Liam Hoofe reviews the nineteenth episode of Riverdale season 2…
After last week’s excellent Carrie the Musical inspired episode, this week’s Riverdale had plenty of surprises in store as it races towards its season finale later next month.
The crux of this episode was the drama surrounding the Hooper family and the aftermath of Mitch’s death at the end of the last episode. Following on from the murder, and the presumed return of The Black Hood, Betty and Jughead went into full-blown mystery inc mode and set about investigating their chief suspect, Betty’s brother, Chic. It didn’t take long for the investigations to uncover a shocking secret though. Chic is not Betty’s brother. To be fair, we should have seen it coming, but I was so engrossed in the idea of Chic being The Black Hood (more on that later) that I didn’t consider this an option.
As it turned out, Chic had lived with Betty’s real brother, and as the episode unravelled, it turned out that he had killed him and then chose to assume his identity the day Alice and Betty showed up. It was a revelation that shook the Cooper family, and things would only get crazier as Alice, distraught from the news that her real son was dead, and initially believing it was her fault thanks to a fabricated story from Chic, ran into the arms of Jughead’s father, FP. FP has quietly grown into one of the show’s likeable characters, and I think I might actually want to see Alice and FP get together, not sure how that’s happened. Anyway, Alice revealed that the child was FP’s, which I guess means that Jughead and Betty now share a deceased half-brother. Just when I thought Riverdale couldn’t get any stranger.
With all of these blockbuster revelations going on, Betty decided she needed to use The Black Hood, who had been contacting her throughout the episode, to rid Riverdale of Chic once and for all. It was a big decision from Betty and one that edges her closer to the dark side. After she leads Chic to The Blackhood at the end of the episode, she returns home, only to realise that…. her dad isn’t at home. That’s right, it looks as though the show is pointing towards big bad Hal Cooper being The Black Hood, and well, it makes a lot of sense. He was there at Betty’s speech last season, the one that inspired The Black Hood, he was there at Carrie: The Musical last week, he has plenty of reason to be pissed off at a lot of people in Riverdale, and it explains the knowledge of Betty’s past.
With a few episodes left to go, though, I wouldn’t rule out the show trying to pull one last big twist. Riverdale is, for better or worse, one of the most outrageous shows on television, and the writers are fairly shameless when it comes to outlandish plotlines. Chic is presumed dead after his run-in with The Black Hood, but the first rule of television is that they’re not dead until you’ve seen the body. That same rule could also apply to Betty’s real brother, Charles. Then there are the less logical options – Riverdale could just decide that Ethel was The Black Hood all along, though, that would be a stretch, even for them.
Elsewhere on this week’s show, Archie got kidnapped by Nick St Clair in a fairly bland subplot. Graham Phillips, who plays Nick, did a great job at hamming it up throughout the episode, but the outcome was so predictable that it never really managed to grip me. Archie and Hiram agreed to take down the Black Hood at the end of the episode, which could set Archie on an interesting collision course with Betty. Honestly, I wouldn’t rule out Hiram already being in cahoots with The Black Hood anyway. Having a masked madman running around the town certainly benefits his plans for the town, allowing him to manipulate the frightened townsfolk.
Mitch’s death was dealt with fairly quickly. The show opened with her funeral, and a rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone by Cheryl. Sheriff Keller has come under fire from it though, and frankly, it’s about time. While he is a sympathetic character, Cheryl did have a point when she pointed out the fact he has managed to solve nothing in the last two years. He’s basically a token police officer at this point. His downward spiral could prove interesting though, and could he be an outside shout as the Black Hood? I doubt it, but stranger things have happened.
Overall, ‘Passengers’ was an excellent episode of television. Sure, Riverdale is an outrageous show at times, but it is also one of the most gripping on television when it wants to be. The Cooper family drama played out perfectly, and with only 3 episodes to go, it looks like we’re in for an explosive season finale.
SEE ALSO: You can check out the trailer and images for next week’s episode here
Liam Hoofe
