In the Riverdale recap, Betty tries to figure out if her father is the Black Hood while Archie does his own sleuthing in an attempt to protect his father…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Previously on Riverdale…following Betty sacrificing her faux brother Chic to the Black Hood a week ago, she’s beginning her own investigation into whether or not her father is the man behind these vengeful killings in town.
Never mind the fact that Hal Cooper was already a prime suspect last season when Jason Blossom was murdered, but apparently this vanilla ice cream cone in khakis also has the heart of a killer — or at least that’s what they want us to believe.
Meanwhile, Archie is determined to protect his father from the killer now that he’s on the loose again but the return of the Black Hood begins causing a rift with his employer/part time daddy Hiram Lodge, who only cares about getting his wife elected as mayor so they can build their for-profit-prison in town.
As it turns out, Hiram’s business practices and lack of faith in his own daughter lead to a problem at home as well as alliances on this show shift more often than cabinet positions in Trump’s White House.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of Riverdale titled ‘Chapter Thirty-Three: Shadow of a Doubt’…
The Hunt for the Hood
Archie is going door-to-door handing out fliers for his dad’s campaign, but what he’s really doing is searching for those pair of piercing green eyes that are forever burned in his brain after watching the Black Hood shoot his father in Pop’s all those months ago. That plan is dimwitted at best as Hiram tells Archie when he finds out what he’s doing. Rather than knocking on doors and trying to figure out who might be the killer, Hiram suggests that Archie reform his Dark Circle (sigh) and bring vigilante justice back to Riverdale.
To help matters, Hiram has personally found the town a new lawman with a guy named Sheriff Minetta, who has taken over after Sheriff Keller was relieved of his post. Hiram believes this new sheriff will get the job done where they old one failed time and time again.
At school, Archie follows orders and regroups the Dark Circle along with a new member — Kevin Keller — and that’s when they hear a confession from Moose. He didn’t murder Midge but he did find out she was cheating on him with a member of the Southside Serpents so perhaps they are responsible for her death.
Reggie charges into the Serpents’ classroom filled with testosterone and zero brains before demanding answers but Archie and Jughead are able to diffuse the situation before it explodes. Afterwards, Jughead finds out that his pal Fangs Fogerty, who was caught backstage helping Midge with her lines (and plenty more apparently) was the one hooking up with Moose’s girlfriend. He didn’t tell the cops about it because he believed they’d finger him for the murder even though he had nothing to do with it.
Unfortunately for Fangs, Jughead’s behind the scenes documentary caught him on tape in Midge’s dressing room and when the new sheriff gets a glimpse of that video once it somehow leaks to the local newspaper, he ends up arresting the Southside Serpent for the murder.
In a rage, Reggie coordinates payback by going to the Whyte Wyrm where the Dark Circle, minus Archie, slash all the tires of the Southside Serpents and even start an actual dumpster fire as a message. When Archie finds out he confronts the group he helped build but then discovers that Reggie has taken over as leader and they are being personally funded by none other than Hiram Lodge.
Slowly but surely, Archie is starting to find out what kind of man Hiram Lodge really is.
Side note — if you’ve watched a single episode of Sons of Anarchy, you’d know that these high school kids wearing varsity jackets would have been beaten down and bloodied for touching one motorcycle much less slashing all the tires. I digress…
The Heart of Darkness
Betty is feeling both remorseful and curious after last week’s episode when she basically handed Chic over to the Black Hood and then becoming suspicious that her father might actually be the man killing all these people in town.
Betty decides to conduct her own investigation after asking Cheryl Blossom for advice. She’s the perfect candidate for help considering Cheryl had to live through the horror of finding out that her father killed her brother a season ago. Cheryl tells Betty that if she wants to find out if her father is the Black Hood, she needs a confession or concrete proof before going to the cops.
So Betty begins her investigation while trying to keep everything as normal as possible at home. When she checks her father’s day planner, she discovers that his schedule coordinates perfectly with every, single incident involving the Black Hood. Hal was either in a meeting or out of town each time the Black Hood struck.
She then finds out that Hal is still paying rent on his old apartment that he got after splitting with Alice so she breaks into have a look around. There Betty finds the Nancy Drew codebook that the Black Hood once used to create a coded message that only she was able to break.
Betty does manage to get sidetracked when she gets a call from the local coroner offering up information about a mutilated body that just got brought into the morgue for some cash (remember Alice pays the coroner for information so she can write about it in the Riverdale Register).
Betty believes the body will belong to Chic but when she shows up to look at the body, she discovers that it’s not him. Still, Betty is feeling awfully guilty about basically handing him over for the Black Hood to murder a week ago.
Back at home, Betty tries to open up to her parents by telling them about her strange relationship with the Black Hood and how she handed Chic over to him a week ago. Betty explains that there’s this darkness that lives inside of her and Hal comforts his daughter by telling her that he has the same kinds of feelings.
So he has to be the Black Hood, right? Not so fast.
The Great Debate
With the mayoral election coming up fast, Fred Andrews and Hermoine Lodge are preparing to clash in a debate at town hall. Ahead of that meeting, Fred gets a note on his door that reads ‘You’re Next Sinner’, which freaks everybody out because it appears to be from the Black Hood. Still, Fred refuses to cater to this threat and says that they should move forward with the debate.
As for the Lodge family, Veronica is suddenly being drawn deeper into the business after she extorted the St. Clair family for a million dollars last week as payback for Nick trying to kidnap and kill Archie. Thanks to that slick move, the five families have sent emissaries (their children) to meet with Veronica to pitch her on ideas for the next big investment from the Lodge family fund.
Veronica finds the perfect opportunity with a legit casino opening in town but her father shoots down the idea and then tells her that the money she took from the St. Clair family has been tied up in a trust that won’t be opened until she’s 21. Veronica is not happy with her father so she ends up throwing her support behind Fred for mayor.
As for that debate, the candidates are sparring when Hermoine drops the fact that the Dark Circle has been terrorizing people around town and then reveals that Archie was the one who organized them in the first place. Archie soon figures out that Hiram was funding the Dark Circle to cause problems that would harm his father’s political campaign.
Before he has a chance to confront him, however, the Black Hood appears in the rafters and begins firing down on the crowd with a sniper rifle. He’s apparently the worst shot ever because nobody gets hit, but Hal does manage to rush into save his daughter Betty, which seemingly clears him of suspicion of being the Black Hood. Archie dives to help his father and everybody is in a panic after the shooting.
The attack does manage to clear Fangs’ name from killing Midge, but that doesn’t seem to matter much to the people in town, who still want his head on a platter for the murder.
When it’s time for his release, Fangs is surrounded by the Southside Serpents as a mob of people try to get at him. In the middle of the crowd, Reggie merges with a gun in his pocket, looking for revenge against the man he still believes killed Midge. Archie arrives just in time to tackle Reggie but the gun still goes off and a second later Fangs sees a hole in his shirt and blood soaking his clothes.
Fangs has been shot and he’s bleeding out on the street much to the horror of both Archie and Reggie, who are still fighting on the ground.
As for Betty, she still can’t let go that her suspicion that Hal is the Black Hood so she calls and asks him to meet her where this all started — at town hall when she made her impassioned speech about Riverdale getting back to the values that made this a town worth living in. She goes there — gun in hand — waiting to see if Hal arrives and possibly confesses to his role as the Black Hood.
Betty is still sitting there when the episode ends so the question remains — is Hal Cooper really the Black Hood?
We won’t know until next week because as Betty was waiting for her father, Cheryl got a knock on the door and when she opened, the Black Hood was waiting there for her.
Tune into the next episode of Riverdale on Wednesday night at 8pm ET to find out what happens!
