Posted in: CW, Preview, Riverdale, streaming, TV | Tagged: archie, betty, bleeding cool, cable, Cheryl, jughead, preview, riverdale, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, season 5, streaming, teaser, television, the cw, toni, trailer, tv, veronica

Riverdale Season 5 Preview: Hope It Was Just the Line That Went Dead

After taking a brief break to help drop the official trailer for the fourth and final part of Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (which looks great) Riverdale creator and executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was back with the twisted teases for the fifth season. We're going with "twisted" because so far, we've gotten key art of a woman running from a truck late at night, an image of the front of a demonic-looking truck (along with the warning to avoid "the Lonely Highway"), a look at Vanessa Morgan as "Toni Topaz, the Serpent Queen," and another piece of key art that refueled our hopes of an "Afterlife with Archie" adaptation. Now, we have key art showing a phone receiver on the ground (from a payphone) with blood and we're going with broken glass (could always be ice).

Here's a look at Aguirre-Sacasa's Instagram post, with the following caption (with emojis for clue-deciphering) that doesn't exactly boost our faith in the town's emergency services line: "This is #Riverdale 911, what is your emergency? ☎️🐍🚧🏃🏼‍♀️🚛🌪💋👠💔⚰️☠️🚀"- and let us just say one more time how this would be a great season to deep-dive hard into the supernatural.

In September, Aguirre-Sacasa announced that pre-production on the fifth season was officially underway, offering viewers a look at the script covers for the episodes being run through table reads. Continuing their effective use of panels from the comics to represent the episode, we learned that Episode 501 "Chapter Seventy-Seven: Climax" is written by Ace Hasan and Greg Murray, and directed by Pamela Romanowsky (with an old-school Betty/Jughead prom image). Episode 502 "Chapter Seventy-Eight: The Preppy Murders" is written by Janine Saline Schoenberg and Devon Turner, and directed by Gabriel Correa (with a newer, depressing Archie/Jughead panel).

Now while the third episode is pretty much in line with wrapping up the senior year, "Purgatory" and the image chosen for the cover have us very curious. Are they going to kill Archie (KJ Apa)? Probably not, but they might do an "Archie went missing overseas and was presumed dead" storyline. The image they're using is from the comic book Archie 1941 (writers: Brian Augustyn, Mark Waid; illustrator: Peter Krause), where our red-headed lead joins the military and ends up MIA, presumed dead (see what we mean?).

Erinn Westbrook (The Resident) has also joined the cast for the fifth season as Tabitha Tate, the ambitious, entrepreneurial granddaughter of Pop Tate. Seeing serious business potential in her family's business, Tabitha's come to Riverdale to take over Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe in the hopes of franchising the iconic diner, even as the town around it struggles to survive.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!