Riverdale’s Parents Are a Greater Threat Than the Black Hood

Pretty much everyone can agree that the parents in Riverdale are the worst. Petty, angry, violent and deceitful, their criminality runs the gamut from white collar to blue, and their abuse from physical to emotional. The major villain from Season 1 one was revealed to actually be a Riverdale parent: Clifford Blossom, who murdered his own son.

In Season 2, Riverdale gave us a new villain in the Black Hood, a hunter out to rid the town of sinners. But in the mid-season finale, the identity of the Black Hood was revealed to be Riverdale High janitor Joseph Svenson and it was… meh.

Many fans still believe that the reveal was a fake, that someone else is the real Black Hood. The face under the mask was disappointing because, given all the potential baddies in Riverdale, Svenson had the least emotional connection to Betty and the others he terrorized. The reveal of Jason Blossom’s murderer in the first season was far more powerful because of that emotional connection between Jason and his murderer — his dad. In a world of maple syrup drug running, incest babies, and teen pole dancing to the worst karaoke song ever, viewers need more than just a run-of-the-mill “I endured trauma in my youth and now I’m violent” bad guy. If you’re not going to give us epic family drama or blood feuds, at least give us some of that Sabrina magic, all right?

The thing is, Riverdale isn’t short on blood feuds, and there is more than enough family drama that could turn a law-abiding citizen to murder. Take Hal Cooper, the subject of many a theory about the Black Hood’s secret identity. On the surface, he’s an overbearing father who thinks he knows what’s right for his family. But just a little deeper is a guy who lied to Betty and the whole town about where Polly was and why, gaslit Betty as she started to figure out the truth, stole files from the Sheriff, tossed his wife from the paper they co-ran by changing the passwords and locks, and who knows what else. His whole family is either angry at him or afraid of him in alternating moments, and he’s been suspected of murder.

Or another nasty Riverdale dad, Hiram Lodge. Unseen for all of Season 1 due to his incarceration, he made it out of prison this season but is continuing his criminal ways. Apart from the embezzlement and fraud, Hiram is known for hiring gangsters to devalue the drive-in so he could purchase it for cheap, hiring other gangsters to his own construction site since he was mad about Fred Andrews and his wife, threatening said wife and daughter on the regular, and causing the car accident of his daughter’s would-be rapist Nick St. Clair. Hiram Lodge is not one to mess with, and is not above using his family or threatening his family to get what he needs.

The mothers don’t get off scot free in Riverdale, either. Penelope Blossom was deep in the drug business with her husband, manipulated Polly into staying with the Blossoms and then drugged her food, and emotionally abused her children Jason and Cheryl for years. Her family is so messed up that her husband killed her son and her daughter set their house on fire. And to top it off she, like Hiram Lodge, has money and power and thinks that should entail her to get whatever she wants.

Alice Cooper thinks that she’s got the moral high ground and the duty to share the misdeeds of Riverdale’s parents and teens with the rest of the community, but she’s no angel herself. In the first five minutes of the first episode, she’s cursing Jason Blossom to burn in hell. She sends her eldest daughter off to live with nuns and tells the world that she’s crazy, not pregnant. She lies to her family, to the community, and she lies to herself about her own past. She’s manipulative and overbearing too, trying to keep her daughters from making the same mistakes she did as a teen: joining the Southside Serpents, having an illegitimate child, and getting arrested.She thinks she deserves to know everyone else’s dirty secrets but god forbid they know about hers.

Jughead’s dad is the worst on paper, and yet he’s far less emotionally abusive or manipulative than the others. He’s just an alcoholic gang member who does petty crime and occasionally cleans up for murderers. He’s essentially abandoned his family, but at least in Season 2 he’s trying a bit harder to be a dad.

Even the two arguably best parents in Riverdale, Fred Andrews and Sheriff Keller, are not great people. While they’re fairly good to their own kids, they both still lie and have relationships with married women.

Riverdale‘s parents make notoriously bad choices, and they’re a far greater threat to their teens than a generic bad guy in a ski mask. While the Black Hood did terrorize the town, most of these parents have emotionally terrorized their own kids, and that’s much more powerful and damaging than some random villain. The randomness of serial killers, or at least the distorted obsession that leads them to choose the victims they do, is in many ways easier to deal with than damage from your own parent. It’s not personal, and they can get caught. The Black Hood became a threat to Riverdale and then was neutralized. Your parents, however, are your parents forever. And when those parents make bad choices (and they make a lot of them in Riverdale), the impact is more strongly felt because of the familial bond and emotional connection.

Riverdale is great at using the absurd to tell us about teens and how terrifying and wonderful it is to grow up. In a town with actual serial killers, a drug called jingle jangle, and potential Lovecraftian horrors, what’s really scary is your family — and what’s really powerful is the family you choose.