Time jumps are quite the common TV trope: they can help revitalize an aging series by allowing it to explore new storylines, and for teenage/high school shows, they open up new creative avenues while also aging the characters to more closely match their portrayers. Let’s take a look at some of the shows that have skipped ahead a few years into the future.
Xena is as an infamous warrior on a quest to seek redemption for her past sins against the innocent by using her formidable fighting skills to now, help those who are unable to defend themselves. Xena is accompanied by Gabrielle, who during the series changes from a simple farm girl into an Amazon warrior and Xena's comrade-in-arms.
Half-brothers Lucas and Nathan Scott trade between kinship and rivalry both on the basketball court and in the hearts of their friends in the small, but not so quiet town of Tree Hill, North Carolina.
In the town of Fairview there's a street called Wisteria Lane; a peaceful cul-de-sac with manicured lawns and beautiful houses. It's a place where you know all your neighbors and your neighbors know all about you. It's the perfect suburban fantasy. But, behind every picket fence there are secrets. And, in every seemingly happy home, you'll find jealousy, lust, passion, and sometimes... murder.
A newlywed with the ability to communicate with the earthbound spirits of the recently deceased overcomes skepticism and doubt to help send their important messages to the living and allow the dead to pass on to the other side.
When mentalist Patrick Jane insults a vengeful serial killer, Red John, his loved ones are brutally killed. Faced with the horrifying consequences of misusing his gift for observation and misdirection, Jane lends his skills to the California Bureau of Investigation, all the while hoping that his connections within the CBI will give him the opportunity to track down and revenge himself upon Red John.
An F.B.I. agent is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist and his son in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.
The series follows Leslie Knope, the deputy head of the Parks and Recreation department in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. Knope takes on a project with a nurse named Ann to turn a construction pit into a park, while trying to mentor a bored college-aged intern. However, Leslie must fight through the bureaucrats, problem neighbors, and developers in order to make her dream a reality, all with a camera crew recording her every gaff and mishap.
Four friends band together against an anonymous follower who threatens to reveal their darkest secrets, while unraveling the mystery of the murder of their best friend.
The world we knew is gone. An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months society has crumbled. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living.
Jessica Day is an offbeat and adorable girl in her late 20s who, after a bad breakup, moves in with three single guys. Goofy, positive, vulnerable and honest to a fault, Jess has faith in people, even when she shouldn't. Although she's dorky and awkward, she's comfortable in her own skin. More prone to friendships with women, she's not used to hanging with the boys--especially at home.
Emma Swan, a 28-year-old bail bonds collector, has always been a fiercely independent person since being abandoned as a baby. Her son Henry, who she gave up for adoption years ago, finds and tries to convince Emma that she is Snow White's missing daughter. Henry shows Emma that in the fairytale, Prince Charming and Snow White sent her away to protect her. Emma doesn't believe him and takes Henry back to Storybrooke...
Set during the Cold War period in the 1980s, The Americans is the story of Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two Soviet KGB officers posing as an American married couple in the suburbs of Washington D.C. and their neighbor, Stan Beeman, an FBI Counterintelligence agent.
Set ninety-seven years after a nuclear war has destroyed civilization, when a spaceship housing humanity's lone survivors sends one hundred juvenile delinquents back to Earth, in hopes of possibly re-populating the planet.
At once deeply observed and intriguingly elusive, The Affair explores the emotional effects of an extramarital relationship. Noah is a New York City schoolteacher and novelist who is happily married, but resents his dependence on his wealthy father-in-law. Alison is a young waitress trying to piece her life and marriage back together in the wake of a tragedy. Set in Montauk at the end of Long Island, the provocative drama unfolds separately from both the male and female perspectives, using the distinct memory biases of both to tell the story.
Jane Villanueva, a religious young Latina woman, has her vow to save her virginity until her marriage shattered when a doctor mistakenly artificially inseminates her during a checkup. The biological donor is a married man, a former playboy, and cancer survivor who is not only the new owner of the hotel where Jane works, but was also her former teenage crush.
Paul and Ally juggle full-time careers, ageing parents, a mortgage, upheavals in their relationship and the unenviable curveballs of parenting their young children, Luke and Ava— exploring the parental-paradox that it is possible to love your child to the horizon of the universe and, in the very same moment, being apoplectically angry enough to want to send them there.