The flashback episode, in addition to being really fun, also did an incredible job of developing the characters and themes of Riverdale.

As much as one can say Riverdale is “about” anything, other than just being ludicrous and campy, it’s about the characters’ struggle between being their authentic selves versus compromising who they are. And the flashback episode, which is officially my favorite Riverdale episode, did a fantastic job of tying into that, and explaining why the parents of Riverdale are so compelling: they lost the battle for their souls because of Gryphons & Gargoyles.

At first, it seemed like Archie’s struggle would be choosing between music and sports, because apparently no one has seen High School Musical in the world of Riverdale. (In related news, I need a Riverdale cover of an HSM song, STAT!) But the show course-corrected, and Archie’s struggle now is to keep his innate decency in a world determined to destroy all decent people.

He very nearly lost the battle last season, seduced by the power and security promised by the Lodges, but he came back from it in time. This season, it looks like he’s keeping his moral compass despite all the prison riots, which means the show really needs to find something to do with Archie to keep him interesting. But in the flashback, we saw Fred Andrews give up his passions of sports and music, a cool nod to the original arc of Archie’s character.

Betty’s arc has been twofold: a search for the truth about her family and a reckoning with her inner darkness. The latter seems to have been resolved, the former is an ongoing story that seems to drive Riverdale more than anything else. (Are we all agreed that Betty is pretty much the main character of the show?) Alice’s arc is a cool parallel for Betty’s: she also had something unpleasant growing inside her (a baby), which she reckoned with and eliminated from her life. Yet where Betty’s arc is about searching for the truth of her background, Alice conceded that battle by burying the truth of her Serpent roots.

Veronica’s arc, in fits and starts, has been about her defying the higher power in her life: Hiram Lodge. Wrapped up in that have been arcs of atonement, empowerment within the system, but has now seen Veronica draw a line in the sand and unflinchingly refuse to compromise with her father. It’s interesting that Hermione, in the flashback, is described as a “rebelling Catholic” — someone who was working against the higher power in her life. She loses the battle and begins a “lifetime of compromise,” exchanging that didactic higher power for another.

Jughead’s arc at first seemed to be about struggling against joining the Serpents, just like his father. But if one digs deeper, it’s actually about him finding a community and a family. Recall how he raged in season 1 about being a weirdo and a loner. Jughead joining the Serpents has provided him with that family and support system, and by all accounts, he is happy with it.

FP came so tantalizingly close to achieving that: a ladies man and an athlete, he seemingly had it made as the star of Riverdale’s North Shore community. But the Gryphons & Gargoyles debacle ruined that, and sent him scurrying away from that community to the Serpents, where he was never as happy and well-adjusted as Jughead seems to be.

Cheryl has been battling against the creepy weirdness of her family, and the twisted roles they’ve forced her into. By and large, she’s succeeded: Cliff Blossom is no longer a threat, and Cheryl escaped from conversion therapy into a loving relationship with Toni. In a way, Penelope seems to have lost the battle for her soul in a much worse manner than all the other parents: not only did she choose not to escape from the Thornhill weirdness, she whole-heartedly embraced it, and was just as gross to her children as the Blossoms were to her.

Kevin’s storyline, fleeting as it has been, is about him being able to love whom he chooses. Whether it was his dalliance with Joaquin, or his cruising in season 2, or his newfound commitment to a romance with Moose — Kevin has refused to be limited in whom he can be romantically involved with. But his father, one half of the starcrossed lovers that Sierra and Tom were, allowed society to halt his desired romance.

[Caveat: not enough has been done with Josie’s character for her and Sierra to factor into this analysis, unfortunately.]

Over at Entertainment Weekly, Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa says that montage of transitions is his favorite part of the episode. “I love when we see the kids towards the end of the episode become the version of the adults that we know,” he says. “These feel like huge, mythic moments.”

He’s right, that montage is a set of huge mythic moments because they encapsulate the thesis of Riverdale: how the last generation had to deny their dreams and who they were, and how that informs the current generation’s parallel struggles.

I think this also explains why all the parents of Riverdale are so “triggered,” as Betty said, by Gryphons & Gargoyles. Alice claims that it’s because they’re afraid the current generation of kids will end up dead while playing it. But it runs deeper than that. All these parents love their kids in their own weird, dysfunctional ways. They still bear the emotional scars from having to give up who they were, and they don’t want that for their children. That’s the real fear that drives them and brings these old enemies together: the fear that the next generation will lose itself, just as the old one did.

This can even go a long way to explaining why the kids on Riverdale are given so much leeway by their parents — a lack of parental oversight that stretches credulity even by the skewed standards of television teens. The parents never do more than occasionally admonish or advise their kids (with the dramatic exception of Penelope Blossom), and now we know why: the parents all remember what it was to deny who they were, and will do their utmost to never do that to their own children.

Honestly, I expected a lot from the flashback episode — mostly for them to throw in everything but the kitchen sink and make it as ridiculous as everything else this season has been. (Seriously, “Jailhouse Rock”?!) What I did not expect was for it to be coherent, thematically relevant, and powerfully melancholy. In a show that’s often too over-the-top to allow genuinely emotional moments room to breathe, Alice’s narration and the kids’ performances created a tenderness and an emotional wallop that the show could really use more of.

So while I’m still invested in the cool and creepy Gargoyle King, and whether it really is a member of the Midnight Club, I’m now even more invested in all these characters… and really just want to give them all a hug.