TV’s Best and Worst Time Jumps

The Affair

The Showtime drama’s fifth and final season tried, and woefully failed, to fill the void left by Ruth Wilson and Joshua Jackson when it introduced Alison and Cole’s all-grown-up daughter Joanie — a full 30 years in the future.

Week after week, we watched her wallow in her own misery as she cheated on her husband, abandoned her children, and eventually confronted her mother’s killer — who wasn’t even brought to justice, by the way! — before Old Man Noah provided the clarity she needed about Mom and Dad to break free from the generational trauma that plagued her for decades. It was a bold but unsatisfying way to bring the series full circle.

The Blacklist

Following the exit of leading lady Megan Boone — which prompted the death of her character, Elizabeth Keen — The Blacklist had an opportunity to completely reinvent itself upon returning for Season 9: Liz and Red’s hot-and-cold relationship was over, Red’s real identity had (more or less) been settled, and the leap forward by two years offered a much-needed fresh start, creatively. Instead, despite the NBC drama’s initial attempt to convince us that Red and his FBI contacts had all moved on after two years, the task force got back together within two episodes, and the show’s Case of the Week structure resumed quickly… now without the central conflicts that had long propelled Red’s involvement with the FBI.

Meanwhile, the time jump’s one major development — Dembe’s an FBI agent?! — has both puzzled us and jettisoned the relationship between Dembe and Red, which has always been one of the series’ strongest and most meaningful bonds. (New Season 9 episodes air Thursdays at 8/7c on NBC.)

Ghost Whisperer

Fans of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s ghostly CBS procedural were spooked for a different reason when the show suddenly skipped ahead five years in the final season premiere. The jump was largely employed to allow Melinda’s newborn son to grow into his abilities, but is that really what any show needs? More kids?

New Girl

The Zooey Deschanel comedy’s seventh and final season wasn’t bad, per se. It just wasn’t necessary. The show could have easily ended with Nick and Jess finally getting together and sharing that epic elevator kiss. Instead, the comedy returned for a mostly forgettable run of episodes that jumped ahead a full three years to show Nick and Jess tie the knot and eventually move out of the loft.

Riverdale

The CW drama certainly shook things up by leaping forward seven years right after the teens graduated high school in Season 5: Archie was an Army veteran, Betty was an FBI agent in training, Jughead was a published novelist and Veronica was married to a smarmy Wall Street broker named Chad. (Plus, Archie and Betty were hooking up on the sly.) The time jump was awkwardly placed midway through the season, though, and despite the superficial changes, the show quickly clicked back into its tried-and-true formula of small-town murder mysteries and love triangles. (And hey, they were already acting like adults anyway.) At least we got Archie Andrews in uniform.

Brockmire

The oddly prescient final season saw a future ravaged by climate change, a country divided among “disputed” and “non-disputed” lands, and talk of an epidemic that resulted in victims being burned in piles. All of that was interesting to a point, but the sociopolitical commentary too often took the focus away from baseball. While part of the 2030-set final season centered on Jim and Jules’ attempts to save America’s pastime, the sport often felt like an afterthought in a way it wasn’t during the IFC comedy’s first three seasons. Above all else, we really missed seeing Jim in the broadcast booth.

NCIS

Season 18 of the typically traditional procedural was time-jumping all over the place! Following a cold open to the season that saw sniper Gibbs gun down McGee at an airstrip (!), the show leaped back a whole year, to tell a story set during a gap in Season 17’s timeline. A half-dozen episodes later, NCIS jumped forward to the present, to reveal, among other things, that Jimmy Palmer’s wife, Breena, had died of COVID.

The Mentalist

Midway through Season 6 — and sparked by the vanquishing of Red John — the procedural skipped ahead two years in the name of a mild “reboot” in which Jane had to be lured from an idyllic, extradition-free island life to serve as a consultant for the FBI. It took some finagling, but Jane got Lisbon added to the team of feds, while Rigsby and Van Pelt were effectively replaced by new characters played by Emily Swallow and Rockmond Dunbar. The series only lasted another season-and-a-half in this manner, but nonetheless culminated in a long-awaited celebratory event.

The Walking Dead

The six-year time jump with which the AMC drama ended Andrew Lincoln’s last episode did more than just allow the show to blow past at least some of Michonne and Daryl’s grief over Rick’s “death.” The Season 9 fast-forward also quietly sent packing the since-returned Lauren Cohan as Maggie, introduced several new characters and aged Judith into Cailey Fleming — a genuine li’l ass-kicker. If only it hadn’t ushered in the era of “wiggy” Carol as well!

Once Upon a Time

Though the Season 7 “requel” (reboot/sequel) curse transported most returning characters to present-day Seattle, the fact is that a good decade had in fact passed, as evidenced by the young girl who came knocking on her dad Henry Mills’ apartment door. What would be the fantasy series’ farewell season thus proceeded to fill in the blanks on what happened in the years prior, but all we could do was wait for everyone to “wake up” and remember being the characters we knew and loved.

Pretty Little Liars

Because it would have been much harder for “A” to stalk the girls while they were all attending separate schools, the Freeform drama bypassed their collective college experiences and lured them back to Rosewood as young adults midway through Season 6. But because the show only lasted for another season and a half after the time jump, the Liars’ adult years almost feel like a fever dream in hindsight — and not just the part about Spencer having an evil British twin.

The Resident

The Fox medical drama was dealt a tough hand when star Emily VanCamp opted to leave the series ahead of Season 5, at a time when VanCamp’s Nic and Matt Czuchry’s Conrad were more in love than ever. Thus, after Nic died from car accident-induced head trauma, The Resident jumped ahead three years, freeing viewers from the most intense and hard-to-watch phase of Conrad’s grief. Moving past Nic’s death so quickly was no doubt a creative gamble, but the time jump has — thus far, at least — allowed for fresh storytelling as it continues to honor Conrad and Nic’s relationship. (New Season 5 episodes air Tuesdays at 8/7c on Fox.)

Xena: Warrior Princess

Sure, everybody loves babies, but would you really want to watch a show where Xena changes diapers all day? The producers certainly didn’t think so, opting to jump ahead 25 years, reintroducing Xena’s daughter as a fellow warrior princess. And because Xena and her trusty sidekick/lover Gabrielle were trapped in ice for that quarter-century leap, neither of them aged a day!

Jane the Virgin

The CW soap’s decision to suddenly jump ahead three years — mere seconds after Jane learned of her husband Michael’s “death,” no less — took us completely by surprise. And while we initially felt cheated out of the opportunity to mourn alongside Gina Rodriguez’s character, the jump ultimately proved fruitful, extending the story for an additional two and a half seasons. (Plus, you know, Michael was never dead to begin with!)

One Tree Hill

For better (Baby Jamie!) or worse (Nathan’s new facial hair!), this teen drama opted to skip “the college years,” jumping half a decade ahead between Seasons 4 and 5. This creative shake-up breathed an additional four years of life into the show, blessing us with iconic whack jobs like Nanny Carrie and trigger-happy Katie in the process. It’s actually ironic that this WB/CW drama is considered a “teen show,” as it actually spent more time focused on the characters’ adult lives than their days in high school.

The Americans

For the final season of FX’s Cold War drama, the action jumped ahead three years to 1987, which ratcheted up the already unbearable tension a few additional notches. Elizabeth was utterly exhausted from doing all the spy work herself for years, Paige was well on her way to becoming a spy herself, and the possibility of peace between the U.S. and Russia put Elizabeth and Philip on a collision course of clashing ideals. It was an elegant twist that kicked off a superb stretch run.

The Originals

This Vampire Diaries spinoff employed several significant time jumps during its five-season run, all of which presented Hope — Klaus Mikaelson’s hybrid daughter — at different stages of her oft-endangered life. But it was the eight-year jump between its final two seasons that really changed the game, turning Hope into a teenager and setting the stage for The Originals’ still-running spinoff Legacies.

Halt and Catch Fire

The period piece, which spanned a total of 10 years, took its biggest leap yet in its fourth (and best) season, which catapulted the show ahead a full three years in order to navigate the mid-‘90s rise of the World Wide Web. The final episodes were as much (if not more so) about the lasting connections that Joe, Cameron, Gordon and Donna had built as they were about their pursuit of technological greatness. The season culminated in a lovely finale that found Joe, our onetime antihero, starting over as a more fulfilled human being, and Cameron and Donna on the cusp of restoring their partnership in the wake of Gordon’s tragic (yet beautiful) demise. (We still get goosebumps just thinking about the moment where Donna approached Cameron outside the diner and said, “I have an idea.”)

Parks and Recreation

The NBC comedy ended Season 6 — and began Season 7 — by jumping three years ahead to 2017, where Leslie Knope had become head of the National Park Service’s Midwest branch. (She even got bangs, to make it clear that time had passed.) And even though Parks and Rec maintained its usual sunny optimism throughout its final season, the time jump added a newfound intrigue that made Season 7 particularly enjoyable: Why were Leslie and Ron feuding? Had April and Andy become a boring couple? And why don’t we actually have those holographic gadgets that appeared in Parks‘ version of the future?

Desperate Housewives

Talk about a shake-up! The final few minutes of the ABC drama’s fourth season finale jumped five years into the future, revealing — among other things — new kids for Gaby and Carlos, a new man for Susan, and a (questionable) new hair ‘do for Lynette. The jarring jump gave our characters completely new journeys to navigate, resulting in four more seasons of suburban shenanigans.

The 100

Thanks to the magic — er, science — of cryosleep, the characters on this CW drama didn’t age a day during the show’s unthinkable 125-year time jump between Seasons 5 and 6. The 100 was famous for reinventing itself every season, but this time jump took that to another level. And another planet.

Alias

How do you completely upend a sexy spy show in which the bad guys have been vanquished and the slow-burn love story is about to have its happily ever after? Have the lead character wake up in Hong Kong with no idea how she got there, then have her boyfriend show up to reveal that she’s been missing for two years (!) and he’s married someone else in the interim (!!). “I cried so much for her during those first episodes of that season,” star Jennifer Garner told TVLine. “If you were gutted, I can’t even tell you, it was like it was happening [to me].”

Fringe

By leaping ahead more than two decades, to the year 2036, the sci-fi series’ final season returned to the dystopian future first glimpsed in Season 4’s “Letters of Transit.” Released from a long-ambered state, Olivia, Peter, Walter and Astrid worked with an adult Etta to thwart the 27th-century Observers who had traveled through time to take over Earth, by collecting videos Walter had prerecorded years prior. As such, the farewell season was a thrilling mix of puzzle-solving, family bonding, heart-rending sacrifices and good ol’ time travel paradoxes, building to a very final scene that loaded so much meaning and emotion into a simple doodle. It was, to paraphrase a wise man, our very favorite thing.