, and a finale that hit all the right notes and landed every breath-stealing punch with grace and love. Farewell, Riverdale, and may we meet again one day in The Sweet Hereafter…

[daphnefangirling]

FEELINGS — I'VE LOTS OF THEM 😭😭😭

Alvin via Instagram

[jancysmixtape]

BUGHEAD STILL WE WON!!!!!

[cheryllclayton]

Goodbye Riverdale you crazy ass show that brought me to this crazy ass site and fandom; to which I’ll be forever grateful for as it not only led me to some of my best friends in the world 🩷but some other really great people too, and of course lots of amazing art and talent which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed over the years.

It’s an end of an era for the fandom, but it’s not the end for us my friends, love you all 😘

[daphnefangirling]

If they wanted this show to end with the last day of senior year, they could have ended it at 5.03 and we’d ALL be better for it! Le sigh

[outerspace-castaway]

Riverdale Series Finale

I enjoyed this season, the gang being transported to the 1950s was a fun and interesting concept.

Keeping them there the entire season instead of having them find their way back to the future was the wrong choice imo, because of this we did not get closure for these characters we were with for the first 6 seasons and i cant understand why the writers did this.

that being said it was still a nice heartfelt series finale

the gang being together again at 17 in the afterlife was really cute and sweet

plus at this point Choni Endgame was all that really mattered to me.

[riverdalearthistory]

top 10 riverdale art history posts: all-time edition

Now that Riverdale has come to a close (RIP), let's go down memory lane at Riverdale Art History. For the next 10 days we'll count down our top-ten posts.

Enjoy!

[pettycooper]

I would have preferred winning, but I’ll sleep well at night knowing ~they~ lost.

[pettycooper]

[crazymisscarly]

Question: did they go back to OG riverdale or were they still in the timewarped hellscape in the end???

[freaky-flawless]

Wait, wait, wait, the new Monster High comics are being written by Jaque Aye??? As in the Jaque Aye who created Adorned by Chi and who's newsletter I've been subscribed to for a year??? The Jaque Aye that's all about Black Girl Magic and empowering black girls???

Forget everything else I've heard. I'm excited as hell now!