Riverdish

Where does one even start when trying to unpack Hal Cooper? Buckle up, folks, because Hal’s story is a real doozy. Whether we like it or not, we all go around day to day holding on to emotional baggage that we have inherited from family members before us. However, most of us do not deal with this baggage by donning a homemade hood and terrorizing an entire community of people by becoming a serial killer. Does therapy even exist in this town?

The Coopers were originally a part of the Blossom family, making them one of the founding families of Riverdale. (Well, technically the Uktena tribe resided there first, but that is a whole other can of worms.) It seems as though ever since the Blossom brothers tapped their first maple tree, the family has been plagued with more than their fair share of issues. Perhaps calling them “issues” is putting it too lightly. As the brothers’ business continued to boom, their respective families became more and more divided, driven by greed and hate. So divided, in fact, that one of the brothers murdered the other and sparked the one side of the family to change their surname to Cooper and forge a new identity in town.

We know that residents in Riverdale have a history of taking games a little too seriously, but the Cooper/Blossom rivalry brought Family Feud to a whole new level. And while the Blossoms might be the family that lives in a Gothic mansion and dresses like vampires out of Twilight, it is the Coopers who truly carry darkness within them. Yes, Clifford murdering his own son was pretty dark, but it was almost as if Hal felt challenged to one-up the Blossoms with his whole Black Hood scheme. Though what other motive could he have had besides trying to outdo the Blossoms?

The Black Hood made his first attack at Pop’s the morning after Betty Cooper’s speech at the town jubilee. Betty’s speech had shone light on the murky underbelly of the town, but rather than heed her call for peace, Hal interpreted her words as permission to systematically remove all sinners from the town. His first victim was the adulterer Fred Andrews.

We realize that Fred did have a fling with Hermione while she was still married to Hiram, but in the grand scheme of things, he seems like a strange person to make your first target. Fred was not even the married one in that equation. If your priority is wiping out sinners, it would seem as though there were people in town far more guilty than Fred. But we digress.

Miraculously Fred survived, but the Black Hood was far from finished. Just one night later, in the sleepy little town of Greendale, Geraldine Grundy (aka Jennifer Gibson) was up to her old tricks.

After kissing one of her tutoring students, Ben, good night, she went back to her piano bench to tidy up a bit.

In Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Ben Button makes a cameo as a pizza delivery boy at Ms. Wardwell’s house! We have so many questions! This delivery must have taken place before he threw himself out of a hospital window because of the Gargoyle King, unless he can somehow magically exist after death in Greendale. (Honestly, nothing would surprise us at this point.) Also, does he live in Riverdale and just travel to Greendale frequently for pizza deliveries and piano lessons? Does he not still work at the Bijou, the local Riverdale movie theater? We demand a spin-off about this Benjamin Button. (And preferably one that doesn’t involve Brad Pitt.) Power to him, though, for holding down two jobs in high school and still managing to have time to get fully invested in his game of Gryphons and Gargoyles.

Unfortunately for Ms. Grundy, her sonata came to an unexpected conclusion. The man in the black hood had struck again, this time with the cello bow gifted to Geraldine by Archie.

Soon after that, Midge Klump approached Reggie Mantle to score some Jingle Jangle for a special date night with Moose. After successfully obtaining some, Midge and Moose drove their car deep into Fox Forest to try it out. Little did they know that the only elevated heart rate they would be experiencing would be from the fear that would strike them when they were also attacked by the Black Hood.

In the span of just a few days, the Black Hood had attempted to kill an adulterer, a child molester, and two drug users. Granted, he only actually killed one of them, which does make the Black Hood a laughably bad serial killer. Yet what Hal lacks in murdering skills, he appears to make up for in negotiating prowess. Soon, the Black Hood began making regular phone calls to Betty, convincing her to do his bidding and threatening that if she did not obey, he would murder all her loved ones.

The parent/child relationships on this show are seriously messed up! Imagine receiving these calls from your own father.

Perhaps this was similar to the way in which Hal convinced poor Joseph Svenson, the school janitor, to pretend to be the Black Hood.

For a while the death of Joseph Svenson had seemed to mark the end of terror in Riverdale. The truth of the matter, however, is that Joseph Svenson’s death was simply more innocent blood on the town’s hands. Hal Cooper had convinced Joseph to wear a black hood and threaten Archie and Betty. This of course led to him getting shot by Sheriff Keller on a bridge over Sweetwater River, and while the rest of the town slept a good night’s sleep for the first time in ages, Archie Andrews knew something was wrong. He had seen the eyes of the man who attempted to kill his father, and they did not match those of Mr. Svenson.

Sure enough, the Black Hood made his grand return on the night of the school musical, murdering Midge Klump in plain sight and sending the town back into panic mode. Joseph Svenson was just a red herring, and the real Black Hood was still at large. Once again, neighbors became suspects and family members became foes as the town struggled to figure out who this killer could be. One town member, Betty Cooper, had a suspicion that she was closing in on her target.

The truth was finally revealed one fateful night when the Black Hood visited Cheryl at Thistlehouse. Thankfully, due to Cheryl’s expert archery skills, she was able to wound the Black Hood and thwart his attack.

Ryan would like to take this time to apologize to his middle school gym teacher, whom he yelled at during his class’s archery unit. Turns out that archery can, in fact, be useful and is not “a complete waste of time,” as he suggested back then.

Shortly after Cheryl’s call to Betty informing her of what happened, Betty received a phone call from FP letting her know that Hal was in the hospital, wounded. However, by the time Betty finally reached the hospital, her father had already made his escape, leaving in his place a now dead Dr. Masters. It was then that she heard that ominous “Lollipop” ringtone. The Black Hood wanted her home. And he wanted her home now.

When Betty arrived home, her father, still visibly injured, gathered both herself and Alice together for a viewing of some of his old home videos from when he was a young boy. Instead of a charming reminder of simpler times, the video that Hal proceeded to play was scarier than any horror movie ever shown at the Bijou. It showed a young Hal being instructed by his mother to manipulate a young Joseph Svenson (then-Conway) into lying about who it was that killed his family in order to protect Hal’s father, who, it turns out, was the real Riverdale Reaper.

Hal also revealed that, contrary to Riverdale lore, it was not Great-grandfather Blossom who killed his brother but rather the other way around. He confessed that there was a darkness that had run throughout the Cooper family for generations. First Great-grandpappy Cooper, then Hal’s father, then Hal, and now Betty.

Hal felt an obligation to continue his family legacy of ridding the town of sinners. Yes, through doing so they became sinners themselves, but the sense of superiority felt by the Cooper clan outweighed any moral qualms they had about killing others.

It seemed as though the mystery had been solved. Hal copped to being the Black Hood and agreed to turn himself in. And while the damage that he had caused to his family would be irreparable, there was hope that the Coopers could potentially begin a new chapter with less darkness.

Personally, we cannot help but wonder whether Hal might be one of Hiram’s first residents in his Southside prison! We are sure there are vacancies!