On January 24th, Netflix released its third season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I’ve written about season one, and I figured I’d write about season 3, as the characters and the plot have both come so far since then. If you haven’t seen the previous seasons, stop reading now and go watch them! Non-spoilery review below:
Quick recap: Theo is trans, Roz was blind for a minute but now can see and is dating Harvey, Blackwood is missing, Nick used himself as a vessel to trap Lucifer and is now in hell, and the Church of Night is probably falling apart. Okay, now that we’re all caught up, let’s get into season 3.
Without giving too much away, I will say that the promos for season 3 mislead you a little bit. Some things take much greater precedence and other things get solved much too quickly. In these instances, I found myself liking season 3 a little less than I thought.
I will say that Harvey and Roz’s dedication to each other is awe-inducing. Sabrina/Harvey shippers shouldn’t lose all hope, though (and that’s all I will say on that). Yet, I felt as though something was missing during the majority of the season: the group dynamic. I think the show was self-aware at first of the sudden turns from human problems to Satan problems, but I don’t think this self-awareness was fully realized and the group dynamic wasn’t as strong as it was in previous seasons. That definitely had me a little bummed, but it was nice to see what the group does when Sabrina isn’t there. The world keeps turning even when Satanic witches aren’t trying to save and/or destroy the world.
Another dynamic that did disappoint me at first was the portrayal of paganism as evil, but there’s a bias on both sides here. Pagans can’t be seen as being just as good as satanic witches, I guess. We’re supposed to root for the Satanists, y’all! And root for them I did, but in a different way than anticipated. The traditionalist views they’ve become accustomed to get questioned in this pivotal season of Sabrina.
I saw an article about how this season, the show embraces its inner-Riverdale. If that’s something that intrigues you, this is definitely the season to watch. I felt the same way about certain Riverdale-y plot points the same way I feel about said sister show. It was a bit cringey, but I couldn’t look away.
The show’s dynamics ultimately change for all of the characters and it begins to embrace its campiness, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing…so long as it remains self-aware and actively does something about it. The season then ends by throwing you for a loop: introducing contradictions that may or may not get explained by the end…who’s to say?
Overall, season 3 is not my favorite, but if you’ve seen the first two you’ll definitely want to see the third.