Riverdale: Does the Black Hood "Ship" Betty and Archie?

Riverdale's resident killer The Black Hood claims that he's on a mission to purge the town of sin, but we think he's got a more ominous motive. The Black Hood wants Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Archie (KJ Apa) together. That's right Bugheads, y'all need to be worried.

We'll start with Black Hood's recent phone conversations with Betty where he elaborated that not only is she the inspiration for his homicidal spree, but that he wants Betty all for himself. That meant blackmailing her into cutting all of her friends out of her life or she risked killing her sister.

You'd think if the Black Hood could use Betty to hurt anyone, he might start with her oldest and closest friend who coincidentally made a very public video denouncing the Black Hood and has launched a ring of vigilantes in hopes of bringing the assailant to justice. Instead, he tells Betty to take down Veronica (Camila Mendes), Archie's girlfriend. Betty chose to evict Veronica from her social circle with the harshest or harsh tongue lashings at a Jingle Jangle hotel party. It was brutal, but the interesting part here is that Archie didn't stay to comfort his girlfriend -- he went after Betty. That didn't feel right.

Knowing that the Black Hood is watching everything, our local serial killer still didn't tell Betty to ditch Archie. No, he went straight for the heart of Bughead and told her to ditch Jughead (Cole Sprouse), the son of a serpent. This is the Hood's most blatant attempt to get Betty single and push her towards Archie. Betty only helped by sending the ginger "hero" to breakup with Jughead for her. That went about as well as you could expect since Archie showed up when a group of Serpents show up for Jughead's initiation into their gang. Once Archie saw the dark path Jughead was heading down, he actually felt vindicated in breaking Jughead's heart for Betty.

At that point, Archie was Betty's only shoulder to cry on, which should be enough evidence... but the Black Hood went one step further. He discovered that Betty had been telling Archie about their phone calls and still didn't threaten to kill Archie. He went back to threatening Polly unless Betty gave him another name in Polly's place. That's three opportunities the Black Hood had to either emotionally or mortally wound the one person in Riverdale swearing to take him down, and he never took it.

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If you take a look back to before we knew how integral Betty was to the Black Hood's endgame, there's even more evidence that this is all an elaborate ruse to achieve a 'shipper's dream. He targeted Fred Andrews (Luke Perry) first, and held Archie at gunpoint but didn't shoot. Betty was the first person Archie called after he got Fred to the hospital. Maybe the Black Hood expected Veronica to fail at being Archie's rock during these hard times as well.

Next, the Black Hood went after Miss Grundy (Sarah Habel), who was the original obstacle to Betty and Archie giving things a romantic go in Season 1. This was obviously a delayed rage kill since Grundy decided to make herself a wedge in this potential relationship.

Yes, okay, the Black Hood also targeted Moose (Cody Kearsely), who was hooking up with Midge (Emilija Baranac) at the time. You know who Moose's only other romantic tie is on the show? Kevin (Casey Cott), Betty's BFF. It's entirely possible the Black Hood stumbled upon Moose and decided to shoot him in hopes of pushing him back to Kevin so Betty and Archie and Moose and Kevin could go on a double date. Okay, that part is a stretch, but everything else shakes out!

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The Black Hood's lack of desire to separate Betty and Archie or even deliver retribution for Archie's blatant attempts to take Hood down is weird, especially if Betty is the killer's ultimate weapon. Either the Black Hood wants Archie and Betty together, or he is Archie suffering from split personality disorder. We know Riverdale is weird guys, but it's not that weird.

Do you think that Bughead can survive this killer intervention?

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

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