When Will Riverdale Return With New Episodes?

Riverdale has been absolutely captivating fans throughout its fifth season, especially once its massive time jump shook up the narrative that viewers thought they were expecting. Each new episode has consistently brought major character moments and intriguing new mysteries — but unfortunately, it will be a lot longer before those stories continue. After this week's episode, "Chapter Eighty-Six: The Pincushion Man", the series will be taking a pre-planned three-month hiatus, during which it will not air any new or previously-aired episodes. Instead, The CW's highly-anticipated reboot of Kung Fu will be taking over Riverdale's time slot, followed by new episodes of Nancy Drew through June 2nd, and In the Dark beginning June 9th. Riverdale will resume airing the remaining episodes of Season 5 beginning Wednesday, July 7th.

This news will surely be bittersweet to fans of the series, especially after all of the plot twists and turns that have come to fruition in Season 5 thus far.

"On a practical level we really wanted to — I call them still the kids [Laughs] — but for the kids to be playing characters closer to their age," Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa explained to Entertainment Tonight last month. "And I think one of the hallmarks of Riverdale has been that it isn't a procedural. Every episode is its own genre and it's constantly reinventing itself and it felt like if we had stayed in high school, we might run the risk of playing the same beats and the same stories over and over again. So I think the idea was that it would sort of be a creative boost for the writers, a creative boost for the actors, and after four years of very gonzo, intricate, incestuous plotting, it was like, "Oh!" Well, we can just drop everyone into new storylines that feel organic to the characters, but allow us to feel like we can move a little more nimbly. Without the burden of, you know, Bughead dating or the burden of Archie still wrestling with the immediate death of his father. It felt like a way to freshen everything up and I feel like that was the big goal."

As mentioned above, Riverdale will return with new episodes beginning Wednesday, July 7th, on The CW.