It took me way longer than I wanted it to, but I finally finished watching Part 3 of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina! And what a crazy ride it was. I’ll try my best to cover everything that went down.
We pick up where Part 2 ended, with Nick using himself as a vessel to trap the Dark Lord. Sabrina vowed to get him back, and she does that right off the bat. She goes to Hell where Lilith has made herself comfortable, and declares that she’s ready to claim the throne as the Queen of Hell. That’s all well and good, except for the clay Prince of Hell, Caliban, also wants to claim the throne. In order to determine who gets it, they must retrieve the Holy Regalia: Herod’s crown, Pontius Pilot’s bowl, and Judas’s silver coins. The hunt for these items span the entire eight episodes and they end up being both Sabrina’s undoing and savior.
While Sabrina is ruling Hell, she’s also still a mortal student at Baxtar High, and a student at the Academy of Unseen Arts which is pretty depleted of witches and powers. Zelda has taken over as the director of the Academy, while Hilda reluctantly helps her. As all of this is going on, Prudence and Ambrose are hunting down Father Blackwood to kill him. When the find him, he’s in the process of retrieving the “time egg” from some swamp creature by sacrificing his now fully grown twins (time loops are crazy, right?). Faustus is captured and brought back to the Academy.
With Lilith’s help Sabrina manages to transfer the Dark Lord into Faustus, but Nick is clearly struggling with life after the fact. He starts drinking heavily, doing drugs, and cheats on Sabrina, so he ultimately breaks up with her. Theo finds a new guy at school, Robin, and Harvey and Roz are still going strong. That is, until a carnival comes to town. Initially seen as a fun time, it is clear the troupe is much more sinister. In fact, they are a group of pagans who plan on summoning “the green man” to destroy Greendale.
Loads of havok is wreaked by the pagans, including turning Roz and Dorcus to stone, turning Hilda into a spider, and ultimately sacrificing Harvey to the Green Man since he’s a virgin. Aside from Harvey dying, basically everyone else Sabrina knows and loves also dies by the end of the seventh episode since she’s too busy trying to get Judas’s silver coins. She gets duped and stuck in stone while Caliban takes over Hell and tries to make the mortal realm the tenth circle. All seems pretty much doomed until Sabrina’s future self comes to retrieve her. She switches places with Sabrina so she can go back and use the Holy Regalia to undo the mess that has been made by the pagans.
Sabrina is able to successfully thwart the troupe’s summoning, and manages to kill them all with everyone’s help. Nick and Sabrina are still broken up, Prudence breaks up with Ambrose, Harvey and Roz are still together, along with Theo and Robin. Hilda surprisingly didn’t kill Dr. Cee during her time as a carnivorous spider, and Zelda finds new love with Mambo Marie. While Sabrina thinks she needs to go switch back with her future self, she manages to find her earlier and they decide that one of them is going to rule Hell, while the other is going to live life as a teenager. All of this seems great until Ambrose pieces everything together, telling Sabrina she’s created a paradox. Elsewhere, Father Blackwood has the time egg and summons the Eldritch Terrors.
This season was intense and so dark! I loved it. They’ve also perfectly set up Part 4, which will clearly focus on the Eldritch Terrors and whatever the heck that means for Greendale. I assume it will also spend time covering the issues created by the existence of two Sabrinas. I can’t wait!