Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this season review. Please read with caution.

On July 20, 2020, I started watching Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s Part 3—season 3—and finished on July 27, 2020. While my feelings have been mixed with the first two parts of Sabrina, I thought Part 3 fixed a lot of the mistakes that plagued Part 2 in particular.

I had a good time with Part 1, a frustrating experience with Part 2, but with Part 3 I was having an amazing time with what the series managed to pull off. The characters and tone were more consistent, the plot was easier to follow, and the show really embraced its campiness, as the show went beyond bonkers and ridiculous at various times. Sometimes it was overwhelming in that regard, but at least it was entertaining.

Let’s talk first about the first episode of Part 3 when Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) and her mortal friends—Harvey (Ross Lynch), Roz (Jaz Sinclair), and Theo (Lachlan Watson)—decide to go to Hell in order to rescue her boyfriend Nick (Gavin Leatherwood), who had become the human prison for the Dark Lord during the Part 2 Finale. Getting him out wasn’t that difficult either, so I was surprised at how this issue was resolved really early on. Although, there were serious consequences to this rescue mission that will plague the rest of the season.

While Sabrina didn’t want her birthright to the Throne—handing it over willingly to Lilith (Michelle Gomez)—there was a problem. Since Lilith wasn’t an angelic creature like Lucifer (Luke Cook), Sabrina’s witch coven praying to her didn’t make their magic any stronger. In fact, it was starting to weaken over the course of the season.

Zelda (Miranda Otto) had also taken over the coven in the wake of Father Blackwood’s (Richard Coyle) defection, having to deal with the weakening magic and the threat of Pagan Witches wanting to resurrect the Old Gods in order to take over the Mortal Realm.

The best part about this current season was the lack of focus on the mortal world, as all the characters—Sabrina’s friends included—were more involved in the weird magical aspect of the show. Sabrina’s friends and their character arcs were more connected to the Pagan threat while the witch coven was more concerned with Father Blackwood, and of course Sabrina had business in Hell to contend with.

All these storylines were somewhat uneven at first as the season progressed, but they all came together at the end in an unexpected but satisfying manner. There were also other sub-plots running around that centered around Aunt Hilda (Lucy Davis), Nick’s trauma from being possessed and trapped in Hell, and Ambrose (Chance Perdomo) and Prudence (Tati Gabrielle) had things going on too. So, Sabrina’s Part 3 was kind-of stuffed.

Overall, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina amplified what made the show work in Part 1 by a thousand folds, giving us a bizarre magical adventure that had a lot going on and ending the season out with even more nonsense than it started out with. In my Part 2 review, I said not to watch beyond Part 1, but watching Part 3 changed my mind on that opinion. Y’all should definitely watch Part 3 if you were into Part 2 of the series. Thanks for reading my season review, everyone! I’ll see you whenever Part 4 drops on Netflix!

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