‘Riverdale’: Jughead Jones Isn’t The Gargoyle King… Right?

All season long on Riverdale we’ve been wondering about the identity of the mysterious Gargoyle King, a stick monster who has seemingly been convincing teenagers to commit suicide based on a heady stew of role playing games and candy drugs. And the assumption has been that the King is an adult, one of the members of The Midnight Club — a crew back from 1992 that kicked off the first Gryphons & Gargoyles game that got this whole thing started.

But what if The Gargoyle King isn’t one of the adults, but is, in fact… Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse)?

Spoilers for Riverdale “Chapter Fifty-Five: Prom Night” past this point.

It seems nearly impossible, and I will admit that the massively conflicting information we’ve gotten from Season 3 of the show may have broken my brain. But let’s look at the sequence of events that happened this week on the show.

After discovering the Gospel of The Gargoyle King, a book used by his/her acolytes as mythology to power the role playing game, Jughead — again — becomes obsessed with the story behind the game. Betty calms him down, but after reading further through the book he comes across a section he thinks will help, a “ritual” that will potentially invoke The Gargoyle King.

“After the false prophet is sacrificed, the Shire will have a bacchanal to celebrate the coronation of the Gryphon Queen,” Jughead reads, prompting Betty to realize that sounds like the upcoming Junior Prom. “Upon her crowning the Gryphon Queen will ensure the King’s arrival, by subjugating herself and declaring that the one true monarch of Eldervair is the Gargoyle King.”

In case you haven’t kept up with the show, a few notes. Betty herself created the character of the Gryphon Queen a few episodes back, in order to break the spell Gryphons & Gargoyles had on a few other kids. Eldervair, meanwhile, is the letters of Riverdale mixed up, as the town is the real world “game board” that “quests” happen on. The Shire is the home of Hobbits in Lord of the Rings, so who knows what’s going on there, this show is bananas.

In any case, Betty agrees to go along with the plan, and they shift the theme of the prom — which is already Fire & Ice — further in a fantasy direction. They also recruit the gangs the Southside Serpents and the Pretty Poisons to work as security, to block off the prom and not let The Gargoyle King out of the room once they enact their plan.

When asked if the King will be in full stick monster regalia, Jughead says, “Maybe, maybe not. At the very least he’s going to have some sort of kingly signifier… Crown, or antlers and the like. And he’s going to make his move after Betty is crowned prom queen.”

I think you can probably already see where I’m going with this, but as you might expect Betty does win Prom Queen; but before she can receive her crown, she gets a note to head to the hallway. There she retraces the steps her Mom took back in 1992, and finds herself in the girl’s bathroom. There, just like her mother, she finds two chalices filled with poison and is told to “flip for your fate.” She refuses, confronts The Gargoyle King in the hallway, and is interrupted by serial killer The Black Hood. We think that’s her dad, who had reportedly died, but it looks like he actually chopped off his hand and replaced it with a hook.

Betty gets led to the same closet where Principal Featherhead’s (Anthony Michael Hall) body was discovered back in 1992, and after a few moments the banging of The Black Hood (Black Hook, perhaps?) is replaced by knocking. Betty tumbles out into Jughead’s waiting arms.

There are a number of ways we could pursue these threads, and tons of questions to wrap up before the season ends. Is this Black Hook Hal Cooper (Lochlyn Munro), returned from the dead, or someone else? What actually happened back on the night of The Midnight Club’s Ascension Party in 1992? Who is The Gargoyle King?

Let’s focus on that last one, and again, I emphasize this is a stretch. But the casual way Jughead — who was following G&G obsessively earlier this season — mentions that The Gargoyle King will be wearing a “kingly signifier” like a “crown” made my ears perk up. Who is wearing a crown at the Junior Prom? Jughead. And who shows up after Betty is crowned Prom Queen, tumbling into his arms and sobbing — in other words, subjugating herself? Jughead. Also of note, Jughead is in the room for the crowning, Betty goes into the bathroom, and when she comes out, she sees The Gargoyle King. Then she’s chased around school by The Black Hook, who disappears just as Jughead reappears.

Coincidence? Maybe. Probably. But there are two other things worth mentioning here. One is that The Gargoyle King has a penchant for complex narratives. One thing we’ve grappled with this season is who, of the characters we know, would be able to build elaborate quests with intense back-stories? Jughead, the show’s resident writer. And the second is a weird bit on IMDB (not always the most reliable source, mind you) before the season began that noted the person playing the massive stick monster as The Gargoyle Knight, not The Gargoyle King.

There’s a lot that works against this theory, including The Gargoyle King seemingly being alive in 1992, far before Jughead was born. And that Jughead has been in the same place as The Gargoyle King before. There’s also the fact that Jughead and Betty decide this was all a plot by Hal Cooper in the first place, including the Gargoyle King’s Gospel, meaning there are two, entirely separate serial killers in town (which is a crazy assumption to make, frankly, but whatever).

But what if that was The Gargoyle Knight in the hallway? What if Jughead had a break with reality, and has been building this complex narrative for the past year, including having the Black Hood/Hook be a minion of The Gargoyle King? Perhaps, as some fans have noted, the idyllic watering hole swim the gang hung out in back in the season premiere was in tainted water, leading to a massive psychotic break on Jughead’s part. Would that even remotely make any sense at all???

As Veronica said a few episodes back: forget it, Jughead, it’s Riverdale.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW

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