The final episode of Riverdale's event series, titled "The Jughead Paradox," finally revealed the truth about the small town with pep's "shadow" Rivervale. While there were plenty of theories, including that the show was really just Archie's coma dream, the truth was a lot stranger than that. Jughead uncovered that Rivervale was actually a parallel universe to Riverdale that somehow had become a warped version of the OG reality.

The towns are similar to one another in many ways, but Rivervale is just a little bit darker and more dangerous — even if the people who died in Rivervale don't exactly stay dead. In fact, that's why Archie (the Rivervale version, anyway) insisted on keeping Rivervale around — he thought that his father Fred, who died while the gang was in high school following the death of actor Luke Perry, might return.

But is Rivervale magic? Yes, sort of, but also — not exactly. The dead seem to return because of quantum physics (Dilton Doiley, who fans will recall sacrificed himself to a board game cult once upon a time, is the science teacher now) and not any Sabrina Spellman-like magic. In fact, the previous four episodes which take place in Rivervale seem to be different branches of this parallel universe, suggesting that there's not just one version of Rivervale, but several — and maybe even more than that.