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That Twist At The End Of This Week's 'Riverdale' Could Mean The Return Of The Black Hood

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As all Riverdale fans know, the big Season 2 reveal was that Betty's dad Hal Cooper had been the serial killer known as the Black Hood all season long. Throughout the show's currently airing third season, Hal has been behind bars, but that actually might change after this week's new episode. The final moments of Wednesday night's episode have fans wondering will Hal Cooper be released from jail. If Hal does get his freedom, then it obviously could mean major things for how this season will end.

Spoiler alert: This post contains plot details from Riverdale Season 3 Episode 18, "Jawbreaker." Hal Cooper was arrested in the penultimate episode of Season 2 after revealing that he was the serial killer the Black Hood, who had been terrorizing the town. It was this shocking revelation that drove his wife Alice to step away from her life and join the mysterious cult The Farm with her daughter Polly. For all of Season 3, Hal has been in jail and Alice has become more and more brainwashed by The Farm, leaving Betty in the middle trying to save her mother and strangely forming a stronger bond with her father.

In Wednesday night's new episode "Jawbreaker," Betty finally launches her last-ditch effort to save her mom from The Farm: good old-fashioned kidnapping. When her fake gravestone for Alice's long-lost son Charles doesn't convince her to leave The Farm (props to Betty for constructing a gravestone and placing it in a graveyard in like a day, by the way), Betty uses chloroform to knock her mother unconscious and handcuffs her to the bed in Dilton Doiley's bunker. Classic mother-daughter stuff!

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In the bunker, Betty tries to get her mother to embrace her past and come home, but Alice burns all the old Cooper family photos and remains adamant on returning to The Farm. As we recently learned, Alice is engaged to The Farm's leader Edgar Evernever now, who also somehow allows Alice to talk to her long-lost, presumably dead son Charles.

Fed up with her mother's resistance, Betty makes super harsh threats against Evelyn Evernever at school, even straight-up threatening to kill her. But Betty comes to regret that encounter when she listens to the recording Edgar made of Alice, in which she admits she is scared of Betty because she reminds her of Hal at times. Yikes... definitely not ideal to be compared to your serial killer father after you literally just threatened to kill your classmate. After an actually convincing chat with Edgar, in which he explained to Betty that Alice needs The Farm right now to heal, Betty finally gives up her fight and allows her mom to go back to The Farm.

But Betty's decision has some dark and unexpected repercussions. Now that Betty has fully given up on her mom, she turns to find comfort in her father. Hal officially signs Alice's divorce papers at Betty's request, and then he asks her for a favor: to help him return home. And honestly, even though Hal is a psychopathic serial killer, it seems like Betty is actually going to try to help him get out of jail. Her mom and sister are both completely gone now, so Betty is just by herself, and she has been growing closer with her dad all season. It does seem incredibly preposterous that a convicted serial killer would ever be released from prison after only a handful of month of jail-time... but when has Riverdale ever been bound by logic?