‘Riverdale’ Is Jumping Seven Years Into The Future, But That’s Not The Nuttiest Thing About This Teaser

It’s a problem every high school-set show faces if it airs long enough: what happens when the characters graduate? Buffy the Vampire Slayer sent Buffy to UC-Sunnydale (and Doublemeat Palace); Gilmore Girls separated Lorelai and Rory, and was worse off for it; and Riverdale, well, Riverdale is playing by its own weirdo rules.

In the most recent episode of The CW series, Archie, Jughead, Betty, and Veronica graduated high school, and the couples, Archie/Veronica and Jughead/Betty, decided to split up. But the next episode, the show’s 80th, won’t deal with the fallout from the breakups; we also won’t see the gang in college. That’s because Riverdale is jumping seven years into the future. “A lot can happen in seven years,” Jughead says in the teaser for next week’s episode. “Archie had been in a war. I was a published writer. Veronica was married. And Betty was an FBI agent.” My favorite thing about that voiceover — besides all of it — is that Veronica being married is treated with the same dramatic weight as Betty being an FBI agent. But that’s not even the nuttiest thing about the promo.

“Although we are still in Riverdale and we are still tied into the school in certain ways, in the time jump I feel like we had to refresh our audience with a new theme, which is the fact that we’re all a lot older,” KJ Apa (Archie) told Entertainment Weekly about the time jump. “And I feel like that in itself, the fact that we’re all older and a lot of time has passed, no one’s really kept in touch, it adds a lot more things to play with.” Including the fallout from fighting a war (in World War II uniforms???) on a high school football field.

Never change, Riverdale. Please run for five more seasons.

(Via EW)