Is 'Riverdale's Chic A Franco Relative, and Maybe Betty's Half-Brother?

By Kristy Puchko | TV | January 25, 2018 |

By Kristy Puchko | TV | January 25, 2018 |

Last night’s Riverdale answered some questions about Betty Cooper’s mysterious long, lost brother Chic, revealing him to be a webcam boy with a volatile dark side. But we’ve got a question that “The Wrestler” ep didn’t answer: Is the guy playing Chick related to Dave Franco? Because if not, someone should tell his face.

The short answer is no. Despite looking and sounding an awful lot like the superior Franco, Denton is not related, and hasn’t even worked on any Franco productions. The 24-year-old actor made his screen debut in 2016 in a one-off appearance on the Lethal Weapon series, and then popped up in the abysmal comedy Fun Mom Dinner. But Denton is best-known as a model and an Instagram star who boasts more than 431,000 followers. There he’s been sharing behind the scenes pics of Riverdale’s production, including this shot of his onscreen mom Mädchen Amick.

quintessential mädchen

A post shared by Hart Denton (@hartdenton) on Jan 5, 2018 at 2:08pm PST

Riverdale appears to be Denton’s breakout moment. Already fans are buzzing about this boy with the cheekbones so sharp they could cut glass. And it seems like season two is just gearing up with Chic’s arc. First he crashes into the Cooper home covered in blood and oozing with drama. Now, we know he’s an online sex worker, and that he shares Betty’s habit of clawing her own palms, and her draw to a “dark” side. So under his mentoring, we’ll likely see her return to Dark Betty. But could Chic’s biggest secret be still on the horizon?

Here’s what we know about Chic so far: Alice Cooper got pregnant with him when she was in high school. Hal and she fought about this publicly during their prom night. Hal wanted her to get an abortion. But Alice snuck off to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, had Chic in secret and put him up for adoption. The intervening years weren’t kind to Chic, who says he bounced around foster homes, and is covered in scars. As he’s practically radioactive with rage, it makes a certain amount of sense that Hal isn’t happy to have him back, especially because he fears Chic is there to fill the void left by his darling daughter Polly. But what if it’s something more? What if the real reason Hal wanted Alice to abort her would-be firstborn was not because he wasn’t ready to be a dad, but because he wasn’t the dad?

I’m saying I think F.P. Jones is Chic’s biological father, which would make Chic a half-brother to either side of Bughead, Betty and Jughead. Would Riverdale dare?

Here’s the clues:
*We know Alice was a Southside girl and a Serpent hanger-on back in the day.
*F.P. and Alice’s on-going flirtation and sparkling sexual chemistry suggests they might be old flames.
*Hal HATES it when Alice dips back into her bad girl fashion sense, which has caused her to chastise him publicly on at least one occasion.
*Wouldn’t Hal’s rage make much more sense if it’s another man’s child barging into his house and throwing off his family’s precarious balance?

All this means, Denton’s time on the show will get a lot more interesting before he too might be shipped off to a farm upstate, Polly-style.