What are our Previous Riverdale High School students doing after the time jump?

We’ve expected to see a time jump in Riverdale’s episode 4 which premiered this week, after all, it was officially confirmed by the cast months ago before the season 5 premiered on Jan 20th this year. But, what are they doing after the time jump? Did they pursue their careers? Do their relationships stay the same? How many are successful? How many are broke? Episode 4 gave answers to these questions, so, let’s find out.

Before we move onto the lives of our beloved high school students, let’s talk about what Riverdale was like after the time jump, I’m not going to give you a whole episode recap, though. After watching the episode we come to know that Riverdale is not what it’s like years ago. This comes as no surprise, after all, no place stays the same after 7 years, that too a town with no supervision where everyone has too much freewill to do whatever they want.

So let’s talk about what our now grown up previous high school students are doing in 2021, yeah, they finally caught up with us. Let’s start with….

Archi Andrews

The episode opens with a bad dream of Archie Andrews who has now climbed up the ranks of the military to become a sergeant. Archie Andrews just survived a military battle, but to his despise, he was posted back to Riverdale to work at RROTC program to recruit new soldiers to the military. After coming to his hometown, Archie volunteers to call and bring all his buddies back to the town.

Toni and the Serpents

Toni joins Riverdale social services group after high school, but after their offices were shut down, she joins Serpents again and becomes their serpent queen, who now leads the gang, she is also working as the Guidance Counselor at Riverdale High. The Serpent gang is currently running the Whyte Wyrm below the Pop’s restaurant which they bought from Hiram Lodge. Toni is no longer in a relationship with Cheryl, and much to our shock, She is now pregnant, but the father of the child is still a secret.

Kevin is the new drama teacher at Riverdale High and BTW, Reggie is now working for Hiram Lodge, let that sink in.

Betty Cooper

Betty Cooper currently lives in Quantico, California, she is currently an FBI trainee and is dating her colleague Glenn, Betty has chosen the job that best suits her, a mystery solver. She works on a case(that she’s not supposed to) which involves a serial killer named ‘The Trash Bag Killer’(remember this name, it may pop up several times in this season); her attempts to catch the killer have failed.

This case gave nightmares and trauma to Betty, this is according to the conversation she has with a therapist at the FBI academy. We also see glimpses of flashback of the time when Betty was in captivity of the killer for two weeks.

Jughead Jones

Jughead Jones is now living in Alphabet City, New York. In these 7 years, Jughead wrote and published his first book, he is living off of the success of his first book but that heat is dying down, he is due publish his second book, he is currently working on it but his fingers are not moving very quickly on the typewriter, he’s on a writer’s block. He switched to a typewriter from his MacBook for whatever reason.

He now lives with his new girlfriend who’s also a writer but she leaves jughead in this very episode blaming him for caring more about his new book than their relationship, we also come to know that he has a lot of debt, with debt collectors knocking on his door and overdue rent payment.

Veronica Lodge

Veronica is now married and lives with her husband Chadwick, in New York. They own a jewelry business(Gilmore Jems and Jewels), they build this business on their own. In one of their conversations we understand that Veronica’s husband wants her to give birth to a child and become a mom. But Veronica is not ready, she first wants to become the “She-Wolf of WallStreet”.

Veronica’s mom who divorced Hiram in the last episode is now a reality TV actress.

Veronica and Chadwick have met with an accident(an helicopter crash) which may be explored more in the later episodes.

Cheryl Blossom

While everyone has moved on with their lives, poor Cheryl is still on her mission to makeup for the wrongdoings of the Blossom’s family, it’s clear that she still didn’t got over Toni, during the episode, Toni says that her family now accepts Cheryl and asks her to be her girlfriend again, but Cheryl refuses by saying that the curse of her family still holds on her, comparing her family to the Winchester family.

She is seen doing a lot of painting in the episode, which can be more than just a hobby based on the words of her nanny.

How is Riverdale after 7 years?

7 years later, Riverdale is not the same as our high school students left it. In the episode, Toni takes Archie for a ride around the town to show what the town was like now. To quickly run down the list, Archie’s Gym is not used in what seem like years, The fire department building is half burned, and we learn that Hiram as the Mayor, has cut down the town’s funding, very Hiram Lodge’s thing to do.

People of Riverdale have started to migrate from the town, the bus stops were burndown, The Ghoulies now live in Archie’s house, no worries, he decides to take care of it, maybe in the next episode.

This is everything that changed in the show after the time jump, you know, things can’t be normal at Riverdale, there should be something to fix for our high school heroes. After their high school reunion in 7 years at pops, a new mystery awaits for them to solve, and we’re all for it.