Betty (Lili Reinhart) must deal with the "consequences of a hasty decision" in the trailer for next week's episode of Riverdale, 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. Things were briefly looking hunky-dory for Betty at the end of this week's 'The Wicked and The Divine', after she and Jughead (Cole Sprouse) romantically reconciled at long last. Life with the Cooper family is never simple though and shortly thereafter, Betty came home to find her mother Alice (Mädchen Amick) wiping up blood from a dead body on the floor, and her brother Chic (Hart Denton) looking understandably distraught about the whole situation.

'The Tell-Tale Heart' is of course a nod to Edgar Allan Poe's infamous 1843 short story of the same name, which examines how the narrator's attempt to hide a murdered body leaves him wracked with guilt and mentally spiraling downward. Although it's not clear at the end of 'The Wicked and The Divine' exactly what happened in the Cooper household (e.g. who killed the shady fellow who showed up looking for Chic, presumably in self-defense), it's Betty who looks to be hit the hardest by the emotional fallout in the episode's trailer.

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While The CW's trailer for 'The Tell-Tale Heart' (see the video embedded in the space above) focuses on the Coopers as they scramble to hide said dead body and Betty dealing with the aftermath, the episode synopsis confirms that trouble is brewing in ever other corner of Riverdale too. According to the description, the episode also sees Veronica (Camila Mendes) step in when tensions between her father Hiram (Mark Consuelos) and the Southside Serpents begin to erupt, now that Jughead and FP (Skeet Ulrich) know more about Mr. Lodge's efforts to stir up trouble in The Town With Pep. Elsewhere, in another plot thread, Archie (K.J. Apa) finds himself between a rock and a hard place when an impatient FBI Agent Adams (John Behlmann) "takes things one step too far" in his investigation to take down the Lodge-father.

Penned by series writer Michael Grassi (who previously wrote for such TV shows as DeGrassi: The Next Generation and Supergirl), 'The Tell-Tale Heart' marks The Originals creator and The Vampire Diaries TV show co-creator Julie Plec's directorial debut on Riverdale. The Archie Comics TV adaptation's brand of stylishly dark soapy opera is cut from the same cloth as Plec's vampire dramas, and 'The Tell-Tale Heart' in particular is an episode that ought to play to her strengths as a storyteller. Interestingly, it's only the fifth TV episode that Plec has ever called the shots on, having previously helmed three episodes on The Vampire Diaries and an episode of Time After Time.

One only hopes that life settles down a bit for Betty and Jughead once their respective storylines involving Chic and Hiram are brought to a close, allowing the two would-be lovebirds to spend time together doing stuff other than solving murder mysteries and battling institutional corruption. That's probably wishful thinking though, given everything that the pair have gone through in Riverdale season 2 already and the threat of more to come... possibly in the form of the other (?) Black Hood Killer.

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Riverdale continues Wednesday, February 7 with 'Chapter Twenty-Six: The Tell-Tale Heart' on The CW.

Source: The CW