We *Finally* Have Some Answers About Griffins & Gargoyles On 'Riverdale'

Spoilers ahead for the Riverdale Season 3 midseason finale. Griffins and Gargoyles is no ordinary game — not just in the way it brainwashes its players, but, as Jughead discovered, how it connects to the town itself. With Betty on the inside at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, she managed to get some answers. We finally know more about who created Griffins and Gargoyles on Riverdale — and even though there's clearly more to the story, it's a start.

In the Dec. 12 episode, Betty and a newly deprogrammed Ethel drag Sister Woodhouse down to the Gargoyle King's chamber, a room that has a gargoyle statue that students high on fizzle rocks have been hallucinating is the King. They then demand she explain what the game is all about and how it's connected to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy.

"The children that come through our doors are broken," Sister Woodhouse explains. "It's our sacred mission to fix them using whatever tools necessary."

Betty then asks if that means the sisters themselves created the game and the lore behind Griffins and Gargoyles.

"Misbehaving children have been brought down to this room since the asylum opened. That statue scared them into submission. Some of them, the more disturbed ones, created a fantasy realm — a game to cope with the fear of the one they named the Gargoyle King. We embraced it as a therapeutic tool, and it worked, because it embeds itself in the minds of the players. It makes them complacent. Focuses them."

First of all, asylum?! Since when has the Sisters of Quiet Mercy been flat-out called an asylum instead of a group home? Second of all, isn't it a little weird for a Christian institution to eagerly embrace something so hedonistic? They should meet up with the Satan-worshippers over on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and compare notes. Turns out Peter Pan collars aren't the only thing the Sisters of Quiet Mercy and the Academy of Unseen Arts have in common.

Why haven't Polly or Cheryl mentioned the Gargoyle King before, if it's such a popular therapeutic tool at Quiet Mercy? Sister Woodhouse may have explained the origin of Griffins and Gargoyles to Betty and Ethel, but she has not explained the game's recent resurgence, the seizure epidemic, or why and how someone is masquerading as the King in town.

Still, that was quite the bombshell. Which children at the group home invented this game? Is it someone we know, or someone related to someone we know, like a Doiley or a Lodge? We know that Quiet Mercy has been opened since the Great Depression at least, and most of the characters on Riverdale are not old enough to have been around then, with the exception of Nana Rose.

Speaking of creepy Blossom family members, are signs pointing to Penelope being the one who took the game into the real world? Mixing fact and fiction to scare children into behaving is already something Penelope is guilty of... remember the Sugarman? We know she was adopted from the home as a child and taken to Thornhill as part of an arranged child marriage with Clifford. There are also a lot of mysteries surround Claudius Blossom, and he has been spotted at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy recently as well.

That's one revelation down. Who is the Gargoyle King — is it actually Hiram Lodge? Was he toasting his own costume at the end of the episode, or his associate? That remains to be seen. The Lodge and Blossom families never seemed to get along, but they have dark plans for The Town With Pep that are seemingly coming to fruition all thanks to a game troubled youth at the Sisters created long, long ago.