Turns Out, Hal Cooper Has NEVER Actually Worn The Black Hood Mask On “Riverdale”

14 May 2018, 20:02

By Katie Louise Smith

Riverdale fans, we have been lied to for almost an entire year...

Hello Riverdale fans, we've got some very good news and some very bad news for you. The very good news is: the Black Hood has been unmasked and is now in jail for his crimes. YAY! The very bad news is: everything you thought you knew about the Black Hood has been a lie. WHAT?!

From the very first time we laid eyes on the Black Hood, a good percentage of fans had been convinced that the man under the mask was none other than Betty Cooper's dad Hal but if you based your entire theory off the fact that you thought it was Hal under the mask this whole time... you're wrong, babes.

Because it's just been revealed that Hal Cooper has NEVER worn the mask on the show. See, told you everything you thought you knew was a lie...

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly after the big reveal on last week's episode (May 9), Lochlyn Munro who plays Hal on the show revealed that he has never actually been under the hood on screen. Not once. Every time you've seen the Black Hood on screen, it's been a stunt actor. (FYI, the Black Hood was played by Jay Clift in the season one finale and a stunt actor throughout season two.)

"I’ve never worn the Hood. I’ve never put it on," he said. "It’s funny to me when people put my face next to the Hood and they’re like, “It’s Hal for sure! It’s exactly him.” I don’t know how people think that’s me, but that’s a stunt actor playing all of that stuff as the Hood."

Yep, for the past 8 months and 22 episodes, you've been trying to identify a murderer based on eyes he doesn't 👏 even 👏 have. Fuming.

To be fair, a lot of fans were convinced it was Hal from the very first time we saw the shooter in Pop's Diner. His stature, his height, his gait... they were all were striking similar to Papa Coop's mannerisms but people still cannot accept the fact that Hal doesn't have the same eyes that Archie has been exasperatingly telling anyone and everyone about all season. It's both genius and something that doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

And to make things even more wild, Lochlyn didn't even know he was the Black Hood until that very episode: "Episode 21 is when I found out I was the Hood. I had my theories on who it was. I was starting to sweat when we started reading 19 and 20, but I thought, “It can’t be me, it’s just too on the nose.”

In case you didn't know, the identity behind the one true Black Hood culprit has been up in the air on Riverdale for a while. Just before the show revealed Joseph Svenson as the one under the mask, the writers were still undecided on who was eventually going to end up as the killer. In fact, they had three options and were still mulling them all over while we were all hell bent on trying to solve the mystery.

While Hal has confessed to being the one behind Fred's shooting, Grundy's murder, the Sugarman's murder and Midge's murder... it's now become clear that there's either an accomplice, or a copy cat killer who's been trying to shoot Fred a second time. But who could it be? Could Hal just be the fall guy for a much larger operation? Will Archie finally find out whose eyes have been terrorising his nightmares for the past few months? Will Riverdale ever let us breathe again?

The finale of Riverdale airs on Wednesday 16th May at 8/7c on The CW.