Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
After the comet reaches Riverdale, guardian angel Tabitha sends the main characters back to 1955 as teenagers and removes their memories of the lives they had already lived. Jughead initially remembers the former timeline, while Tabitha works to repair the damage that the comet caused. The reset classmates face the pressures of their new era: Betty pushes against Alice’s control, Jughead fights a comics publisher’s censorship, and Cheryl, Toni, Kevin and Clay confront racism and homophobia. The season also builds a murder mystery around the Killer Milkman, whose attacks connect to the Blossom mines and Clifford’s plans. By episode eighteen, Clifford and Penelope’s palladium operation is exposed as a scheme to help Russia build a powerful bomb.
Tabitha returns and offers to restore their former memories. Most choose to keep only the good moments, while Betty and Jughead retain everything. The timeline is stabilized, but they cannot return to 2023. In the finale, 86-year-old Betty is the last of the group alive in the present day, which the episode identifies as 2023. A version of Jughead lets her relive the last day of senior year, and he explains that she, Archie, Jughead and Veronica shared a four-person relationship during their 1950s school year. Betty later dies outside Pop’s after her granddaughter brings her to Riverdale. She enters the Sweet Hereafter, where her friends are waiting, and Jughead leaves them as forever juniors, still seventeen.