‘Riverdale’ To Skip The College Years In Season 5

Riverdale will make not give it the old college try when it returns next season.
TVLine reports the Greg Berlanti program will skip several years in the lives of its core group of characters; allowing them to age more or less in step with the actors. Executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told the site a time jump was always in the cards, but with its fourth season cut short because of the COVID-19 pandemic, “what we’re doing is picking up right where we left off for the first three episodes, and then doing a time jump.” Besides resolving the Voyeur story, the remaining high school episodes will center on the gang’s senior prom and graduation. One imagines they will also address the departures of Hermione Lodge (Marisol Nichols) and F.P. Jones (Skeet Ulrich) as both actors previously announced they were leaving the program.
But by the season’s fourth episode, at least four years will have passed with the gang reuniting after their college graduations. This will more or less line it up with Katy Keene, which is set in a time when Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) is Riverdale High’s drama teacher. This is probably for the best as high school shows often struggle with putting their characters in college situations and contriving ways to keep the group together when they should spread to the four winds. And considering the amount of adult situations the teen characters have been through in the last four years, seeing Archie (KJ Apa) take community college courses or watching Veronica (Camila Mendes) pledge a sorority would be cliche and lame by comparison.
Meanwhile, it is unclear if the time jump will allow for more Katy Keene crossovers as that series’ future is still up in the air; though with The CW set to announce its 2020-2021 broadcast schedule later today, the fate of Kate Keene will not be a mystery for long.
Riverdale returns in the Fall on The CW.