Is Dark Betty The Black Hood On Riverdale?

Could one of Riverdale's most beloved characters be the person wreaking havoc on the town?

According to a very convincing fan theory on Reddit, Lili Reinhart's Betty Cooper could be the Black Hood — or, at the very least, working with him.

If you're wondering how that could be possible when we saw Betty doing everything in her power to take down the moralist murderer stalking the citizens of Riverdale, well, it might not be Betty who's the Black Hood's partner. Instead, it might be her alter-ego, Dark Betty, who's coming out to play.

Redditor dahuterschuter has a theory that suggests Chic Cooper (to be played by actor Hart Denton) is the key in this whole Black Hood mystery, and the person who unleashed Dark Betty onto the world yet again.

Remember how, in the season 1 episode "Body Double," Betty completely forgets donning a black wig and nearly boiling a maple syrup-covered Chuck Clayton (Jordan Calloway) alive in a hot tub? It seemingly hinted that Betty had some sort of a dissociative identity disorder. Dahuterschuter suggests that Betty's long-lost brother Chic, who he believes is secretly the biological son of F.P. Jones (Skeet Ulrich) and Alice Cooper (Madchen Amick), took advantage of that fact in order to use Betty to do some of his dirty work.

"Years [after being given up for adoption, Chic] has come back, hating his former mother for giving him up, hating Riverdale’s corruption in the North Side as he sees himself as a victim of it, and the one shining light in the middle of all of it is his estranged little sister Betty," writes the Redditor.

"There’s many things that only Betty could possibly know, the Nancy Drew book, having talked to Archie, where Polly is at, and more information that she was privy to like Archie and Grundy. As well, Sheriff Keller said that the note that Betty received was not consistent with the one sent to Alice’s paper. This means there are two people writing these notes. One of them is Chic Cooper, who saved a newspaper clipping about his mother long, long ago, and also sent the message to her paper. He is the 'muscle' doing the physical killings."

That's when Betty comes in, wrote Dahuterschuter.

"When Chic reached out to his little sister Betty, Dark Betty responded. We see Dark Betty take over at the end of episode five when she designates a target for him to kill in Nicky. Dark Betty knows all of the otherwise unknowable information about Betty’s actions and Riverdale gossip, she can write cryptic notes to Betty that only Betty would know the answer to, she can leave herself messages and calls through a voice changer even down to predicting conversations with herself. She hates all of Betty’s friends and wants her cut off. She hates, hates, hates bad people and wants them punished, like when Chuck was lying about [Veronica] and she sticky mapled him. And Chic says they are the same."

This theory actually makes a lot of sense — and it's possible that Lili Reinhart teased it herself. In an interview with Teen Vogue, the actress revealed that Dark Betty is very much a part of the blonde River Vixen.

"Season 2 becomes a boiling-over point for [Betty] where she kind of lets go and lets the darkness come out," Reinhart told Teen Vogue. "She lets that dark side of her live a little bit, and come to the surface and stay there. It's not just a moment in a hot tub. It's something much more intense and much more real than that."

If Betty really is secretly working with the Black Hood, it would be a secret to even herself...and there's no Riverdale twist that could possibly be more jaw-dropping.