‘Riverdale’: 7 Questions Raised by “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Tonight’s episode of Riverdale was full of unexpected twists and turns and while there were some big reveals, as the show goes on break for the next four weeks, those reveals only left us with even more questions.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Riverdale, “Chapter Twenty-Six: The Tell-Tale Heart”, below.

Where to even begin? Last week’s episode ended with Betty (Lili Reinhart) walking in on her mother cleaning up blood, her brother rocking in a corner, and a dead body on the dining room floor, and this week picks up with Betty helping Alice dispose of the body. As Betty starts to unravel, so do a lot of other threads in the tapestry of Riverdale. Turns out the dead guy was Chic’s drug dealer, Hal is hooking up with Penelope — and not as a business transaction, the FBI agent turns out to be fake, and Mayor McCoy (Robin Givens) is breaking ranks with the Lodges. It’s a lot.

Some of tonight’s madness we know is leading up to more reveals. FP Jones (Skeet Ulrich) gets involved with helping Alice (Mädchen Amick) and Betty deal with that dead body and in the process hinted at both Alice’s past as well as her relationship with FP. Amick told ComicBook.com that audiences would be seeing more in coming episodes. “We’ve got some good stuff we get into later,” she explained. “But right now. there are a lot of questions we can’t help but asking until we get to that future good stuff.”

Here are seven questions we have after tonight’s wild episode of Riverdale.

Who is the dead guy?

On first glance, it would be almost easy to buy the idea that a “client” of Chic’s came to the door, things got weird when Alice tried to intervene, and the guy ended up dead. Alice is kind of a mama bear, after all. But as the episode unfolded, it was obvious that there’s a lot more to the story. Not only did Betty figure out he’s a drug dealer, but when FP helped properly dispose of the body he paused almost as though he recognized the deceased.

So, who is this guy? Is it possible that what led to his death was not a drug deal gone awry or a client call but, instead, him coming to expose Chic to Alice? Even from his first appearance, some fans have questioned whether “Chic Cooper” really is the long-lost son Alice has been pining for and if it turns out this kid isn’t that would definitely be a secret to kill over.

Did Hermione just bring Archie into the mob?

At the end of tonight’s episode, it was revealed that Agent Adams wasn’t really an FBI agent. He was someone that Hermione Lodge (Marisol Nichols) had hired to test Archie’s (KJ Apa) loyalty. Even under the pressure of threats to his father, Archie chooses to side with the Lodges, tipping Hiram off. When it’s revealed that “Agent Adams” was really someone Hermione had hired, she explains to Archie that he passed the test and told him “welcome to the family.” And while Archie is dating Veronica (Camila Mendes) between the test of loyalty and Hiram offering Archie an “internship” previously, it that wasn’t exactly a relationship-based “family” welcome. It sounded more like Archie had just earned his admission to the Lodge’s shady crime world — which might mean that Archie just joined the mob.

What are the Lodges up to?

When negotiations with the South Side broke down, the Lodges decided that they had to move forward with their plans for the site of the former South Side High School. It was a call that caused Mayor McCoy to break ranks which begs the question what are the Lodges really up to? They’ve been quietly grabbing up land — specifically on the South Side — and while the SoDale project is the very public face of what the Lodges are doing, there is clearly something more. But what? Now that we know that the Lodges have mob ties, and might even be an organized crime family themselves, exactly what their plans for the South Side are even more of a mystery than ever.

What is Chic up to?

Removing the whole random dead guy issue for a moment, tonight’s episode made it very clear the long-lost Cooper son is up to no good. It was revealed via Chic’s (Hart Denton) expressions that he delighted in Alice and Betty fighting, that he has been faking the fragile, frightened demeanor, and that he has something out for Hal. In one of the last moments of the episode, Chic is seen cutting Hal out of family photos. He also answered the door when Hal showed up as though it was his home, not Hal’s.

So, what is Chic’s endgame? Is he determined to cut Hal out of the family entirely, perhaps blaming him (and rightly so) for his childhood in an orphanage? Or, considering his own shady dealings, is there something more sinister going on? Even Denton himself told ComicBook.com that Chic’s presence is going to make things complicated for everyone involved.

“A lot of these people, they grew up together or they’ve known each other for years and years,” Denton said. “Then you bring in somebody who is family of someone who is so respected in the town and there’s almost a level of expectation for them to also take me in, as well, because there’s a blood relation. But when you see the way that I am and the way I go about things, it doesn’t make that exactly easy for a lot of people.”

How long have Hal and Penelope been together?

Tonight, it was revealed that Hal and Penelope have an intimate relationship by choice, not by business arrangement. Penelope even admitted to Cheryl that it was fairly serious. But Hal hasn’t been out of the Cooper house for very long and doesn’t really seem the sort to jump immediately into a relationship — especially with a Blossom. Is it possible that Hal and Penelope have been together a lot longer than just a few days or weeks? It certainly seems so, and it kind of makes us wonder if that relationship started while Clifford Blossom was still alive.

How much does Veronica know?

While we’ve seen Veronica be brought further and further into the Lodge family plans, when Veronica went to warn Mayor McCoy that her parents planned to expose her affair with Sheriff Keller to discredit her, it seemed like Veronica almost wanted to thwart her family’s plan. If that’s the case, then we have to wonder how much Veronica really knows. Have her parents truly told her everything about what they are doing like it seems, or are they potentially putting Veronica through a high-reassure test not unlike what Hermione did to Archie with Agent Adams?

How does this tie to the Black Hood?

We haven’t heard too much about the Black Hood since the midseason finale, but that doesn’t mean the question of if they really unmasked the right person or not has disappeared. And in tonight’s episode it isn’t just the mystery dead guy whose death makes waves. There was also a gang land-style killing in Riverdale as well and when Kevin Keller (Casey Cott) tells his friends about it, it prompts Jughead (Cole Sprouse) to ask if the Black Hood is back.

Could the killer be back? With all of the shady dealings going on in town — the mystery dead dude, the Lodge family shady business, the brewing civil war — it wouldn’t surprise us if the Black Hood might pop up again, bent on cleansing Riverdale of its sins.

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

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