Was the season 4 finale one of ‘Riverdale”s craziest episodes? Here’s WTF happened

Granted, the finale we just watched wasn’t the original Riverdale season 4 finale. But just like the rest of the country, Riverdale High’s seniors are going to have to wait a little longer before their graduation ceremony comes around. 

Even if “Killing Mr. Honey” wasn’t supposed to be the finale, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and co. made sure we got one hell of a finale anyway. Teasing that we may finally see the death of Riverdale’s jerk of a principal, it definitely left fans intrigued. Now that we’ve seen it, we just have one thing to say: What the heck?

Mr. Honey (Kerr Smith) still isn’t dead

We’re not going to lie, we prefer the Riverdale episodes where we’re watching the team deal with a dead body. But this whole “Jughead (Cole Sprouse) writing murder mysteries” gimmick is starting to get old. We know that the narrator is heading off to University of Iowa for writing, but they needed one more sample to sell them on his admission.

So what does Jughead do? Write a murder mystery where Betty (Lili Reinhart) pitches an idea to get revenge on Mr. Honey. The gang attempts to pull a prank on him, but then everything goes horribly wrong, and they’re left to clean up a dead Mr. Honey. 

But the ending gets a bit of a rewrite when Jughead realizes Mr. Honey isn’t the monster he thought he was. Mr. Honey ends up writing a positive recommendation letter in Jughead’s favor for the University of Iowa. Maybe the darkness of Riverdale was finally getting to Jughead, making him more bitter than he should be about everything. 

The final version the University of Iowa got of the story had an ending where the gang realigns their moral compass and saves Mr. Honey’s life. But the rough draft Jughead showed Betty had real names of Riverdale citizens in it. Jughead promised the names would be changed before it got sent out, but did it?

The tapes are getting more detailed

Meanwhile, Betty, Jughead, and Charles (Wyatt Nash) are still on the hunt about those mysterious video tapes. So far, it’s been getting closer and closer to the residents of Riverdale and their houses. The Riverdale episodes this season have been a bit too focused on these tapes, but with a good reason. 

We’ve also seen tapes with a Betty mask killing a Jughead mask with a rock, a Clifford Blossom mask killing a Jason Blossom mask, and a Midge mask being killed in the same way he was killed during the Carrie musical. But this episode ends with a tape of the masked Core 4 killing Mr. Honey.

This comes right after Jughead and Betty get a tape showing the cabin owned by the Lodges, where Hermione killed Sheriff Minetta. At the cabin is the mystery Mr. Honey tape. So who knew about Jughead’s story enough to make a tape based on it? 

Prom is cancelled, then saved!

Technically speaking, prom was supposed to be happening in season 4. But with production on Riverdale getting shut down before completing the final three episodes, prom is going to be the season 5 premiere. No matter, prom was still a big subplot in the finale. 

No surprise, Mr. Honey banned prom after Reggie (Charles Melton), Archie (KJ Apa), and Kevin (Casey Cott) all pranked him once again. Some digging proved that Mr. Honey cancelled prom at every school he was principal at before. But this time, they turned to the parents of Riverdale to save the day. 

Hiram Lodge (Mark Consuelos), Alice Smith (Madchen Amick), and Mary Andrew (Molly Ringwald), among others, showed up to protest Mr. Honey’s actions and make it clear they’ll mess with him big time if he lets the ruling stay. They end up winning, though it’s because Mr. Honey resigns from Riverdale High, not because he let prom happen. 

Mr. Honey is not the absolute worst, but he’s not great

After his resignation, thanks to a new opening at Stonewall Prep as headmaster, Ms. Bell, the receptionist, comes forward to tell the students how Mr. Honey helped Riverdale High in ways they couldn’t see. 

Six low-income students are now going to college on full scholarships thanks to Mr. Honey. The school’s GPA average went up under him, and of course, no deaths. Plus, Jughead saw it personally with a recommendation letter written by Honey. He definitely tried to do right by the students. 

But that doesn’t excuse his behavior with terrorizing the students through past Riverdale episodes this season. Especially not the whole “faking a voyeur tape inside Riverdale High” trick he did to defend cancelling prom. How did the gang figure out it was fake? They saw Mr. Honey’s reflection in the video with the camera in hand. 

College is a coming

With all the Riverdale seniors so close to graduation, it’s nearly time to finalize college plans for the fall. We already know Jughead’s plans, but Archie is starting to lean more towards the Naval Academy, like his mom wants. His motivation for it isn’t so pure though.

After his actual affair with Betty in episode 18, Archie is looking to move on from Riverdale and onto something greater than him. Though he also really needs to move on from Betty because Baronica is endgame. 

What’s next?

With this being the official finale now, we’re wondering what comes next for season five of Riverdale. It seems like the plan was to have all the seniors move on and graduate, ending season 4, and then move on to season 5 with either a time jump or them in college. 

Now, we still think a time jump is in the future for Riverdale, with the gang all graduated from college and moving on to the real world. That gives an opportunity for more Archieverse crossovers with Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or Katy Keene as the gang moves out of Riverdale. 

But who only knows where Riverdale will go next. This finale was all over the place, and we’re still not 100% sure what we just watched. All we know for sure is that we’re not ready to see the gang leave Riverdale after graduation.