The Gargoyle King Is This Long-Dead Riverdale Character & Here's How It Makes Sense

I'm screaming. I'm screaming! And if you're not screaming, it's probably because you have yet to watch the new episode of Riverdale, "The Dark Secret of Harvest House." So many secrets were revealed in this episode, but it's not just the fact that The Farm is secretly an organ-selling cult run by a very hot fake dad (Chad Michael Murray) that blew my mind. Riverdale finally revealed the Gargoyle King's identity, and it's none other than the very first person ever murdered on Riverdale: Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines). I'll explain.

Season 3 of Riverdale has balanced two very creepy cults: the previously mentioned The Farm, and the cult of the Gargoyle King, who seems to possess some sort of crazy power over people he recruits via role-playing game Gryphons & Gargoyles. We haven't seen the real Gargoyle King's face yet, though several people have pretended to be him, and he has appeared as a vision to plenty of people high on fizzle rocks. (I mean, really: This. Show.)

In "Harvest House," Jughead (Cole Sprouse) is finally given real information about the man under the Gargoyle King mask, from G&G player Ethel (Shannon Purser). The reveal is wild, to say the least. According to Ethel, the Gargoyle King is Jason Blossom. The only problem? Jason Blossom was shot in the head by his father Clifford (Barclay Hope) before the events of the pilot episode of Riverdale.

The way most TV murders work is that no one is really dead unless we see a body. Except, we saw Jason's body, grey and bloated in Sweetwater River, with a bullet hole right in the middle of his forehead. We saw a video of Clifford shooting his own son. Jughead's dad F.P. (Skeet Ulrich) even kept Jason's dead body in a freezer for a week. It was a whole thing.

Yet, when Jughead goes to Jason's grave to dig up the body...Jason's body is no longer there.

So, what the hell is happening on Riverdale? There are a few plausible (if batshit insane) explanations. The first is that Jason Blossom was never dead at all, and that the body found in Sweetwater River was fake — perhaps a stuffed dummy of some kind. That seems highly unlikely — but this exact thing did happen on Stranger Things, so, maybe!

The second, more plausible explanation is that a very dead Jason has a twin running around Riverdale. Jason comes from a long line of twins, and as far as we know is a twin himself, with sister Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch). Perhaps Jason and Cheryl are really triplets, and Jason and his brother are identical. It's also possible that this twin is really the one who was murdered by Cliff, and that Jason is actually the Gargoyle King, as Ethel revealed.

I'm keen on the twin theory as it might make all the pieces of the Gargoyle King mystery fit together. Jason may be the Gargoyle King now, but we know he definitely wasn't the OG Gargoyle King from the '90s. However, it's possible that his father, Cliff — or perhaps uncle, Claudius — was the original Gargoyle King. Much like Betty (Lili Reinhart) has a darkness within her that partially comes from her demented dad Hal (Lochlyn Munro), maybe Jason is following in his own murderous pop's footsteps.

Then there's the possibility that Ethel was lying and that Jason is really as dead as we believe — and that someone stole his body to mess with Jughead. If that's the case, I'm suing for this emotional rollercoaster that Riverdale just took me on.

Long live Jason Blossom!