Stylish and gleefully macabre, Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is one of the streaming service’s best original programs. It tackles social issues, veers away from the many issues in its traditional source material in favor of a more feminist tone, and features gorgeously ghastly imagery. What’s not to love?
It turns out that there are some big plot holes, inconsistencies, and just weird writing that would be easy to tear apart if we loved the show less. Since we adore it, we tend to ignore the series’ many problems, even when they sort of detract from the rest of the show.
Werewolves Can Be Familiars
Familiars are supposed to be goblins, according to Zelda Spellman, and we’ve witnessed evidence to support this statement each time we’ve seen a familiar’s demise on the show. If this is true, how can Nick Scratch’s familiar be the werewolf Amalia, who apparently practically raised him?
A wolf might make sense, but a werewolf is an actual person. So how could an actual person be a warlock’s familiar? There’s something not quite right about Amalia, particularly in the way she reverently touched Sabrina’s face when she was supposedly intent upon taking Sabrina out, so perhaps there’s more to learn about her even though she’s gone.
Theo Makes The Basketball Team
We love how The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina takes on gender fluidity and prominently features Theo, who wasn’t even in the comic books. But why does Theo suddenly want to be on the basketball team when he isn’t even any good at basketball? While it’s wonderful that the bigoted coach was forced to allow him to try out for the team, it doesn’t make sense to allow anyone on the team who can’t even play. Anyone who’s tried out for a sport knows that you have to be able to play to make the team.
Sabrina’s magical involvement in helping Theo get on the team isn’t fair or supportive of the show’s messages. Why not have Theo already good at the sport, but in need of Sabrina’s help to get the tryout instead?
The Tarot Reading Episode Is A Cop-Out
During the second part of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, we witness a weird episode in which a fortune teller reveals the possible futures of all of our characters. In “Chapter Fifteen: Doctor Cerberus’s House of Horror,” Madam Satan poses as Mrs. McGarvey, a woman who can read everyone’s tarot cards. She gives each of the main human characters plus Sabrina, Ambrose, and Zelda a glimpse into a horrifying future during each of their readings.
The issue here isn’t even that future reveals through fortune telling, visions, and dreams are so overused in fantasy, although they really are. It’s that the fortune teller is none other than Lilith, who is the most untrustworthy person in the series up until the final episode. Whether or not her predictions are truthful or a total plot to usurp the Dark Lord, as her own card, the Empress, alludes to, it feels a bit like a waste of an episode filled with what-ifs.
Edward Spellman Married Diana In The First Place
The fact that Edward Spellman would marry Diana knowing that there would be trouble when it came to giving Sabrina to the Dark Lord is ridiculous. It’s akin to condemning your marriage to failure. The show doesn’t explain Sabrina’s parents’ relationship very well except to show how they both deceived one another in a battle to choose their daughter’s path for her. They thus prevented her from the choice she should’ve received as any other witch.
In the comics, Edward has a plan all along, and he’s so evil he’s even attracted to Sabrina when he uses Harvey’s corpse to come back to life. Yeah, it’s vastly different, but it makes much more sense, given that he was a warlock in this series who made a deal with the devil.
Madam Satan Is A Flip-Flopper
She hates Sabrina and she’ll take her down because she deserves to be the Dark Lord’s queen! Madam Satan has monologued about this so often she probably mumbles it in her sleep. So why does she waffle between aiding Sabrina in some of her efforts and sabotaging her in others? Whether she was putting on a show for the Dark Lord or just choosing to sympathize with her competition, after the second part of the show we know she’s on Sabrina’s side, or so she says.
Given that Madam Satan’s source material in the comics—which had her pursuing Edward Spellman, who had rebuffed her for a mortal—gave her a much more pitiful nature, we can’t help but still love her in the show. In the comic, she actually sacrifices herself to some lions in protest of Edward’s marriage before returning from the grave.
The Dark Lord Randomly Taunts Miners
During the first part of the show, it’s revealed that the Dark Lord used to haunt the mines where Harvey’s father and brother worked. It’s the reason why Harvey is so terrified to enter the mines in the first place. While it makes sense that the devil would love to play with mortals, the Dark Lord, in this case, seems above such tasks.
This is a guy who sends his second-in-command to Earth to groom his daughter/future queen (because that’s not weird) because he can’t do something that important himself, but he can play boogeyman in the mines? It makes zero sense.
The Dark Lord Makes No Sense
Speaking of Satan, he really has a lot of issues. If he could arrive on earth all smoking hot like he did during the second part of the series, why not just do that in the first place to seduce Sabrina instead of sending Nick Scratch? And why would he send his concubine, of all people, to groom her? He had to know that was a recipe for disaster.
Everything the Dark Lord does makes it appear as if he’s not really Satan but some mischievous lesser demon who just wants Sabrina for his bride. It would be hilarious if that turned out to be true, but now that Sabrina is Queen, that seems unlikely. Still, it would be more fitting for the Dark Lord, who doesn’t seem to be much more powerful than Voldemort.
The Ages Don’t Make Sense
Sabrina is ready for her Dark Baptism on her 16th birthday, yet some witches are supposedly middle-aged or older and still attending the Academy of Unseen Arts. Actress Tati Gabrielle, for example, says that her character, Prudence, is 70 years old, and Nick Scratch is 50 years old.
We get that the witches and warlocks experience unnatural longevity as part of their powers, but why would they stay at a boarding school for this long? Did all of the students start at 16 or younger and just remain there for decades? If so, that seems like overkill and way too long to experience high school, even for evil people.
Salem Is Barely In The Show
It makes perfect sense for Salem, Sabrina’s faithful and helpful familiar, to not appear much on the show for Kiernan Shipka, who plays Sabrina. Shipka has cat allergies and cannot hold Salem without bothersome effects, so it’s unlikely that we will see the two of them snuggling up anytime soon.
Still, the cat has a more prominent place in all of Sabrina’s past incarnations and deserves a bit more limelight than he’s received this season. He did some incredible things for Sabrina during the first part of the show, but since the apple orchard incident and assisting Sabrina with the Weird Sisters, he hasn’t been around much.
Sabrina Is Kind Of A Jerk
Our love of Kiernan Shipka, who plays the role so well, keeps us mostly blind to the fact that Sabrina is a big jerk, and often. She defies every tradition just because it’s her opinion and offends the rest of the witches and warlocks in the process; lies to people but expects them to be honest with her; believes that she’s right and everyone else is wrong, even if they have much more experience; and often fails at her own plans.
Sabrina continues to interfere in the lives of her friends with her magic even after they’ve asked her not to do so and sometimes acts like an arrogant little witch, particularly for a novice. We can always blame it all on her also being a teenager, but that doesn’t make the behavior okay.
