Riverdale to Have a Major Time Jump in Season 5

Riverdale has provided a dramatic, larger-than-life take on high school for several seasons now — but it sounds like that’s about to change very soon. TVLine recently confirmed that the hit The CW series will have a “significant” time jump in its upcoming fifth season. While the specifics of the time jump are reportedly still being figured out, it is expected to jump “several years” into the future, presumably to skip the period of time when a lot of the show’s teenage characters are off at separate colleges.

The time jump was conceived for the show’s original Season 4 finale, only for shutdowns tied to the COVID-19 pandemic to cause the season to end three episodes early, with last week’s “Killing Mr. Honey”. Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa confirmed that Season 5 will open with those retooled episodes, which will culminate in high school graduation, before the time jump occurs.

“We’ve been talking and planning on doing a time jump,” Aguirre-Sacasa 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],” Aguirre-Sacasa added. “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.”

Fans had been theorizing about Riverdale potentially jumping forward in time for months now, especially with the landmark of high school graduation looming ahead. With many of the show’s teenage characters heading to different colleges across the country, adding in a time jump takes away the logistical nightmare of following those characters’ college adventures for the next four years. It also allows the ability to completely upend the show’s status, allowing characters to grow and evolve offscreen from their time in college — and bringing in a slew of unexpected “ships” and dynamics.

This confirmation is also interesting when juxtaposed with Katy Keene, Riverdale‘s spinoff series which is nearing the end of its first season (and has yet to be renewed for Season 2). Katy, which follows the adult lives of Katy Keene (Lucy Hale), Jose Mccoy (Ashleigh Murray), and their friends five years ahead of Riverdale, has used sporadic cameos and references to allude to what characters on the flagship show are doing (namely Kevin Keller, who appeared in a recent episode). But if both shows are theoretically set in the same year once they returned, that would allow a lot more opportunities for crossover events.

What do you think of Riverdale having a time jump in Season 5? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!