Hiram and Reggie are life ruiners. They ruin peoples' lives. In this case, specifically, it's the lives of the residents of Riverdale, who are having their beloved small town with pep destroyed by the notorious mobster (and his newly-minted sidekick Reggie) so that he can drain their resources and funnel them into his very own community of SoDale nearby. Except, as we learned in "Chapter Eighty-Three: Fire in the Sky," that's actually not Hiram and Reggie's ultimate plan. The turnpike in Riverdale's backyard leading to SoDale is just a "smokescreen." Which means that there's something even bigger, and likely more evil, happening here.

Last time Hiram had a bigger and badder plan, he opened up a private, for-profit prison in Riverdale's backyard. The American prison system is very bad, and especially bad for this show, as this particular prison also became a fizzle rocks factory. (Distributing drugs within a prison, then sending people caught with those drugs back into the prison system to make more drugs? That is a whole new kind terrible.) However, that was Season 2, and this is Season 5 — Hiram needs to step up his evil villain game. And I think I know how he's doing it.

This season has a few unconnected mysteries, some of which, I believe, will eventually come together. Thanks to Jughead's book research, we've learned a lot about the entity known as the "Mothman," who seemingly live in the Riverdale mines (I guess there are Riverdale mines now) and resemble aliens. (Yes, Riverdale is doing aliens now.) We know that the Mothman (or rather Mothmen) are possibly legit, because Nana Blossom candied one in her maple syrup, like any normal person living in Riverdale would. We also know from Jughead's research that the miners who were allegedly kidnapped, briefly, by the Mothmen returned to Earth and died of cancer later in life.