RIVERDALE 3.21 Review “The Dark Secret of Harvest House

This post contains spoilers for Riverdale.
Check out our last review here.

It’s penultimate episode time, and no one in the town of Riverdale is safe! “The Dark Secret of Harvest House” is sharp, succinct, and hits like a bare-knuckle brawl. And that’s not just because it features one! Veronica’s has had enough of her father’s shit, Betty’s finally at The Farm, and Jughead’s got to figure out who the Gargoyle King is before more folks drop dead. There’s a lot on everyone’s plate, and they’ve only got forty minutes to sort it all out!

Hiram still owning Pop’s might be old news, but his plan to buy Riverdale is the newest polished turd in his collection. It’s a shame Hermione hasn’t been used more now that she’s finally separated from Hiram, but perhaps we’ll get some sort of payoff there in the finale. For now, it’s another Archie and Veronica team-up as they plot with the FBI to take down Hiram for good. Some illegal gambling on a Lodge-owned establishment coupled with an illegal street brawl are enough to bring Riverdale’s very own crime lord in, but will he stay there? Putting Hiram behind bars before the finale is stressful, even if Veronica did get her epic closing statement.

Did you know that Ethel Mugs didn’t stop playing G&G? Of course you didn’t, no one did! Jug finds out after finding her hiding out in the bunker. She’s afraid that the Gargoyle King will kill her because she failed her mission to get Betty to where she needed to go at prom. Her will to live outweighs her loyalty, so the two of them team up to get themselves and the Lost Boys out of the woods. They run into some Black Hood related trouble, but manage to escape unscathed for now. After their successful escape, Ethel reveals that the King is Jason Blossom, because of course it is.

In a roundabout sort of way, the Jason reveal ties in with Betty’s work at the farm. In her first session with Edgar, Betty gets hypnotized and sees her darker self. That side of her tells her that she drowned their cat when she was little, and pushed her sister Polly down the stairs. All of this seems extra creepy since her mother just got done telling her that she’s got the “serial killer gene”, but, hey, we’ve seen Betty go dark side in the past!

Through it all, she manages to maintain her calm. In her next session, she plugs her ears up with wax so the hypnosis doesn’t work. Turns out it wasn’t her dark side that was visiting her. It was Polly. This takes us back to Jason and, ultimately, Alice’s long lost son. Their loved ones aren’t visiting them; they’re just being hypnotized to see what they want most. Except for Cheryl, she might legit be seeing Jason now that we know about this whole Gargoyle King development.

So, what’s the endgame? A frustratingly obvious one, to be honest. It’s literally called The Farm and no part of me guessed “oh, yeah, these folks are obviously harvesting organs”. But, here we are. Betty manages to show Cheryl what’s going on, which leads to Cheryl making her ultimate choice. She manages to save Toni before her kidney’s harvested, despite the fact that she’ll likely never be able to see her brother again because of it.

Toni’s the only one who makes it out.

Betty’s captured by a still enthralled Fangs and Kevin, and Cheryl’s apprehended by Farm lackeys. We don’t know what’s happened to Cheryl, but Betty’s all strapped up and ready to be harvested by the time the episode closes. We’ll undoubtedly get more answers (and more questions) in next week’s finale. You know what to do if you had thoughts on this week’s episode!