Riverdale trailer shows Lili Reinhart’s Betty and KJ Apa’s Archie KISS

It looks like fans of The CW’s mystery series will not have to wait much longer for some new episodes.

On Wednesday, the trailer for the upcoming fifth season of Riverdale was released to the show’s official YouTube channel, confirming a release date of January 20, 2021.

In the trailer, series leads Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart in character as Jughead Jones and Betty Cooper are seen visiting a prison inmate, where they are warned that: ‘Something’s coming…and it’s going to hit you like a Mack truck.’

The cast is then shown watching videos that were sent to their characters depicting a series of murders committed by individuals wearing masks representing each one of them.

After a sequence is shown of Sprouse and Reinhart’s characters in bed together, the entire main cast is seen celebrating at their prom together, a highly anticipated scene that was notably cut from the last season.

Apa and Reinhart are then seen in character as Archie Andrews and Betty Cooper, respectively, kissing passionately, to which Camila Mendes, also in character as Veronica Lodge, tearfully relates to an unseen cast member.

A series of disconnected scenes of Reinhart and Sprouse encountering one of the masked figures, an altercation at the prom, and the potential aftermath of the event are seen, with Reinhart stating: ‘I’m never going to get that image out of my head.’

Sprouse is then seen punching another character, to which a crowd is seen reacting; the cast is also shown taking prom photos, which are juxtaposed by another image of the masked individuals holding someone in an Archie mask at gunpoint.

After Apa is pictured kneeling in front of a gravestone and a knife is seen being dragged across the face of Trinity Likins’ face, Reinhart is seen pointing a gun at an unseen character.

Mendes finishes the trailer by asking a crowd: ‘Is everyone having a good time tonight?’

The trailer only utilized scenes from the episodes intended to be broadcasted at the end of season four; the producers elected to hold on to the episodes and repurpose them as the beginning of season five as a response to the onset of COVID-19.

The upcoming fifth season of the mystery series will feature a time-skip of a few years for the characters in order to show how they change over time.

The series first premiered in 2017 and was based on the main cast of characters from Archie Comics; the show was intended to utilize the source material in a way that had not been done before.

Reception of the show has generally been positive, with many critics praising its reimagining of the characters in an updated setting.

Riverdale has also been a success on various streaming platforms, with each season’s Netflix release being more popular than the last.