can i get some more spoilers for asp season 5? ;)
Ooooh ofc! So I’ll start with just a little background, so you can understand how she got to be where she is in S5 after the time jump... it’s all under the cut!
After graduation, Aspen goes to Yale where she studies law. Her parents are both so proud of her, because not only is she the first in the family to attend college...she’s going to an ivy league! amazing! Unfortunately for Aspen, Betty Cooper also attends Yale so try as she might, Asp isn’t able to escape her blonde nemesis. They have a few classes together where they end up reluctantly pairing up for projects, as much as they both despise each other they know and appreciate that the other is good at what she does - so whenever they do team up they actually get amazing grades. They don’t have any interaction socially though, they pretend they don’t know each other outside of the classroom and both have their own social circles. Aspen and Sweetpea stay together for a good few years after high school, he visits her at Yale whenever he can (there is some drama where the other students at Yale see this tatooed trucker turn up in his plaid shirt and think he’s no good for Asp but she stands up for him). Eventually they break up and it is sad and they both still love each other but their social schedules, school, work, distance just takes too much of a toll on the relationship and they decide it’s better for them to call it quits. They both always have the idea that when the time is right, they’ll find their way back to one another - so watch this space.
After college, Aspen moves to New York where she interns for a few years at the District Attorney’s office before passing the bar and becoming a defense lawyer in her own right. She leave’s the DA’s office and starts working for a pretty high profile law firm where she is moved up the ranks quite quickly. As she’s living in New York, Aspen rekindles a friendship with Veronica Lodge who is missing Riverdale and her old life. The girls actually become quite close and see each other regularly, going for drinks, shopping, just generally hanging out you know. It’s Ronnie who finally persuades Asp to come back to Riverdale.
So back in Riverdale, Aspen has admittedly not been in touch as often as she would have liked, or as much as she should have been so she’s not that up to date on the comings and goings of the town. She doesn’t know about Hiram’s agenda or what he’s doing, and it’s only when she gets a tearful call from her mother to tell her that her dad has been arrested for something that Lettie is adamant he didn’t do that Aspen starts to realise something isn’t right. It’s at this point that Veronica turns up at Aspen’s office and tells her she thinks her father might be behind John Mills’ arrest and that Aspen needs to get back to their home town to defend her father in court because she’s the only lawyer that knows enough about Hiram’s tricks to be able to convince a jury to declare her father innocent.
When she gets back to Riverdale the first thing Asp does is go to see her father in jail and get as much information as she possibly can to help defend him. The second thing she does is visit Sweetpea, they have an...emotional reunion. Asp doesn’t quite know how she feels about Toni as Serpent Queen, and she’s not particularly pleased that she’s renamed Le Bonne Nuit the Whyte Wyrm because that was Aspen’s home, it was her plan all along to return the Whyte Wyrm to the Mills family...so that’s a bit of a kick in the teeth and Asponi definitely have some conflict.
.... wow that was a lot, but if anyone is still here or interested I’m happy to answer any more Qs about S5 Asp!!