OK, “Riverdale” fans, we have some news about the Season 5 time jump that you’ve all been waiting for: the length of time this jump is actually going to cover.
According to Lili Reinhart, the CW drama will take Archie and the gang seven years into the future in its upcoming fifth season — which is set to begin production in Vancouver soon — skipping over college entirely and landing our core characters in their mid 20s.
“So, we’re taking the first few episodes [back] to finish Season 4, technically, and then Season 5 we’re actually doing a, I believe, 7-year time jump into the future,” Reinhart told Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.” “We’re not going to be teenagers anymore.”
“I’m really psyched about it. I think it will be nice to play an adult. But I also really appreciate that Roberto [Aguirre-Sacasa] our showrunner was like, ‘Yeah, let’s revamp.’ We’re not just stuck in high school for seven seasons.”
The time jump itself isn’t news, as Aguirre-Sacasa has previously spoken about how Season 5 will skip ahead a few years after high school for Archie (K.J. Apa), Betty (Reinhart), Veronica (Camila Mendes) and Jughead (Cole Sprouse) — it’s the length of the time jump fans had been waiting for confirmation on.
Like hundreds of other shows, “Riverdale” had to shut down production due to the coronavirus pandemic in March, when it had just two and a half episodes left to shoot to complete Season 4.
“We stopped in the middle of an episode. So when we go back, we have to finish three days of one episode that we were filming in March,” said Reinhart, who will be heading back to Vancouver in a couple days to quarantine before resuming production on “Riverdale.”
“So we’re all going to be significantly tanner. Maybe I’ve gained weight during quarantine, so I’ll look a little different,” she added laughing. “I feel like it will be very easy to tell when was in March, when we filmed in September.”
Watch Reinhart’s full “Tonight Show” interview above.