Tonight’s episode of Riverdale, titled “Chapter Fifty-Six: The Dark Secret of Harvest House,” gave fans to bizarre and shocking answers to two of the season’s longest-running mysteries. One of them we know for a fact to be correct, but the other is the one that would be a complete game-changer for Riverdale. So spoilers ahead for tonight’s episode of Riverdale, as we get into both twists, but especially the (apparent) identity of the Gargoyle King. As seen in teasers for tonight’s episode, Ethel Muggs whispers the name to an astonished Jughead Jones at one point in the night — and for the rest of the episode he, and the audience, are trying to make sense of what happens.
Per the episode’s official synopsis, released a few weeks ago, “Veronica (Camila Mendes) turns to Mary (guest star Molly Ringwald) and Archie (KJ Apa) for help after uncovering a secret that Hiram (Mark Consuelos) had been keeping from her. Betty (Lili Reinhart) raises questions after witnessing some strange activities at The Farm. Jughead (Cole Sprouse) finds himself one step closer to uncovering the Gargoyle King’s identity.” We can start with the activities Betty witnesses at the farm, and ignore the Archie/Veronica/Hiram plot, since that one is the least “twist-y” of the three.
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During her time with the Farm in tonight’s episode, Betty learned quickly that Edgar Evernever was using physical pain to “purge” his followers of emotional pain. A giant scar on Kevin’s back revealed that Edgar was almost certainly performing some kind of surgery on them, leading Betty to wonder how people had become willing participants. Fast forward to her “sessions” with Edgar, where she realized that she was being hypnotized into complacency. Reasoning that was likely what was happening to the others, she was once again certain that Edgar does not have the best interests of his followers at heart. Searching deeper into the building, she found a freezer filled with human organs, and sussed out that the Farm is literally a farm — an organ farm, and Evernever is selling the lion’s share of the organs while keeping some to maintain his wife, who needed a transplant.
The real crazy comes when Jughead, after rescuing Ethel from a group of Gargoyle acolytes and delivering her safely to his father at the sheriff’s office for protection, she gives him something he has been looking for all season long: the name of the “true” Gargoyle King. Jughead calls it impossible, and on some level that is true: you cannot take both the series up to this point and the identity of the Gargoyle King both at face value, because the identity of the Gargoyle King undermines everything that has happened going all the way back to the series pilot. Becuase according to Ethel, the Gargoyle King is Jason Blossom.
Justifiably skeptical, Jughead and Betty decide to do their best to authenticate the information themselves — which of course means digging up Jason’s grave and looking inside to find his casket empty. And Gargoyle King or not, the empty grave suggests something bigger than anybody previously thought is afoot. Let’s take a quick trip through some of the possibilities.
First, we have Edgar Evernever, whose primary means of brainwashing seems to be taking in those who have suffered losses and showing them their loved ones, allowing them to reconnect with those who have passed away. So there is the outside chance that, in addition to showing Jason to Cheryl Blossom during her sessions, Edgar was also showing him to the rest of the world as the Gargoyle King. it is not clear what purpose that might serve, but that is one layer of the onion.
Another layer is that there are a few reasons Jason being the Gargoyle King might actually make a little bit of story sense (if you ignore all the inconsistencies). The Blossom Family has a thing for twins, and giving birth to twins is indeed something that runs in families (although that is for fraternal, not identical twins). If Jason had an identical twin, it would not be something that seemed particularly strange. It could even be that the twin was squirreled away somewhere and hidden because Jason and Cheryl were the ones the Blossoms had chosen to represent the next generation. Whether the Gargoyle King was Jason’s twin, or the Gargoyle King is Jason himself and somehow his twin was murdered, it would stand to reason that a member of the Blossom clan might see himself as heir to the drug trade in Riverdale, since that is what Clifford Blossom did during his life.
The absence of a body hints at something bigger than we know because many people have already seen Jason’s body. At a minimum, a body in the grave would have meant that even if “Jason” was an impostor somehow, the real Jason did not hae any concern that he would be found out. The removal of the body, which prevents a closer examination, suggests that whoever is in that Gargoyle King costume, whether it is Jason or somebody impersonating him, knew that there might eventually be suspicion cast on him and that the body could provide clues to a potential investigation.
What, if anything, all of this adds up to is anybody’s guess, but it’s a hell of a place to leave things heading into next week’s finale. Riverdale airs on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
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