‘Riverdale’: Who Is Edgar Evernever, Really?

Among the many ongoing mysteries Riverdale Season 3 has been juggling, one seemingly minor one you might want to keep your eye on is the identity of cult leader Edgar Evernever (Chad Michael Murray). First officially introduced at the end of “Chapter Fifty-One: BIG FUN,” Edgar is the man in charge of The Farm, the Scientology meets Wild, Wild Country organization that has slowly absorbed at least half of the residents of the town. But is he who he says he is?

In the last episode, “Chapter Fifty-Three: Jawbreaker,” Edgar told Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) a story. He was a man, lost and broken, wandering through the wilderness, until he found a tree on a hill (this is mostly a joke about Murray’s time on One Tree Hill, but remember it anyway). Near that tree was a farm, and a kind lady in a white room nursed him back to health. He wanted to provide that same level of healing to other people, so he started The Farm.

Sounds nice, right? And Edgar is pretty convincing in his story, but what he doesn’t offer up is his real name: Betty searched online, and found no records of an Edgar Evernever. That’s not the sort of detail you casually drop on a TV show, so let’s take a moment and explore some possible theories for who Edgar Evernever really is:

Theory #1: Edgar Evernever is Charles Smith

This is definitely the most popular theory right now, that Edgar is actually the secret, presumed dead son of Alice Cooper (Mädchen Amick) and FP Jones (Skeet Ulrich). In order to understand how this works, we’ll need to break down what we know about the history of Charles Smith, as well as the timeline of Riverdale which is the sort of thing that can make your ears bleed so buckle up, folks.

In 1992, Alice became pregnant with FP’s baby. Rather than stick with Mr. Jones, Alice hooked up with Hal Cooper (Lochlyn Munro) who seemed like a better teen father for a child, I guess. The timeline gets a little murky from there, but from what we’ve been told Alice had the baby at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy nunnery, most likely at some point in 1993.

From there — again, based on what we’ve been told — Charles grew up in the SoQM, ran away around 2009, tried to visit Alice, and then befriended Chic (Hart Denton), a drifter and conman. Chic accidentally killed Charles during a fight, and later Chic pretended to be Charles because who doesn’t love The Man in the Iron Mask?

Regardless, it’s clear that Charles should be 25 years old if he was born in 1993, right? Alice says as much when she calls out that Chic didn’t have anyone to love him for 25 years (thinking he was Charles). It does get confusing, though, when you consider that FP turned 50 this year, which would mean he was a 23 year old high school Junior in 1992. So maybe the 1992 date is wrong? Or more likely, the actual dates don’t matter.

That’s important when you consider that Hart Denton is currently 23 years old, while Chad Michael Murray is 37 years old. If Edgar is Charles, could a 37 year old really be playing a 25 year old? Or if you go by the weird shifted timeline of FP’s age, maybe he’s actually 31 years old? And we skipped six years in there somewhere?

We’ll shove that aside for the moment, as well as that the one photo we’ve seen of Charles shows him with red, curly hair and green eyes; and Murray has blonde hair and blue eyes. Hair dye and tinted contacts exist. The photo of Charles could be fake. This show is bonkers.

So ignoring the age thing and the physical appearance thing (sigh), there is some plot evidence that Edgar could be Charles. If you take his story as sort of the truth, Charles did hit rock bottom and ran away, just like Edgar. Only he met Chic in Centerville, instead of some lady on a farm. Also of note, a resident at the hotel they lived in together said Charles was the good boy, Chic was the bad boy.

What if the two of them, spurned by life, hatched a plan to take revenge on Riverdale? What if they decided to divide and conquer: Charles/Edgar would set up The Farm, the “good” side of things; and Chic would become the horrifying Gargoyle King, the “bad” side of things? That would explain their focus on the Cooper and Jones families, respectively. Maybe?

There are two other orders of business we need to deal with on this whole “Edgar is Charles” thing. The first is that, uh, it seems like maybe Alice is getting married to Edgar? That seems pretty messed up, even for Riverdale. However, let’s look at the actual language of what happened last episode. After finding out that Alice has agreed to a divorce, Betty confronts her and asks straight up if she’s getting married to Edgar. Alice pauses and says, “we have an understanding.” The assumption is they’re getting married. Add in that Murray stoked the fires in interviews saying that a “white wedding” is coming to the show, and fans freaked out that A) Alice is marrying Edgar, and B) Alice is maybe marrying her own son.

But Murray never said that, and Alice never said that. The show just led you into that dark corner. Will they go there? Maybe. But if Alice is marrying Edgar, I’d sure hope we’re not going full Game of Thrones on this thing.

The other issue is that Edgar has a teenage daughter, Evelyn Evernever (Zoé de Grand’Maison). If Edgar is 25, he probably doesn’t have a 17 year old daughter, right? Two possibilities here. First is that Charles is older than 25 as mentioned above, so maybe he, I don’t know, conceived Evelyn when he was 14? The other popular theory about Evelyn is that she’s actually an adult, not Edgar’s daughter at all, and just pretending to be a teenager to recruit kids into The Farm. We’re going to find out some surprising secret about Evelyn this week on “Chapter Fifty-Four: Fear The Reaper,” so fingers crossed it’s an Orphan deal because that would be super fun.

Anyway, before we get too in the weeds here (too late!) let’s move on to another theory.

Theory #2: Edgar Is The Monsignor

We’ve had a few references to the former Monsignor of Sisters of Quiet Mercy, a cruel man who left the nunnery in disgrace years ago. If Edgar is that same Monsignor, it would make sense why he bought the Sisters of Quiet Mercy as the new home-base of The Farm. It also lines up with the story he told Betty, that he was down and out and wandering through the wilderness. It would also potentially explain his ability to build a religion, and potential affinity for mind altering drugs — another popular theory that ties into how characters like Alice and Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) seeing dead people from their past. Just like the Gargoyle King appeared in visions caused by hallucinatory drugs, these more positive visions could be something caused by a tweak on the recipe, something Edgar could have learned during his time as Monsignor. It’s a simpler explanation than the Charles/Edgar theory though, so maybe not because this show is hella complicated.

Theory #3: Edgar Is Laurie Lake’s Dad

This one is definitely a stretch, but Edgar’s story seems extremely similar to what happens to Archie Andrews (KJ Apa) back in “Chapter Forty-Two: The Man in Black.” The episode is split into three stories, the first focusing on Archie’s road trip with Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse). They’re trying to escape Hiram Lodge (Mark Consuelos), and in the process find a farm run by Laurie Lake (Riley Keough). Archie has also hit rock bottom, the farm has a large tree beside it, and he’s slowly healed by working for Laurie. No old lady, no white room, but Archie does spend time talking about how the place feels like home.

Then it turns out Laurie is working for Hiram, and in fact the entire town is addicted to Gryphons & Gargoyles (the evil role playing game that has The Gargoyle King at its head). Laurie is trying to trade her father and brother’s lives for Archie’s, though ultimately she’s unsuccessful. We never see the Lake boys, but Laurie does spend a lot of time talking about how her dad is a man of the land, and she used to shave him, and he’s amazing, etc., etc.

So what if Edgar is actually Laurie Lake’s father? What if he based The Farm on a literal farm, and has been working with Hiram the entire time? That might explain why the other residents of the town treat the Lakes with disdain, and that family feels more privileged than the rest of them, because Edgar/Mr. Lake isn’t a slave for Hiram at all, he’s a business partner.

Like I said, it’s a stretch; but it’s weird to have someone tell a story that’s almost exactly like another story that happened earlier in the season, and for it not to matter.

Hey, maybe Edgar is all three, right? He’s Charles Smith, who was put in the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, rose to the rank of Monsignor, left in disgrace, found himself at the Lake farm, had a kid with the lady at the farm, started a cult, and now he’s back in Riverdale. Listen: when you start with an absolutely insane sounding sentence like “maybe Edgar is Charles,” anything is possible.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW

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