Sadly, earlier this year, Netflix announced that part four the dark supernatural show, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, would be its last. What a freaking bummer! I was a little nervous because they had filmed parts three and four simultaneously, so I wasn’t sure if it was going to get a good ending. No one likes a cliffhanger that will never get resolved! After finishing the eight episodes the other day, I was quite pleased with what went down. I’ll try to be a non-spoilery as possible going forward, so let’s go witches!
The end of part three showed that the gang had successfully defeated the evil carnival folk, but ultimately unleashed the Eldrich Terrors onto Greendale. Father Blackwood is also going to try to specifically send them Sabrina’s way. Great. Another big revelation was the fact that there are now two Sabrinas co-existing. Sabrina Spellman stays in the mortal realm, while Sabrina Morningstar takes her place as the Queen of Hell. Ambrose is super nervous about this, because, unless you’re a twin, there should not be two of you existing at one time.
Throughout each of the eight episodes Greendale is introduced to a new Eldrich Terror. The first terror is The Darkness, who tries suck the light out of Greendale. With the help of Sabrina Morningstar, they are able to trap The Darkness while simultaneously battling loneliness. Truly, Sabrina is lonely. Nick dumped her and her friends are preoccupied with their own love lives. So are her aunties! Either way, they are able to come out on top and Sabrina is able to value herself before jumping into another relationship. The second terror to visit is The Uninvited. He’s a disgusting man, who, if denied hospitality, rips your heart out. Sabrina is able to woo him at Aunt Hilda’s wedding in a hilarious series of events before trapping him in the dollhouse.
The third terror to descend upon Greendale is The Weird, which takes its form in an octopus. In reality, it is able to transfer from host to host, meaning Sabrina is the next host. I loved the fake-out we got when they all thought they rid her body of it – so creepy! Eventually they were able to trap it in a real octopus with the help of Pesta temporarily rotting Sabrina’s mind. The fourth terror is the Imp of the Perverse, which Father Blackwood gets his hands on from an odd guy who goes by “the Trinket Man.” Blackwood wishes for himself to be Emperor of Greendale, and to have always been Emperor. Lucky for everyone, Roz and Sabrina are unaffected by the wish. They eventually get help from the Trinket Man to restore the coven’s memories and find the Imp of the Perverse to wish everything back to the way it was. Kind of reminded me of the wish concept in Wonder Woman 1984.
Greendale’s fifth terror comes at a much higher level with the Infernal Realm and the Mortal Realm merging into one another. Metatron from the Celestial Realm comes to tell them all that one of the Sabrinas must die, or they merge to become one Sabrina. See? Ambrose was right! Ultimately though, they discover an even bigger problem with duplicate realms hurtling towards their own. In order to stop this from happening, Sabrina Morningstar volunteers to go live in this copied realm in order to stop the original from being destroyed. The sixth terror is The Returned, which is bringing back loved ones from the grave. Only problem is, is they are not their actual old selves, and if they are irritated in any way while they are returned then bad things can happen. What frustrated me with this was that even though everyone knew that, they still couldn’t help but interact with the dead. Obviously, Sabrina interacting with her father, Edward Spellman was a bad idea. Everyone also has to win a battle of the bands competition in order to save Harvey’s dad. Cue not one, but three, cringeworthy songs. Yeesh.
The seventh terror is very much related to the fifth. When Sabrina Morningstar crosses into the copied realm, it happens to be quite a bit different than she was expecting. In a stoke of genius, they brought in the actresses who played Hilda and Zelda from the sitcom, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, to make it seem like her life is just acting out everything that actually happened to her in her real life. I loved seeing them in a large majority of the episode! Kudos! And yes, Salem was talking and animatronic. While I enjoyed Luke Cook voicing him, you almost can’t replace Nick Bakay’s brilliance in the original. It takes her a long time, but she finally figures out that Salem is the Eldrich Terror, as anything he writes for the show comes true. The two of them somewhat unite when they realize the eighth and final terror, The Void is coming for their copied realm first. They manage to escape through the mirror to warn Sabrina Spellman and co just before she dies.
The Void doesn’t care who they are or about them in any way, shape, or form, so this is obviously going to be one tough thing to defeat. Sabrina gets her hands on Pandora’s box and goes to trap the Void, but is pulled out before she is done. This leaves a part of the Void in Sabrina and starts accidentally making stuff vanish. In order to not be danger to others, she heads to a remote location and teams up, surprisingly, with Father Blackwood to control the Void inside her. Obviously Blackwood sucks and there’s something in it for him. Namely, to destroy Sabrina once and for all, and to have the power of the Void all to himself. Luckily, Sabrina has lots of friends that care for her and work to save her. But….SPOILER….Sabrina dies! And yes, that puts a nice little bow on everything, especially when Nick decides to “swim in the sea of sorrows” to join her.
Look, I know this was probably not the intended ending of this series, but it works. At least from a high level. Sure, the Spellmen’s most definitely have that Cain pit where they could have brought Sabrina back to life. And if that didn’t work, there was still the frozen body of Sabrina that they could have transferred her soul back into. Oh yeah, AND, Mambo Marie is actually a leader of the dead, so she could have brought Sabrina back, too! I digress. I’m sure something like that would have happened had the series continued, but as it is, I am ignoring those plot holes since it is indeed, the end. Overall, I really enjoyed the darker take on this show. As a lover of the sitcom, I was very skeptical going into it. And while they are quite different, I still think Harvey and Sabrina should have been the actual endgame, because as Harvey says in that alternate universe, “they’re canon.” So long and farewell, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I’ll miss you so.