Riverdale season 5 character preview: Betty Cooper

What should happen

It wouldn’t be Riverdale if the show didn’t have something major planned for Betty Cooper and you can rest assured that one half of TV’s best detective duo will indeed have a big year ahead of her. In fact, both of them will. However, in order for that to happen, some elephants in the room need to be addressed.

As we already discussed in our Jughead character preview, Betty’s moments of weakness with her boyfriend’s best friend, Archie Andrews, must be addressed. As forced as the arc was, it (like everything else) serves a purpose to the narrative and given that it was thankfully tied up incredibly quickly, that confirms that full-blown-affair/Barchie rising was not the purpose of that arc. And that leaves only one thing on the card: A Bughead rift.

Jughead remains completely unaware of Betty’s brief straying with Archie and that kind of secrecy is unhealthy for their relationship. No, in order to move on, Betty must face up to her actions and accept the consequences – and if those consequences mean a Bughead break-up during the seven-year off-screen time-jump, then that’s fine by this writer.

Why? Well, because whatever the great mystery that reunites the gang – who will, at this point, have gone their separate ways – is will also bring Betty and Jughead back into each other’s lives, allowing a more mature version of the couple we all fell in love with to fall in love with each other all over again. And they should ultimately do that by solving the new mystery that the town has presented them with.

Aside from all that, the show really should drop the Betty’s inner darkness arc. It’s always been intriguing and Lili Reinhart portrays it incredibly well, but it went off the rails last season when it expected us to believe she was a serial killer.