https://tvline.com/2020/05/13/riverdale-time-jump-season-5-spoilers/
The CW drama will kick off Season 5 with the three episodes that were intended for the end of Season 4 before the coronavirus shutdown, including the prom and graduation episodes. Afterwards, Riverdale will do a time jump. “So what we’re doing is picking up right where we left off for the first three episodes, and then doing a time jump… after those three episodes," says showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, without specifying how long the time jump will be.
Riverdale "out-Riverdales itself" in promo for its 7-year time jump (https://www.themarysue.com/riverdale-sort-of-explainer/)
"Uh so … what is happening on The CW’s Riverdale, you ask?" says Rachel Leishman. "I suppose you saw the absolutely wild new promo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65eDbMsPPRE) for season 5 episode 4, where the show out-Riverdales itself by jumping 7 years into the future for some more wild plot twists. Are you sure you want to know the answer to your question? Because I’ll tell you, it is absolute nonsense, and I’m here for everything that show is trying to sell me—mainly because it makes zero sense. You know, like all of Riverdale, a show that has already done seasons, episodes, or plots involving serial killer fathers, sisters who stage their brother’s deaths to show them they care, and a cult where Chad Michael Murray tried to fly off earth in a makeshift rocket. That’s right: with a bunch of high school students." ALSO: Riverdale's time jump looks like "some lawless s***." (https://themuse.jezebel.com/riverdale-is-jumping-7-years-into-the-future-i-cant-s-1846197866)
Riverdale boss admits "we're definitely in a time paradox" after jumping seven years into the future (https://www.eonline.com/news/1237078/riverdale-boss-sheds-some-light-on-the-new-time-period-and-what-comes-after-that-ending)
"I think it would have been less jarring if we'd had the organic season break," showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa says of this week's time jump. "But yes...the show's timeless so that's what we're hanging on to, to be honest. Like yes if you if you really, if you really analyze it it's like we're either in 2028, or we've been seven years in the past...there's a discrepancy there for sure." ALSO: Aguirre-Sacasa: "We wanted our kids in their mid-20s to be closer to the age they are in real life." (https://www.thewrap.com/riverdale-time-jump-archie-army-betty-fbi-veronica-married-jughead-cheryl-toni-pregnant/)
Riverdale's seven-year time jump is a reminder that it's essentially Glee's darker noir cousin (https://variety.com/2021/tv/opinion/riverdale-flash-forward-purgatorio-recap-review-season-4-episode-5-1234905401/)
Former Glee writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who created Riverdale, has "embraced soap opera style melodrama from the start, throwing its plucky — if weirdly solemn — teens into life-threatening scenarios every week," says Caroline Framke. As for this week's time jump, she says, "'Purgatorio isn’t here to party; it’s here to remind everyone that Riverdale has always fancied itself a pitch black noir above all else. In retrospect, though, this is about what I should’ve expected. While Riverdale has had more than its share of hyperbolic storylines, its first instinct is to take them all very, very seriously. The combination of absurdity, solemnity and gothic grandeur that 'Purgatorio' runs on has always formed the backbone of Riverdale. Flashing forward wasn’t going to change that. If anything, aging the characters up to being full adults only made the show a more concentrated version of itself that’s freer than ever to dig into its seedy underbelly."