There’s a 'Riverdale' Theory That Betty’s Mom Is Actually a Witch

This post contains spoilers about the season two premiere of Riverdale, “A Kiss Before Dying.”

The season two premiere of Riverdale ended with a quick trip to Greendale, home of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Miss Grundy, Archie’s ex-teacher-slash lover, who made a brief return to the show before getting killed by the same green-eyed guy who shot Fred (opens in new tab). As previously announced, the same team behind Riverdale will be giving the Sabrina franchise a TV reboot (opens in new tab), and while not much has been revealed, the new show’s existence pretty much suggests that things will get more supernatural in the towns surrounding Sweetwater River. Believe what you will, but this environment would actually fit perfectly with the latest theory to hit the show: Alice Cooper, mom of Polly, Betty, and their long-lost brother, is a witch and what’s more, she might be related to Sabrina Spellman.

As BuzzFeed (opens in new tab) recently explained in a video, in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comic book, witches are given the option to either be baptized during a satanic ritual or leave that world to live their lives as mortals. According to the theory, Alice was baptized but decided against raising her kids in the same way, so she raised Polly and Betty as mortals. (But what happened to the brother?) As showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa shared on Twitter earlier this month, he is definitely drawing from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for the new show, so we’re at least heading in the right direction.

The theory of Alice being a witch has actually been making its rounds on Tumblr since May, with one user pointing to all the witch references Alice made during season one. From using sage to “banish the evil spirits” to her brewing something called “High Point” for Betty, Alice has never passed up a good moment to get witchy. As the Tumblr user “Betty-and-Jughead” (nice) put it, perhaps Alice is the “black sheep of the family” and “doesn’t want to accept her witchcraft lineage.” Instead, she leaves the Southside, meets Hal, and builds “a fresh new life.”

http://betty-and-jughead.tumblr.com/post/160395068397/just-throwin-it-out-there-my-headcanon-theory

If this theory proves to be true, I hope Dark Betty returns and puts a spell on the doctors’ uniforms at the hospital in Riverdale. Those costumes were truly horrifying.