Spoilers ahead for tonight’s episode of Riverdale, titled “Silent Night, Deadly Night.”
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Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa may have already given fans a hint about the next big twist in the ongoing saga of the Black Hood — even before the serial killer’s identity was revealed on tonight’s midseason finale.
That would be way back on December 1, when a tweet featuring the cover to episode fifteen’s upcoming script, “There Will Be Blood,” featured a caption from Aguirre-Sacasa teasing “the unlikeliest return of all.”
At the time, the guesses from the fans all centered on Jason or Clifford Blossom, or maybe Joaquin, who had relocated at the end of season 1. Another name has now joined the list of Riverdale’s dead, though: Joseph Svenson, a Riverdale High janitor who was shot to death by Sheriff Keller while fleeing the scene of one of the Black Hood’s crimes.
Svenson’s eye color did not match what Archie had been seeing in his mind whenever he thought back to the Black Hood, and of course an episode earlier in the season had already established that two different “Black Hood” notes had been written by two entirely different handwriting styles. This has led many fans to believe that perhaps Svenson is not the only Black Hood in Riverdale.
Comments from Aguirre-Sacasa to ComicBook.com earlier in the week indicated that audiences have not yet seen the last of the Black Hood, and that he might be rising from the dead in the not-too-distant future.
With many fans already convinced that there was more than one Black Hood, it will be a hard sell to persuade them that The CW’s most grounded comics adaptation is reviving minor characters (Svenson was introduced just a few weeks ago) from the dead.
Aguirre-Sacasa told us, though, that the second half of season 2 would launch an entirely new mystery. How wild — and potentially terrifying for the characters — would it be if, six episodes into that new status quo, it was revealed that the hand guiding 2018’s chaos was none other than the Black Hood?
If that were the case, it might also provide an interesting opportunity to look into the question of just what Svenson’s role in everything was. Last week, the audience learned that Svenson’s family had been murdered when he was a child, and that the killer was killed by a lynch mob. This week, Nana Blossom revealed herself to have been part of that lynch mob, along with Betty Cooper’s grandfather. It turns out Svenson had apparently implicated the wrong man in his family’s death, leading to the town’s “primal sin.”
What, then, would make him decide to “atone” by killing more people? And why was he seemingly so scared of Archie and Veronica when they confronted him last week? Is it possible that his nearly-silent confrontation with Archie and Betty this week actually happened because he was being manipulated, or even on the other end of a rifle scope from the other Black Hood?
Riverdale airs on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW. New episodes will be back on January 17.
