WS Woluwe took the first period and looked, briefly, like the team to beat. Then Oostende took the second period. Then they took the third as well. By spring, the title was no longer in dispute. Because the champion had already swept two of the three period crowns, the rules pushed the final-round playoff spots down to the highest finishers who had not yet qualified, which meant Mouscron-Peruwelz and Westerlo. They joined WS Woluwe in the playoff to chase a second promotion spot. Cercle Brugge, dropping down from the Pro League, beat all three of them. So Oostende went up alone.

At the other end of the table, the season closed with the kind of slow administrative drama that defines Belgian football. Sint-Niklaas and Oudenaarde were relegated on sporting merit, finishing 18th and 17th. Heist, who had finished low enough to face relegation, were spared at the eleventh hour by the bankruptcy of Beerschot AC, which forced the league to redraw its membership. In Belgium, a small club's survival has always depended at least as much on what happens in the courts as on what happens on the pitch.

For most of its existence, Oostende had been a regional club playing in a regional city. The 2012-13 promotion put them in the top flight for the first time since the early 2000s, and they did not come straight back down. They stayed up. They reached European competition. They became, for a stretch in the late 2010s, a fixture in the Belgian Pro League. By 2024 the club had collapsed back into bankruptcy and would merge with a provincial side, but for ten seasons after this title, Oostende mattered. The 2012-13 season was the door.

Look at the top-scorer list and a few names stand out for what they would become rather than what they were. Junior Kabananga, a single-goal scorer for Roeselare that year, would later represent the DR Congo national team at the Africa Cup of Nations. Frédéric Gounongbe, who joined RWDM Brussels on loan that season and would later score 11 goals for the club in 2013–14, would go on to Cardiff City in the English Championship. The Belgian Second Division has always functioned as a finishing school for players too young, too unproven, or too late-blooming for the top flight. Most of the 2012-13 scorers ended their careers in this division. A few did not.