'Riverdale' Season 5 Is Officially Happening, But Will Jughead Be Around To See It?

Expect the mysteries of Riverdale to become even more dark and twisted, because the teen drama series will definitely be back for another new season. It's been confirmed that Riverdale Season 5 is officially happening, and it will most likely be premiering toward the end of 2020. The renewal also means fans will get to see Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead move on from Riverdale High... if Jughead can survives Season 4, that is.

On Tuesday, Jan. 7, The CW announced renewals for nearly its full slate of shows, including Riverdale. The pickup came at around the same time the network renewed Riverdale for its fourth season at the beginning of 2019, which was also right in the middle of its currently airing season. Although the Season 5 renewal did not reveal when fans can expect the next run of episodes, it looks incredibly likely that the show will continue following its mid-October premiere pattern, meaning the new season will probably drop a few weeks ahead of Halloween 2020.

Alongside the Riverdale renewal, The CW also picked up 12 of its other series for new seasons: All American, Batwoman, Black Lightning, Charmed, Dynasty, The Flash, In the Dark, Legacies, Legends of Tomorrow, Nancy Drew, Roswell, New Mexico, and Supergirl. The only shows not to earn a pickup were ones that had previously announced their current season would be their last: Arrow, Supernatural, and The 100. And although the yet-to-premiere Riverdale spinoff Katy Keene did not get a second season announcement, The CW did order 13 additional scripts of the new series, which makes a full renewal seem super promising.

Of course, the biggest question surrounding the Season 5 pickup in terms of where Riverdale's story is currently at is whether Jughead will actually be in it. Spoiler alert: The rest of this post includes spoilers from the first half of Riverdale Season 4.

For the first time ever, the fourth season of Riverdale is riddled with flash-fowards, which all point to a couple months ahead of the present storyline and heavily suggest Jughead was killed. These time-jumps have already shown F.P. and Betty identifying Jughead's dead body in a mortuary, and most recently, suggested Betty was to one to kill Jughead by hitting him with a rock. The show has yet to fully reveal what is going on in these scenes, but every Riverdale fan is super concerned this may be Jughead's last season.

In lighter news, the Season 5 renewal also means all the main characters will presumably have graduated from Riverdale High School in the new season, given that Season 4 follows their senior year. Fans are unsure how the show will handle the Core Four's postgraduate lives, considering Betty and Veronica have both applied for colleges far from Riverdale, so Season 5 will likely be a big shift in the show's structure.

Look for Season 5 of Riverdale to premiere on The CW sometime in the fall of 2020.