Looking ahead to the future of the wild Archie Comics-inspired series.
School may be out for summer in most places – but Riverdale High is just about to open its doors.
We finally have a confirmed UK airdate for the second part of Riverdale season five, after the US release date was announced all the way back in April 2021 – and we won’t have to wait long after our American cousins.
If that wasn’t enough good news, we also have a trailer for the new batch of episodes, which teases Cheryl starting a ministry, Toni with a baby and Betty wielding a chainsaw of all things.
It looks to be another wild season for the Riverdale residents, though behind-the-secenes production has been just as eventful as the show’s return was delayed by several months.
Season five did not air until January 2020 – missing its usual autumn premiere date – and went on hiatus in March 2021 after broadcasting 10 episodes.
However the remining season five episodes have since finished filming – and the concluding half is set for release very soon.
The cast celebrated wrapping filming in May 2021 by posting pictures on social media, including Cole Sprouse, whose character Jughead Jones was the focus of a big cliffhanger in the midseason finale.
Fangs Fogarty actor Drew Ray Tanner also shared snaps of him and his co-stars in all-black outfits, prompting speculation of a funeral scene…
Here’s everything you need to know about Riverdale season five.
*Warning: spoilers ahead for Riverdale season four*
What time is Riverdale season 5 released on Netflix?
Riverdale season five will return on Wednesday 11th August on US network The CW, with the new episodes available from 8am on Thursday 12th August 2021 on Netflix in the UK.
Season five initially premiered in January 2020 with the much-anticipated time jump, but has since gone on a mid-season hiatus.
Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa confirmed the start of season five part one on Twitter, sharing a photo that revealed the date along with the caption, “Back to the Future….buckle up gang!.”
The CW had confirmed a fifth season of the outlandish show, which is based on Archie Comics, was in the pipeline back last year, with the intention originally for it to air in October 2020 before the pandemic got in the way of that.
Pre-production began in August 2020, before creator and Aguirre-Sacasa confirmed in September that shooting was beginning on the new season, posting an Instagram photo of himself and Riverdale cast members.
On 14th September he posted another image, this time of the “first scene… of season five” – featuring KJ Apa in character as series protagonist Archie, apparently standing in a steam room.
Annnnnd #Riverdale is back. First scene up of Season 5: Archie in a steam room. Even in a Covid world, some things never change…????????????????❤️ pic.twitter.com/DJznFr0wYX
— RobertoAguirreSacasa (@WriterRAS) September 14, 2020
It looks like Riverdale isn’t going anywhere either, as The CW president Mark Pedowitz named it as one of three shows that define the network’s current new direction.
Speaking at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, he said: “We transitioned from a female-skewing network in 2010, ’11 and ’12 to more male-focused with Supernatural, and now we’ve shifted back a bit with Riverdale, All American and In the Dark to something different.”
Riverdale season 5 release schedule
Since it airs on The CW in the US, the full season of Riverdale is not released all at once on Netflix UK, with episodes arriving weekly instead.
Episode titles have not yet been released – but expect new episodes at 8am on Thursdays starting from 12th August 2021.
Is Riverdale finished?
No, and far from it – as well as being in the middle of its ongoing fifth season, the show has already been confirmed for a sixth run, so there’s still plenty more to come.
The CW is not hanging about either – Riverdale will return from its mid-season break in August, with season six also confirmed to start airing in late 2021.
Riverdale season 5 trailer
A trailer for the second half of season five was released in July 2021 and certainly teases some darker episodes, as Betty prepares to fight – and quite possibly kill – Polly’s killer…
The first half got a full length trailer in December 2020, teasing a whole load of drama to come – from masked sadists masquerading as Archie and his friends, to Veronica sobbing over what looks like a potential romance between Betty and Archie.
And while announcing that production was back underway on Twitter, showrunner Aguiree-Sacasa also shared a teaser poster which shows a mystery woman running away from a truck, seemingly terrified, at Riverdale’s city limits.
Who’s in the cast of Riverdale season 5?
!["Riverdale]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2019/07/source-RVD302b044420V1-2-25f5ab3.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413" "\"Riverdale")
KJ Apa, Camilla Mendes, Cole Sprouse Lili Reinhart, Casey Cott and Madelaine Petsch all return in main roles for the new series.
One cast member who hasn’t returned is Jughead’s dad, FP Jones (Skeet Ulrich).
As he revealed to TV Line, Ulrich decided to “move on to explore other creative opportunities”, bagging a role in the upcoming Tom Hanks film Bios.
During a recent Instagram Live, Ulrich revealed he had quit the show because he “got bored creatively”.
“How’s that? That’s the most honest answer,” he added.
His co-star Marisol Nichols, who played Hermione Lodge, is also confirmed not to be returning as a series regular.
Back in February, Riverdale creator and showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa said in a statement: “Part of life in Riverdale — and part of growing up — is saying goodbye to people.
“I’m grateful to Skeet and Marisol for their incredible work on the show these last four years, and we all wish them well on their future endeavors. FP and Hermione will never be far from our hearts. And, of course, they’re always welcome back in Riverdale.”(sic)
On the other hand, Mädchen Amick will be returning and shared a snap from a Zoom table read for season five, expressing how excited she was to be back.
Meanwhile, Aguirre-Sacasa announced back in September that Drew Ray Tanner (Fangs Fogarty) would be joining season five as a series regular, with the showrunner announcing that he’ll be living with “on-again, off-again boyfriend Kevin Keller [Casey Cott] and Serpent Queen Toni Topaz [Vanessa Morgan]”, before adding that we’ll be seeing more of Tanner’s singing.
And a new cast member for the series is Broadchurch star Chris Mason, who will play will play Chad Gekko, Veronica’s controlling and jealous husband who works on Wall Street, in a recurring role.
Is Cole Sprouse leaving Riverdale?
After previously starring in Friends and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Cole Sprouse was one of the more famous faces amongst the cast of Riverdale.
Fans were understandably concerned therefore when Sprouse was absent from a photo Riverdale creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa posted on Instagram to commemorate a wrap on shooting season five – especially when his character Jughead seemingly disappears in the mid-season finale…
However, there have been no official reports that Cole Sprouse is leaving the show, and the trailer for the second half of season five showed Jughead alive and well, if in a rather dark place mentally.
It’s possible that Sprouse simply finished filming earlier than his castmates, or that he was busy shooting another project – the Jughead actor is set to star in sci-fi rom-com Moonshot as well as family comedy Undercover with Zachary Levi.
So Riverdale fans can rest easy – the wonderfully named fan-favourite character and show’s narrator is not going anywhere just yet.
Riverdale season 5 spoilers
In the trailer and a few first-look photos, we see the Riverdale gang head to prom – the “last dance they have with their friends,” we see a bloody-faced Archie tell Veronica.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Riverdale if there wasn’t any drama at a school event. Not only do we see a few fights break out but the trailer also hints at Veronica’s discovery of Betty and Archie’s kiss last season, with a devastated Veronica seen crying: “Something happened between Betty and Archie.”
According to showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the prom episode is the first one back, with the producer telling TV Line in May that the prom and graduation episodes are “big, emotional episodes”.
He added: “There’s a lot of stuff with the characters that we’re still playing out, so it felt like maybe what we’ll do is start with the last three episodes.
“After being with the kids at the high school for four years, you kind of don’t want to take graduation away from them. So what we’re doing is picking up right where we left off for the first three episodes.”
Again, in Riverdale fashion, season five introduced another round of masked criminals, with the group receiving videos of people murdering and injuring their others whilst wearing cartoonish masks of Archie, Veronica, Betty and Jughead’s faces.
While fans of #Choni (Cheryl and Toni) will be in for a surprise this series after Vanessa Morgan, who plays Toni Topaz, revealed that her real-life pregnancy was written into the show.
Announcing the beginning of her maternity leave on Instagram, the actress wrote: “Feeling grateful to my showrunner and producers for being so accommodating and writing my pregnancy into the show! Also proud of my body for allowing me to still work almost 9 months preggo.”
While the circumstances of Toni’s pregnancy are currently unclear – especially since part of the upcoming series jumps seven years into the future and so could see Toni and Cheryl begin a family together – what’s guaranteed is that we’re bound to see some drama between the couple.
Meanwhile, a poster for the fifth season hinted at the potential resurrection of a dead character. Sharing the promo pic on Twitter, Aguirre-Sacasa wrote, “Nothing stays buried forever”, along with several emojis including a broken heart, a skull and crossbones and an engagement ring. While it’s impossible to tell which character could be brought back from the dead at this stage, all bets are on Cheryl’s late brother Jason – the show’s very first murder victim.
There is also a huge time jump, with star Lili Reinhart confirming during an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“We’re actually doing a seven-year time jump into the future so we’re not going to be teenagers anymore,” she explained.
“I’m really psyched about it. I think it will be really nice to play an adult. But I also really appreciate that Roberto [Aguirre-Sacasa], our showrunner, said let’s revamp. So we’re not just stuck in high school for seven seasons.”
And KJ Apa gave away more details about the time-jump shortly before the new series debuted, telling TVLine, “Archie enlisted in the Army after graduation, and when he returns, after all that time in the Army, he discovers the town is on the verge of becoming a ghost town, thanks to Hiram.”
He continued: “He came back and saw Riverdale turning to s**t pretty much, and he’s like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to let this happen.’ So he wrangles the whole team in, and they figure out ways to revive the town, and the best way to do that is through Riverdale High.”
Why was Riverdale season 4 cut short?
Riverdale season four ended on 19 episodes – instead of the expected 22 – because the coronavirus halted production on the show, cutting the season short.
This meant that a key prom episode, originally due to air as episode 20 in season four, kicked things off for season five, as the high schoolers donned their glad-rags and buckled up for some serious drama.
“When it became clear that we weren’t gonna be able to finish the season, the first thing I kind of did was look at episode 20 to see if we could cobble together an episode from that,” showrunner Robert Aguirre-Sacasa told Entertainment Weekly.
“Though we actually shot the prom, where a lot of dramatic stuff happened, there were so many emotional scenes with Archie and Veronica and Jughead and Betty that it felt like we just couldn’t quite do it.”
Aguirre-Sacasa’s comments hint at a possible reckoning for the ‘love square’ between the central four characters, Betty, Veronica, Archie and Jughead, after Archie and Betty shared a kiss – cheating on their respective partners – during season four, episode 17.
“We haven’t heard or seen the last of the song that Archie wrote for Betty [during season four, episode 18], and right at this moment where they should be celebrating everything, a lot happens,” Aguirre-Sacasa said. “It’s pretty dramatic what happens at prom with Varchie.”
Could this be the end of Archie and Veronica as a couple? Will Jughead also break things off with longtime girlfriend, Betty – or will Archie’s song reignite her old feelings for him, making her the one to betray Jughead?
And what will this all mean long-term for the Riverdale teen residents as they graduate high school and head off to college?
Riverdale writer Ted Sullivan also revealed in a tweet that season four was due to include a “heavy” episode focussing on Toni (Vanessa Morgan), which some fans are guessing will focus on her past sexual assault.
This episode will now also be postponed to form part of season five.
Riverdale is streaming now on Netflix. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our guide to the best series on Netflix and best movies on Netflix, or visit our TV Guide.