Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Netflix Original Part 1 Review
Major Spoilers are included in this Season Review. Please Read with Caution.
This is not Sabrina the Teenage Witch. There are no magic sparks flying out of Sabrina’s finger, no talking cat (Salem is present in the season), but there are loads of talks about The Dark Lord. Not Voldemort from Harry Potter, but Satan himself. He is present in all ten episodes and it’s rather chilling, pun surely intended.
The show is still about a young woman named Sabrina Spellman, a half-mortal, half-witch who is about to turn sixteen-years-old on Halloween. She is about to give herself over to the Dark Lord and sign her name into the Book of the Beast, something all young women have to do when they turn sixteen.
Her Aunts Zelda and Hilda have different opinions on the matter. Zelda is a committed member of the Dark Church and devoted follower of the Dark Lord, but Hilda, she always had doubts, which she passes on to Sabrina. These two are also in some form of abusive relationship. One where Zelda kills Hilda repeatedly whenever she does something wrong.
Although I chuckled the first time it happened, the implications are far more dire than I realized as the season progressed. Zelda is trying to keep her family under the Dark Lord’s “good grace”, but their repeated mistakes and errors in judgment make that task almost impossible to grasp.
Sabrina’s cousin Ambrose is underutilized. I think he was a good character to have around, but his punishment to stay inside the house made navigating him difficult until the show addressed how to lift his sentence. He is also pansexual, shown in the orgies, but he has a primary male love interest who didn’t garner enough interest for me to invest in the relationship.
Sabrina and Harvey (Ross Lynch) were cute. I thought having them start off as a couple was an interesting decision for the show’s direction… By season’s end, I understand why this needed to happen, to give Sabrina something to lose alongside her friends, but the chemistry wasn’t one-hundred percent there.
Prudence and the Mean Sisters are not used to their fullest potential. At least, Prudence wasn’t, which is a shame given she’s one of the few POC characters on this show. The show also gives Sabrina and Prudence a handful of similarities that are hard to ignore: both are orphaned at a young age, but Sabrina grew up with the privilege of being the daughter of a High Priest while Prudence was abandoned by her biological father, who became a High Priest himself.
This is the main root of Prudence’s rivalry with Sabrina. She isn’t fully an antagonist either… she was designed to be likable and a somewhat supporting character. The scenes of Prudence and Sabrina teaming up are honestly what hooked me to continue watching this: torturing mortal boys does seem like a lot of fun.
The themes of gender, power, feminism, religion, free will, and sisterhood blend with the supernatural elements associated with the Dark Lord. No matter how you spin it, even Prudence admits that in the end, the Dark Lord is a man.
Sabrina’s mortal friends deserved more attention / screentime than they got. Roz and Susie were kept in the dark for too long about Sabrina’s other life… worse than that? It took them way too long to figure out Sabrina was a witch. In my opinion, they should’ve figured it out sooner, especially if they have ties to the magical world.
If Sabrina gets renewed for Part 2, I do hope Susie gets her chance to explore her gender and sexual identities. There were hints of Susie going through these transitions, but the show didn’t make time nor did they have it to completely flesh it out. Gender and sexual identities are separate issues, so I’m not sure which one is the most prevalent one when it comes to Susie’s character journey.
The connection to Riverdale is addressed. The setting, Greendale, is situated close to the town of Riverdale, where Archie and his friends live. I think this could lead to something if The CW and the Powers Behind Netflix figure something out. We need supernatural forces to invade Riverdale.
Overall, this season had a couple of hiccups like the lynching scene, but I think it’s worth binge watching, especially if you’re in the mood for some witchcraft horror.