'Riverdale' Fans Have New Evidence That Hiram Lodge Could Be the Black Hood

Who is the Black Hood? That's the question at the center of Riverdale this season and as the [...]

By Nicole Drum

Who is the Black Hood? That's the question at the center of Riverdale this season and as the mystery unfolds on The CW series, fans are trying to unmask the killer as well. Now, a new fan theory as some convincing evidence that Hiram Lodge could be behind the killer.

Even before we met Hiram Lodge (Mark Consuelos) on screen we knew he wasn't exactly a nice guy. After all, he was on trial for fraud and embezzlement back in season one and appears to have arranged for Nick St. Clair (Graham Phillips) to get injured in a car accident after Hiram discovered he had made unwelcome advances to Veronica (Camila Mendes.) But could he really be the Black Hood? A video posted by Twitter user @Chloe1D seems to strongly suggest that he is.

In the video, the pitch of one of the Black Hood's phone calls to Betty (Lili Reinhart) is adjusted to a more normal tone and then compared to a scene where Hiram is speaking. The two voices are eerily similar. You can check it out below.

But even if Hiram is the voice behind the Black Hood, he doesn't meet any of the rest of the evidence as to who he is -- particularly, Hiram doesn't have green eyes. However, as Refinery 29 reports, the deeper theory isn't that Hiram is behind all of the killings attributed to the Black Hood. Instead, the theory is that there are two Black Hoods and while one of them is on a purification spree as he claims to be, the other is simply Hiram Lodge taking advantage of the situation.

Here's how it breaks down. There is only one killing connected to the Black Hood's phone calls to Betty and that is the killing of the Sugarman. Betty gave his identity to the Black Hood, who promptly murdered him in his jail cell. The other name Betty gives the killer, Nick's, evades killing because he wasn't a real "son of Riverdale." What he is, however, is the son of one of Hiram's friends. Not killing Nick when another person accused of a similar offense who also wasn't a real child of Riverdale -- we're talking about Ms. Grundy -- was killed seems to point that maybe the hood on the phone has a slightly different agenda.

That agenda could be to rattle things up so badly in Riverdale that he could swoop in, buy things up, and turn a tidy profit. Remember, in season one, Hiram paid the Serpents to destroy the drive-in so he could buy the property and develop it. This season, he quietly bought Pop's Diner, though he's kept that quiet. He also encouraged Archie's (KJ Apa) Red Circle army, which caused unrest in Riverdale.

There's also some other things that could point to there being two Hoods. When Betty received a letter from the Black Hood, Sheriff Keller noticed that there were inconsistencies in the notes. The information in the notes was also public information and nothing that Hiram couldn't have gotten and used to twist Betty into helping him. Even finding out where Polly had gone wouldn't have been terribly difficult, considering that Betty and Veronica are best friends.

The Hiram Lodge theory is only the latest suggestion of who the killer is. Recently a theory emerged that Penny Peabody was behind the killings, though we may be finding out who the killer is very soon. Until then, though, fans will just have to keep watching and see who the clues point to next.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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