Riverdale Showrunner Teases Pre-Production Has Begun on Season 5

Riverdale was among the many shows to be profoundly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the show’s fourth season forced to end earlier than planned this past spring, after production was shut down due to quarantine restrictions. The hit The CW series still has a lot of ground to cover in its fifth season and beyond — and it looks like the work on that has already begun. On Monday, showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa took to Twitter to reveal that pre-production on Riverdale‘s fifth season had officially begun. He attached a teaser poster of sorts to the tweet, which shows a blonde woman running away from a truck just on the edge of Riverdale’s city limits. The show’s logo also has the “V” highlighted to represent Season 5.

Riverdale will have a major new status quo in its fifth season, as the show is set to air its unaired Season 4 storylines, which will include the high schoolers going to prom and graduation.

“It’s funny, we had shot almost two-thirds of episode 20, which was going to be our prom episode. And we looked at that footage and tried to see if there was a way we could cobble together that episode,” Aguirre-Sacasa explained back in May. “We actually had shot the prom, where a lot of very dramatic things happen, but we still hadn’t shot some big character moments between Archie and Veronica and Betty and Jughead. So we kind of just couldn’t do that.”

“However, when I saw the cut of 19, what’s great about it is all of the kids are in one big story together united against Mr. Honey. And it does end on a pretty shocking, disturbing cliffhanger,” Aguirre-Sacasa continued. “So, it sort of was like, “Oh wait a minute, this could be a great season finale” and then prom would be a great season premiere next year. So it worked out in kind of the best way possible given everything. Obviously we would have loved to have finished the full season, and the last three episodes are fantastic. But to me, this one is fun. It’s a special conceit and it brings everyone together, which I think people love.”

After that, the series will be having a five-year time jump, which fans had been speculating about for months. This will place Archie, Betty, Jughead, Veronica, and their classmates firmly out of college — and give a lot of new narrative possibilities to play around with.

“We’ve been talking and planning on doing a time jump,” Aguirre-Sacasa previously explained. “And of course, usually time jumps happen in between seasons, because there’s a tease at the very end. It felt like maybe what we’ll do is start with the last three episodes [intended for Season 4]. So what we’re doing is picking up right where we left off for the first three episodes, and then doing a time jump… after those three episodes.”

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