Dawson’s Creek’s Kerr Smith Cast as Riverdale’s New Principal

Several of Riverdale‘s cast of characters will be entering their senior year in Season 4, and it looks like they’ll be seeing a new face in the school halls. During the show’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that Kerr Smith will be joining the cast as Mr. Honey, Riverdale High’s new principal. Honey, who will be a recurring character on the series, is described as “a bit of a hard-ass who takes a harder line with the students this year, especially with the seniors.”

Smith is known for his roles as Jack McPhee on Dawson’s Creek, and Kyle Brody on Charmed. In the years since both of those projects, he has appeared on shows like Life Unexpected, The Fosters, and Agents of SHIELD.

Honey is expected to debut in Season 4’s second episode, which is titled “Chapter Fifty-Nine: Fast Times at Riverdale High”. His arrival comes after the school’s previous principal, Mr. Weatherbee (Peter Bryant), presumably fled with The Farm in the Season 3 finale.

This sort of focus on the goings-on of high school is expected to be seen throughout Riverdale Season 4, even as the show has become known for mysteries around serial killers and ritualistic killings. Of course, the season is expected to have its own dilemma to solve, with Jughead Jones’ fate seeming a little uncertain in a flash-forward sequence.

“I can’t say anything specifically to that,” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa said of Jughead’s fate shortly after the Season 3 finale. “All I can say is, I guess things look very dire for Jughead in that scene, for sure.”

“Next season is the kids’ senior year. It’s their last year in high school, and we really want to locate their stories in the high school world,” Aguirre-Sacasa explained. “We started talking about what the big mystery could be, and we said it would be great if we kind of kept it in the high school kind of world. The other thing that we wanted to do is, this year Archie and Veronica weren’t that involved in the Gargoyle King mystery — it was more Betty and Jughead. We loved the core four together in the finale. We wanted to do something that tied them all together for the core mystery and for a big secret, and it felt like having them all around that bonfire, minus Jughead, would be a way to tie them all together so that when we get to the central mystery of what happened that night and what led to the events of burning their clothes, it would be all of our foursome and not the kids split off again.”

Are you excited to see Smith join Riverdale? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Riverdale‘s fourth season will begin Wednesday, October 9th, at 8/7c on The CW.