'Riverdale' Season 4 Episode 18: Is Mr Honey the creepy cinephile behind the audacious tapes?
Spoilers for 'Riverdale' Season 4 Episode 18 'Chapter Seventy-Five: Lynchian'
In the last episode, the voyeur tapes being sent around 'Riverdale' took a sinister turn when Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) got sent a tape where a person wearing a Betty mask murders another person wearing a Jughead mask with a rock.
This was a clear emulation of how the duo had pulled off Jughead's fake murder to take down the Stonies. While that mystery was solved and the Charles and Chic suspense remains hanging, we are thrown into this whirlpool of who is responsible for these tapes, which were once recordings of the outside of residents' homes but have now taken a clear turn into a personal vendetta. Jughead and his FBI agent half brother, Charles Smith (Wyatt Nash), follow a new lead after they find the Scarlet suite. Thing is, that room has a secret and a constant visitor — Mr Holden Honey (Kerr Smith).
As the voyeur is now termed a cinephile, Charles and Jughead decide to run through hours of footage where Jughead finds Ethel Muggs (Shannon Purser) was one of the people who dropped off the tapes. She herself had almost been at the center of the demented Gargoyle set-up in which Chic (Hart Denton) was wearing the mask, but the show didn't take that angle.
Ethel, who was once obsessed with Jughead, seems to convince him that she had nothing to do with the 'Betty-Jughead murder act out tape', while Charles took a different route. Turns out that Ethel is the president of Riverdale High's AV club where she would have access to equipment and after a house search, she was in possession of Betty's and Jughead's sex tape — the one Bret Weston Wallace (Sean Depner) filmed.
Ethel, who seems to visit the Blue Velvet Video store quite often, tells Jughead that the store has a room called the Scarlet Suite, which contained the sex tape. She had apparently not watched it and kept it instead, so no one else could see it. With an FBI warrant, the room revealed an even more sinister tape — Clifford Blossom (Barclay Hope) killing Jason Blossom (Trevor Stines). Yes, an actual snuff film. Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) gets a tape in which two actors act out the murder, pulling her and us back to the mystery that started the show — the murder of Jason Blossom. So how does Mr Honey factor into all of this?
Well, at the end of the episode, we see Mr Honey visit the Scarlet Suite only to be told that it was raided by the FBI. Could he be the creepy cinephile behind the audacious tapes?
Mr Honey seemed to be a strict man as he took over as the principal of Riverdale High. His background was never divulged but his attitude towards the Riverdale High Gang was quite firm, "We’ll have order…discipline…consequences,” he told the gang." That's how he had introduced himself. He's done a lot from canceling the school dance and threatening the Hedwig musical for the variety show. "Students of Riverdale, we have a new enemy in our midst,” Cheryl had said, and it turns out she might have been right. He's gone head to head with Cheryl and gas-lit Kevin into telling him Reggie was to blame for trashing the principal's office on Halloween. Will Kevin get the next tape? He also trashed Reggie's car.
Mr Honey is a keen observer and uses academic performance and personal information to pressure his students into making sure things are done his way. Does that surprise you, with all the personal hits he might be throwing with the tapes? Not to mention, the next episode is titled 'Killing Mr Honey' as the gang takes revenge on his (we don't know if this is real or fantasy yet) for all the things he's done to ruin their senior year. From what it looks like, it seems as though Mr Honey was able to gain personal information on his students from the Scarlet Suite, and maybe is using it to taunt them. We don't know for what reason yet.
He has been an unnecessary harda** from the start and with Riverdale, nothing seems impossible. So, we have to wonder, is Mr Honey somehow working with Chic? He has an odd affinity to being sadistic towards his students — that's not new in Riverdale — but that allows him to find many vulnerable targets. He was introduced as the new villain when the season premiered, it was subtle but most fans knew there was more to that narrative. Is he out for revenge, one that we can't put our finger on? This can't be an act of revealing personal hurt in order to ensure control in a high school, right? There has to be more. This man has to be connected to the past to be screwing with the gang's future.
'Riverdale' airs on Wednesdays at 8 pm EST on The CW.
