Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina goes out in a wild blaze of overplotting
TV Reviews Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina
Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina has always been a show that struggled to be about something while still churning through vast acres of plot. And while this season occasionally spent time with Sabrina struggling to figure out who she was after a bad breakup, the finale goes out in a wild blaze of plot, as her various loved ones battle to save her and stop the Void.
They’re ultimately successful at stopping the Void, but Sabrina herself isn’t saved, thus ending the show on a surprisingly down note for a series that was often explicitly about darkness but rarely completely despairing. It’s a blur of events, considering the episode begins with Sabrina making out with her boyfriend among friends while watching a scary movie. In short order, Sabrina Morningstar reappears through a mirror with just enough life left in her to warn Sabrina Spellman about the Void before she perishes. This event then kicks off a series of speeding train events that keep dropping characters by the wayside with little in the way of a farewell. The trinket man returns to get the Imp of the Perverse, trading it for Pandora’s Box, at which point Sabrina comes up with a reckless plan on her own to stop the Void. Her family, unsurprisingly, tries to yank her back into reality, whereupon they store her spirit in Morningstar’s body, even though it would seem that whatever killed her would have damaged that body. Lilith overhears that Morningstar is dead and rushes off to tell Lucifer, who tries to storm the Spellman house with Caliban and some possessed miners, all of whom end up getting sucked into the Void. And then Lilith stabs Lucifer, drinks his celestial blood, and kicks him out of Hell. That’s it for Lucifer, once the show’s greatest villain, and it’s also more or less the last of Lilith, who pops up to attend Sabrina’s funeral but otherwise isn’t an actor in anything that happens. What happened to her baby? Was she actually upset about it? Was this all just a long game to take over Hell, or is the idea that she’s just enough of an opportunist to forget everything else and seize her moment now that it’s here?
Doesn’t matter! Now we’re onto the Void problem, namely that it is now stuck in Sabrina and she keeps accidentally voiding people. Father Blackwood tells her he can help, and two weeks later, when Prudence, Roz, Agatha, and Ambrose show up to rescue her, the main result is that Roz and Prudence get sucked into the void. But Sabrina manages to communicate to Ambrose how to actually defeat the Void, which involves Nick going into the void with Pandora’s Box (which in a separate, off-camera development, he has picked up along with Spellman’s body in space while wearing a tentacle on his face, naturally) while Harvey and Ambrose yank out all the trapped people. Hecate is summoned to watch over her during this process, but it’s not enough to save her, and after everyone is successfully de-Voided, she dies. Both Sabrinas are buried outside the Spellman mansion, then some amount of time later, Nick also dies, thus joining Sabrina in a place that looks an awful lot like heaven.
It is so very much plot. And with so very few meaningful character moments along the way. Even if this were just a season finale instead of a series finale, it would be a wild way to end the season, with little emotional payoff for a lot of what was set up over the course of the season. Sabrina doesn’t even get any kind of resolution to her earlier soul searching about who she wanted to be, whether in this world or a different one. Father Blackwood’s big plan for the eldritch terrors was to have power over the Void himself, even though it seems very hard to control, with little in the way of active powers. And now there’s a new religion going in his name started by Mary Wardwell. If you had a favorite character on this show, they probably did not get much of a sendoff. And despite the fact that this episode was more than an hour long, we still didn’t get to see a lot of things. Why send characters as major as Prudence and Roz into the Void and then not follow them there? Why then send Ambrose, Harvey, and Nick into the Void to be heroic and not show what they did? Why leave Robin, a magically fast being, holding onto a rope instead of rounding up all those missing people?
It’s all a rough way for the show to end. Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina has always had a lot of ups and downs, but it usually at least wanted to spend more time with the various humans and immortal creatures occupying its universe. At its best, it was a fun, gothic romp with a disconcertingly angelic main character who was both a Satanic worshipper and a normal high school student, with all the accompanying humor and pathos that conflict promised. But it also had an annoying tendency to throw out character development in favor of whatever exciting new conflict it came across, with maddeningly little interest in crafting a coherent path there. Too often, it had all the ingredients of a good show—a fun and game cast, a unique and gorgeous aesthetic, and a sustained commitment to being truly weird—without the narrative follow-through to hold it all together. The TV landscape will be a little less colorful without it, though.
Stray observations
- There were so many dropped threads in this season! I wanted to know more about Weird Sister Roz, or see Lilith find her way, or learn more about the coven under Hecate’s guidance. Or have the trinket man explained. Not sure I cared about what Caliban actually wanted, though, so I don’t mind that we never figured that out.
- Why is Lilith all, I can tell you where the Spellmans will be? They’re at home. This was not much of a mystery.
- I appreciated that even when Sabrina was in the depths of Void-dom, she still wore a headband.
- Lil Salem peeking out of a knapsack was a highlight for me personally, as I have always enjoyed the very skillful black cat acting on this program.
- Thanks for reading along! May your headbands be sharp and stylish and your doppelgangers be as friendly as Sabrina’s.
86 Comments
Giving this a C is beyond generous. What a mess.
Very surprised that there’s no mention of the ending, which has Sabrina not only DEAD, but implies that Nick Scratch committed suicide to be with her. What an awful, tone-deaf way to end this show.
And why didn’t they go to HELL?
Or reincarnate since that’s what modern Wicca (which the turn towards Hecate seemed to lean towards) typically believe in? Hilda and Zelda getting baby Sabrina all over again seems appropriate. They could have spent like 2 minutes in the Returned episode and explain what the heck the new!Coven thought the afterlife would be. They could have also had her go to the Summerland which is where modern Wicca sometimes think you go between death and reincarnation.I can understand not wanting her to go to Hades (Hecate was a greek goddess so that’s what her actual followers may have believed in) bc Hades sucked and it’s a little off from the of the new!Coven, but why Heaven?
It wouldn’t be a Netflix teen show if it didn’t have toxic messages viewers are supposed to embrace because it’s all so cool.
If this was just a normal season finale, I would’ve loved it. Frequently when the show goes all-in on stacking one layer of nonsense on another it gets too much, but this could’ve been one of the few occasions where it was just focused enough to justify itself and become glorious. But then they killed Sabrina for good (twice) for no real reason and it took the air out of everything. Half the point of teenage protagonists is so you can see how they navigate the obligatory bullshit milestones of youth within their own particular circumstances to become adults. Killing her at the end takes that away.Did they know this was the last season before they started shooting? Would love to know how this season was meant to end if not.Thanks for writing these recaps, Lisa. It’s been a blast.
I don’t think they knew it was the last season. There were (are?) plans called for a part five entitled “Witch War.”
Ross Lynch thought the show was cancelled due to Covid. I’m guessing it was a combination of Covid and that Netflix doesn’t like to keep shows that they co-produce with other studios going that long. Longer the show continues the bigger the budget gets; they have to give the talent raises.
So the death(s) would’ve happened anyway? It seemed like a pretty deliberate series finale, unless they just re-edited whatever footage they could to give closure.
I’m sure they could have brought her back with some magic for another season if they wanted. Dead only sticks in shows like this until someone has an idea for a new storyline.
I think killing her might have been fine, I’m just not sure about the sending her to Heaven bit (it looks pretty, but her dad killed an Archangel literally this season, that’s going to be unpleasant, also why is Heaven the afterlife of a believer of Hecate?) and Nick’s happy suicide (very irresponsible on a show catering to teens)
Are we sure “The Sweet Hereafter” is supposed to be the same as “Heaven”?
For that matter, what was the book she was reading?
Given the mess the show’s cosmology has always been, it’s just as possible that it’s Hecate’s waiting room. 🙄
They didn’t know when they were shooting it that it was the last season. They got cancelled before it aired, and had to throw together that series finale in post. This episode was originally meant to be a cliffhangery season finale. I really think they should have just left it as it was, and left the series unfinished, rather than finish it the way they did.
It still feels like a cliffhanger. Maybe they’re holding out hopes for a reunion of some sort. I liked this ep okay. C is a bit harsh, just as A was a bit of an overpraise for last episode. Together, give em a B (a B+ and a B for last week and this week). Nick’s casual suicide is a wrong note – but Prudence chain-sawing her old man was a very right note! So, superficially the notes wash for me.
Terrible finish to a terrible (eventually – started strong) show. At least the penultimate ep did some interesting stuff and leaned into its campiness the right way. This finale, and the entire season, was just a misguided mess.
Did I miss the thread, by the way, on what happened with Theo’s ancestor-ghost-thing? What happened there? Oh wait, it’s Theo, so doesn’t matter.
Again, to reiterate a comment I’ve made previously – everyone is sad about Sabrina because they’re written to be sad about Sabrina. Sure, she had some heroics, but interpersonally, she was hot trash.
I’m kind of curious, who was this show for?
Really want to see the show that’s a continuation of Season One, Episode One.
This show was so frustrating. The only consistent, and consistently good, thing about it was the killer aesthetics. No consistent internal logic around magic, how it’s practiced, what the source is, what its limits are, what the cost is. Early on, they toyed with the whole “can you be a good person and still be a witch/Satanist” but never had any real interest in developing that. If you’re going to pull in the power structures of heaven and hell, then at least have some sense of why. I never could figure out what being Queen of Hell meant, especially for someone who doesn’t actually want to torture people, and with Lucifer still hanging out down there. And of course all the missed potential of half-hearted storylines for the mortals. Harvey’s blue-collar family, Roz’s anti-witch family that actually turns out just to be witches (so dumb! but at least it got Roz into the coven), Theo’s everything.This season or installment or whatever was even more frustrating than the last. But I think my absolute least-favorite part was implying Nick pined (after a completely unearned reunion) for Sabrina for a bit and then died (broken heart? suicide?) to join her. What a great message – death fixes everything!
Nick’s fate was not ambiguous. He said he intentionally went swimming in the Lake of Sorrow, or whatever it was called, and he made a quip about its strong undertow. Dude straight up drowned himself in order to join Sabrina in the Afterlife. That’s how this show ended. It not only killed Sabrina, it then had her rushed, last minute “endgame” boyfriend kill himself in order to be with her for all eternity.
Dude straight up drowned himself in order to join Sabrina in the Afterlife. And without knowing anything at all about what the Afterlife is, and where he and Sabrina would end up relative to that.
This was the grand ultimate meaning of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: “Kill Yourself, Kids”. The “Chilling” part refers to how irresponsible it is
I agree, I watched the show for the aesthetics and the cast. The beliefs and mythos were astoundingly inconsistent. I found myself wondering why Sabrina would even want to be in heaven, much less wind up there. Shouldn’t she go to hell? And character-wise, any number of the supporting cast would have made more interesting protagonists. That’s not a knock on Shipka, it’s the writing. The Aunts, Ambrose, Prudence, and Roz were all more interesting and had better arcs than Sabrina.
Also her dad just killed an archangel this season. I imagine Heaven would not be a fun place to be even if it was nice if you pissed off G-d and the Angels. Like even Supernatural understood that and got it right (and Sam died of old age and not immediate suicide!)
Suicide! He said “I went swimming in the Sea of Sorrows”. Just a casual happy suicide at the end of a show in many ways aimed at teens. Very healthy. That really bothered me- and he was the one holding Pandora’s box! Why not just kill him then?
Weren’t the Sabrinas burried in the cemetary that brings people back to life? Did the cemetary lose that ability in one of the earlier seasons? I absolutely loved this show despite it making absolutely no sense whatsoever. It doesn’t quite achieve the heights of Riverdale because somehow the show that involves witches and Satan feels like it has more structural limitations. As much as it often ignores structure, it is still married to a particular genre where Riverdale just be wilin’. But I love its commitment to beautiful, stylish nonsense. And mainstream Satanism. I mean, we had a beloved main character kill and eat (?) a baby and it was barely worth a mention in the recaps.I was actively offended by what came off to me as Nick’s tossed off mention of suicide. When you have 13 Reasons Why getting tons of scrutiny and trigger warnings on the same service (which I admittedly did not watch), it seemed strangely callous for the ending to be, “Hey girl, I drowned myself in the ocean so we could hang.” But you know. That was literally 7 seconds, so whatevs. The show died as it lived.
Weren’t the Sabrinas buried in the cemetery that brings people back to life?Of course they weren’t, it was the series finale! 🙂 we had a beloved main character kill and eat (?) a baby and it was barely worth a mention in the recaps.I suspect the reviewer didn’t pick up on that particular development (out of a thousand), as she was wondering in this review what happened to Lilith’s baby.I agree that the show will still be endearing to me because of its amazing visual style and its approach to Satanism as a religion worth defending. In fact, if it wasn’t for the simultaneous criticism of Satanism as basically just the same as Christianity but with better-dressed people, I would be interested in it. I guess I’ll stick with the Church of the Invisible Pink Unicorn, may She bless us with Her holy hooves.
I didn’t even realize they missed that in the recaps. It was covered a fair amount too. Also Lilith isn’t going to improve much- she got her goal, she’s Queen of Hell and she screwed over Lucifer. That’s fairly in character for her since there’s at least 2 times she gives up the morally right option in favor of power.
I wish they could have gotten Tim Burton or Sam Raimi to come in and film a quick down & dirty two-parter. That would have been a perfect fit.
What you want is LaVeyan Satanism. The show was more Theological Satanism. They believed in Satan, whereas LaVey was Atheist. He puts it right out there in The Satanic Bible.
A conservative follower of Ayn Rand? Thank you, but no thank you.
That stopped working, I think- that’s part of why Zelda stopped killing Hilda?
I don’t think the Cain Pit stopped working they had to switch to Hecate is all.
That is what I wonder, too. After the one auntie being killed, buried, and coming back due to the special dirt or whatever at the start of the series, when they had the funeral for the Sabrinas in the cemetary by the Spellman house I assumed that, natch, they would have planted at least one Sabrina in the special dirt. Plus being dead, wouldn’t she just end up back in Hell anyway?
Some notes, on our way to the great white room beyond.1) Last episode’s cliffhanger ultimately amounted to nothing, since Sabrina Morningstar survived her ordeal only to die ten seconds later (which, why, by the way? She wasn’t even wounded in the Endless), after telling the other Sabrina that the Void is coming, which wasn’t any kind of new or helpful information. So the entirety of that episode served no purpose at all.2) Sabrina Spellman died in outer space? Last I checked, outer space doesn’t look like a museum room during an exhibition about Minimalism (also, outer space is not empty). And the idea that the Weird could somehow work as a respirator is akin to saying Nick could have put a colander on his head to protect his body from gamma radiations.
3) Did Lucifer really need to know where Sabrina & friends would be, in order to attack them? First of all, he’s fucking Lucifer. And second of all, they spend their whole lives within a one-mile radius, it’s not that hard to track them down! And they were at the Spellmans’ house! What a valuable piece of intel Lilith was holding!
4) And having Lilith, the first woman, betray the Spellmans to Lucifer after all the help they gave her, is outright misogynistic.5) What happened to the Endless? The stuffed Salem crossed over with Sabrina Morningstar, was shown on the floor of Sabrina’s bedroom, and then… was forgotten?6) What was the purpose of the framing device with Ms. Wardwell recounting the story, and attributing it to Blackwood/Reverend Lovecraft, when it’s the story of his defeat?7) So the trinket man was God? Who knows, who cares. And it makes as much sense to think it was James Urbaniak as himself.8) Hecate never materialized. Lilith at some point said she was the goddess of witchcraft while Lilith herself was the first witch (so predating Hecate, which makes zero sense, but what’s new). If Hecate didn’t exist anymore, where did the coven’s powers come from?9) It’s ultimately quite sad to think back at the entire series, and find out it chronicled the last twelve months in the life of a 16-year-old girl. (And then another teenager kills himself to eternally keep her company in an empty room). It’s the last in a long list of misguidedly dark finales to mostly lighthearted series. Sure Sabrina’s goodbyes to everyone (including Agatha, because she had such a great rapport with Agatha) was affecting, but why would the creators think the viewers would love to see the protagonist die? I honestly won’t find much incentive in rewatching the series down the line, knowing that’s just Sabrina’s march toward untimely death. Imagine if they put a countdown in each episode, “Six months left”, “Five weeks left”, like in Fosse/Verdon?
2) She was inside the Void when we saw her so the art gallery was the inside of the Void. The Void was traveling through Space.3) It seemed like Lucifer was panicking and tired so it’s not that implausible4) Lilith has chosen to do bad things/put up with bad things in the name of power on at least 2 occasions so her choosing to betray the Spellmans so she could do fun spells again and not get old wasn’t super out of character
But yeah, I agree with everything else. The last one didn’t bother me quite as much since I’d read the comics it was based off of and it was waaaaaay darker, but Nick’s suicide I thought was portrayed really irresponsibly and also seemed an unnecessary choice as he put the Pandora’s box in the Void, the same task which almost killed Sabrina the first time. Why not just kill him then?
2) “The Void was traveling through Space”. This sentence makes no sense, but I guess it’s the kind of lack of sense the writers reveled in. :)What we saw is still nonsensical on that level, though. If Sabrina was “inside the Void”, then that’s where Nick should have gone too, and it wouldn’t require a preposterous space walk. If the Void ejected Sabrina’s body at some point, it was never said, and it awfully makes the Void feels like an alien spaceship rather than a metaphysical concept of complete annihilation of energy and matter. And it raises questions like: where was the portion of space where the Void resided? How large? How far? The implication here is that witches can space travel to any point in the universe. Just think about it.3) It’s implausible that Lucifer forgot where Sabrina’s home is, and that he would later still consider it valuable enough an information to push him into taking back a punishment he had personally administered. And panicked about what, anyway? His problem at that point is that he wanted Sabrina Morningstar’s body back to give her a proper funeral. Not really a time sensitive issue. It’s clear the writers wanted Lilith to have leverage on Lucifer so her powers could be restored for her final act of vengeance, but they couldn’t figure out a sensible way to go about it.
Yeah I don’t understand why her body and the box wouldn’t still be in the Void? Like, other stuff doesn’t fall out of the Void. It barely makes sense why it wasn’t vacuuming other stuff up as it traveled between the duplicate Earth and actual Earth. And yes it’s absolutely wild Nick was able to just travel through space with no suit or oxygen. Also how fast was he traveling? I don’t think the CAS witches every demonstrated a consistent “travel” spell (I have to rewatch the old show, but I think they had “blinking” where it was obviously the same method and functioned like teleportation). If they’d had him show up and instead of saying he killed himself, being like “Well, it turns out space is full of radiation”Yeah, I never quite got why Lucifer was quite so passionate about Sabrina. Was it really that hard for him to have another kid? It’s not like they showed he and Sabrina Morningstar were actually tight. Initially when pretty!Lucifer showed up it kind of seemed like he wanted to bang her but then they dropped that
9) It probably enters a lot of spoiler territory but could you give me an idea of what other shows you mean?
It’s a topic for an entire article. I retrieved what I wrote in occasion of the Grimm finale, which reviewer Les Chappell described correctly this way: “As the story we’ve watched for six seasons ends, it leaves us with a sense that we only reached the end of a volume, and the adventure continues in books yet to be written.” To which, I replied something that applies to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina as well: “This is definitely how a show like Grimm has to end. A fun, lighthearted show based on the strength of its ensemble and the heartwarming feels of its characters hanging out and having adventures together. So many shows of this kind have awfully botched the ending, scattering the characters, destroying the core relationships, inserting a jarring last-minute darkness. Chuck botched it. White Collar botched it. Grimm did not.”Chuck might be the first instance where I felt a disconnect between what the writers said they wanted to accomplish and what they actually did. They thought that permanently obliterating the mind of a main character (arguably the most beloved character in the whole series) and scattering everyone else across the planet in ways that would make almost impossible for them to remain in touch, somehow equaled to “romantic”.I could also argue that the finale of Scrubs (the real one), while extremely well-done (the gallery of past characters is still a paradigm for that type of scene, as is the best use ever recorded of Peter Gabriel’s “The Book of Love”), fabricated an unnecessary contrivance (that the misguided follow-up season and the weak spin-off had to backpedal on to some extent) to separate the main characters for no strong reason.
In the post above, no TV and no beer gives other solid examples, though I maintain the original incarnation of Veronica Mars had the correct (if forced by circumstances) finale, because that’s noir, baby. Instead, I find the finale of The Good Place a miscalculation, but that’s more complex than just accidental tone-deafness, and at least it was thoroughly engineered throughout the last stretch of the final season.
I watched most of White Collar but I think skipped a good bit of the last season and the finale. Likewise, I watched most of Burn Notice, but never finished it. I did read the summary of the last episode though and I think that would be another candidate for your point.
You should watch the last season of White Collar. It’s only 6 episodes I believe. It’s quite touching, and they do a very good job wrapping up the series (until the continuation that supposed to happen).I remember watching Burn Notice every week when it was on. The problem was when he got back in the show took a VERY dark turn. It was more about his spy adventures then him helping people. It was very hard to watch if you enjoyed a the fun-loving series it was up until season 6.
I think Chuck after season 2 was just terrible. They decided to change his character 180 degrees, and say he wants to be a spy even though NOTHING showed that in the last 2 years. Yes, he was good at it…because he wasn’t trying to be a spy. The audience could relate with him, when they cut his hair and made it a generic spy show the story went downhill. I think White Collar actually nailed it for the limited amount of episodes USA gave them to wrap it up. We will see what the new continuation will do to advance the story, my guess is Peter is in Paris on vacation and Neil wraps him in one of his adventures, and it ends with him coming back to America free and clear. I actually liked the GP ending. Truthfully, how else would you end it. I do think Janet should have got an ending, but she is just tool of the afterlife.
Yeah seriously. I put this up there with other terrible nonsensical finales of the last few years, like iZombie and Veronica Mars. And just like those two, I have no desire to re-watch it now because the journey is utterly pointless.
WRONG SABRINA DIED!(Well, first anyway)
I wonder how much of the ending storyline was attributed to Netflix cancelling the show when they did? How much of this season was written/filmed when they received the announcement?
I commend them for going with a ballsy definitive conclusion that killed
off the lead. On the other paw, it didn’t really feel it was in the
spirit of the show since nearly every tragedy had been magically undone.
Did the writers learn Netflix was axing the show at the eleventh hour
& hastily rewrite the ending in a fit of rage?
The Endless came through he mirror with Morningstar, so why don’t we get more talking cat?
So Lilith basically restores herself to the end of season two status quo. Hooray for her, but it’s a waste of the audience’s time making her scrounge to reclaim what she’d already won.
Why doesn’t the Cain Pit resurrect both Sabrinas?
One of the Sabrinas (Or did their souls merge back together in death?)
is sitting in The Sweet Hereafter, which is the crappy art gallery of
afterlives. Nick implies he committed suicide to be reunited with her
& their spirits smooch. Why are their souls not in Hell since they
signed them away to Satan?
CAOS takes place in an alternate reality to
The CW so destroying all Sabrinas here shouldn’t be an obstacle to her appearing on Riverdale. Perhaps
The CW’s Salem can be snarky?
The first word of this episode is “meanwhile . . . ,” implying that the events we are about to witness are happening while Sabrina Morningstar is dealing with The Endless. That is a lie because what we see is Wardwell’s reading from the Eldritch Gospel, which then flashes back to what was happening at that time.
We all know that horror movies are for making out to. Sabrina Spellman and Nick Scratch are the most in love because they are the last to pry themselves apart during the group makeout session? (Speaking of, this is probably not the kind of group makeout session Nick is used to, what with his orgy experience.)
Sabrina (Spellman, anyway) likes the giallo films of Dario Argento.
Loving the subtlety of Chekhov’s birthday locket, delivered along with the line “so that I’ll always be able to find you,” from Nick to Spellman.
Coitus interruptus: Morningstar comes through the mirror at the worst time for the happy couple.I really hate this part. Morningstar appears, tells them The Void is coming to destroy everything (which is not new information!), and promptly dies of unknown causes (though nothing so bad that Spellman can’t use her body later)!!! Wtf? And why do absolutely NOTHING with The Endless?! It’s like the show is saying, “You know that last episode, the one with the glorious fanservice? F that episode, and f you guys for liking it.”
Preparing your alt-self’s dead body has to feel weird, right? (But let’s not explore that at all.)
Blackwood’s grabbing his own head / giddiness at The Void’s approach is some quality horror humor.
Ambrose refers to the eldritch terror of The Cosmic as the three realms of The Ro-Cosmos. I am unfamiliar with that prefix “ro-.” Does anyone know what it means? I’m assuming in context it means something like The Cosmos That Could Have Been, but I honestly have no idea.
I’ll take a well-placed meow from our Salem familiar, but I’ll always remember the talking cat.
“Hello random stranger, of course you can come into my home. I was just about to wish on one eldritch terror to make another go away. Does that sound like a good idea?”“Not to anyone. Also, that imp is mine. It was stolen from me. Give it back, please.”“No. But I’ll trade you for it. Have anything I can use to defeat The Void?”“Here’s Pandora’s Box. Nothing bad ever happened from giving it to a girl like you.”“Shrug, I guess we’re using Greek mythology to defeat Lovecraftian horror.”
Why does Spellman blame herself for all the eldritch terrors? It’s Blackwood’s fault for unleashing them, right? At the point she writes her suicide note (about going into The Void), there aren’t even two Sabrinas anymore for her to think that that’s why the terrors have come.
One tearful goodbye to Salem and one magic mirror spell later, Spellman enters The Void and finds . . . some big M.C. Escher works and a bunch of model planets. Oh yeah, and the words “THE VOID” in case it wasn’t clear that that’s where we are. (The “O” is the door Spellman uses to enter. Presumably, she can’t just use it as an exit, too. For . . . reasons.)I like Escher, but the more I think about it, shouldn’t his works refer to The Endless rather than The Void?
The Void is being weirdly nice to Spellman. Like, “I’ll make the atmosphere hospitable to you,” and everything.Also, there’s “THE VOID” in mirror writing, because The Void is on the other side of Spellman’s mirror, get it?
“I am The Void. I want for nothing. I am nothing. . . . There is no death. No life. Only The Void.” That’s an interesting idea. Too bad about the execution.
The placing of Spellman’s soul in Morningstar’s body raises the question of where Morningstar’s soul went, which never gets addressed.
It gets literally darker in The Void once Spellman nears the end of her Pandora’s Box plan. Obviously, this is meant to be a sign that the plan is working, but shouldn’t The Void, a place of nothingness, already be dark? Also, there doesn’t seem to be any connection between The Eldritch Dark (trapped, fwiw) and the darkness in The Void, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.
If you stop the episode at the 18 ½ minute mark, you get a happy ending to this fairy tale, delivered by Wardwell.
Wardwell says that no one, especially not Spellman, lives happily ever after at the end of this story. But we know that she’s wrong. Spellman and Nick are together in The Sweet Hereafter in the end. Wardwell has strayed far from her Christian beliefs, such as the one about good people living happily ever after in heaven after death, unless she just really believes that Spellman belongs in hell, which, fair.
Now, Wardwell can add “sewing severed head back onto body” and “preaching the Eldritch Gospel” to her resume, along with “former high school teacher.”
I’m probably reading too much into it, but Lilith says, “The Queen, my Lords, is dead,” when she tells Lucifer (and Caliban) about Morningstar. In The Bard’s Scottish Play, the line that leads into the famous Tomorrow Speech is nearly identical. (See also that excellent episode of Barry toward the end of the first season.) That play had witches. This show has witches. Deliberate allusion here? Maybe?
It’s a little ridiculous for Lucifer and company to make such a big deal about the difference between Spellman and Morningstar when the two Sabrinas are largely identical.
I like the idea that The Lord of The Flies is the lord of The Legion. And it’s super creepy how the miners get possessed.But then the possessed get voided and somehow The Void cures the possession. Lame!
Lucifer is wrong: Sabrina Morningstar’s body does not end up having a burial in hell.Also, why does he care about her body so much, as opposed to her soul, which is where again?
I assume that when someone on this show casts a spell, they have to not only say the words but also have the intention behind them. Hence Lucifer’s saying the magic-binding spell to Spellman without losing his own powers.
Lilith said the Spellmans would be unarmed. First off, if a witch can cast a spell just by speaking words, she’d have to be speechless to be unarmed, which everyone knows the Spellmans aren’t. Second off, why would Lilith think the Spellmans wouldn’t have their wands? Oh look, Ambrose has his. I’m shocked.
Lilith knew all along where in hell The Spear of Destiny was. She gave Caliban the location, and he got it for her with ease. She also has known about Lucifer, his strengths, weaknesses, etc., from the beginning (or close to). She has also had problems with Lucifer in the past. Yet she waits until now to stab Lucifer in the back where he’s weak with The Spear, why?You know what, I don’t even care. You go Lilith! You sit on that throne. Yes, Queen! (Too bad about your baby, though. Wtf was that all about, anyway?)
I missed lucid Agatha. So glad she’s back.
So, when Spellman used the mirror to enter The Void with Pandora’s Box, she actually teleported herself to outer space, which appeared as a minimalist art installation about Escher and random planets that was totally hospitable to her even though she wasn’t wearing a spacesuit / hadn’t cast a spell to protect against the elements and was actively trying to destroy The Void with said Box.That’s bonkers, even for this show.
“That’s good enough for me.”This is what Nick says when Ambrose explains how The Weird will help him breathe in outer space.And what the writers said when they got tired of trying to explain any of this nonsense.
Assuming that the chronology of this episode is as straightforward as it seems, when Blackwood told Wardwell to preach the Eldritch Gospel, he couldn’t have meant what we’re listening to from Wardwell now, because she’s talking about things that didn’t involve her that happened after he told her to. So, the Eldritch Gospel has gotten some updates somehow.
Blackwood says he can’t be voided because he’s immune to The Void, just like Spellman was immune to The Perverse. At that time, Spellman and Roz said they were immune because they had come into direct contact with an eldritch terror, when Roz touched The Uninvited and got a vision and when Spellman was possessed by The Weird. So, how come Roz can get voided / isn’t immune to The Void?
If there was any Big Mystery uniting this show, it was “with all the fuckery we’re throwing around, what ultimately happens to Sabrina Spellman’s soul… and why?”That last bit is really important. The show, from the outset, was telling its audience to kill all of their assumptions about the traditional hell/earth/heaven trinity and follow Sabrina’s journey on two levels simultaneously: her “soul” in the moral/developmental sense, and her soul in the in-universe-literal, cosmological sense. The “and why” was an artistic obligation the show explicitly undertook. Did Sabrina’s non-literal soul even matter in determining her final rewards or punishments? Was her universe one of power and politics exclusively, where signing a deal with the devil was a better bet than rolling the dice on a conspicuously absent Abrahamic figure whose celestial realm seemed utterly disconnected from the dominant earth/hell duo?I get that they crammed in a lot of other stuff, and I understand that, to an extent, mashing those big questions together with high school drama was a conscious, cheeky choice. I get all that.
But come on now. In the end, the show looped back around to those big questions, and this was its answer: “lol I guess she ends up in heaven maybe, because fuck you that’s why.”This show made pretense to being something more than an endless (har har) wheel-spinning plot machine, but that’s all it was, ultimately. It ended more or less in media res, which is a pretty fuckin’ risky choice compared to starting a project like so. I suggest that it massively fucked up that maneuver.But hey, it had some cool episodes, some good actors, and loads of aesthetic sensibility. So, whatever.Also, the trinket salesman is God.
I don’t understand why Sabrina Morningstar’s soul didn’t just pop straight back into hell after she died of plot contrivance. She’s the Queen of Hell. Where else would her soul go when she died?
Also lol, fuck Caliban I guess. Just leave him in the void forever.
Caliban really annoys me. There’s never anything suggesting that Sabrina Morningstar was wrong about loving him, but they still treat him as a 2-D background villain to the end.
There were a lot of plot and character inconsistencies in the show – in fact I’d say it’s the show’s defining feature – but Caliban really stood out. They couldn’t seem to decide from one scene to the next whether he was evil or a love interest, and they never went anywhere much with either. What was even the point of him, in the end?
I think he particularly suffered because he was introduced in the third season. The first two seasons had the occasional odd retcon or memory hole, and plenty of plot contrivances, but they largely made sense (and I thought were genuinely good). Then the writers completely lost focus.The rest of the cast was already defined by the first two seasons, so even when they make random decisions, we at least know who they’re supposed to be. But Caliban was introduced into the random mess version of the show, so we never even got a foundation. We can’t even say he’s out of character because they never established one to begin with.
I’m angry so I’m going to type a comment!Really though, I can’t believe they had so many opportunities to magically not kill the titular character(s), but killed both copies of her AND had her boyfriend die by suicide to be with her? Beyond bad writing, that’s actually just messed up?(also, I thought it was funny that, like, I guess only one Sabrina gets to go to the afterlife on camera)
So, would it have been better or worse if the final scene was in this room?
A. This season was back-half-of-NBC-Dracula rocketing through plot points by the end.B. Was that at the end the second The Good Place reference this season (after being informed Melvin is surprisingly ripped), or simply the second coincidence that looks like a The Good Place reference (same) this season?C. Also, was the white room being both space and Sabrina’s heaven an artistic choice, or a Neon Genesis Evangelion level of putting together a season finale on a negative budget? (Answer: Yes.)D. We didn’t even get to see Endless-Salem(‘s corpse) when everyone was handing over the relics. They were just salting the wound at that point.E. The X-Men movies would at least take the time to nerf Quicksilver. CAOS just kinda forgot about Puck for most of it, like a few episodes ago just kinda forgetting Mambo Marie was a wyrd sister, even in the same episode.I’m sure there’s more.
The first two seasons were great. After they inexplicably were able to defeat Lucifer in the season 2 finale, all logic fell out the window and never came back. Seasons 3 and 4 had some fun camp, but the first two seasons were genuinely good. Characters had internally consistent arcs, the worldbuilding was at least mostly coherent, and there were clear themes expressing viewpoints on patriarchy and feminism. I miss that show. I’d love to see a reboot that took the ideas of this series but treated them with discipline.
The best thing about this episode was the pace. It felt like a really long episode of Sabrina, but it also had actual propulsion, so that was nice.The teen witches approaching blackwood with their cool traveling monk aesthetic was actually also pretty nice. I mostly dug the costume choices. I actually also really liked the Void as depicted, but wish they had indicated that it was clear if the Void was really just that space.I don’t know why a bunch of miners in protective equipment would be laughing about a shirtless teenager being down in the mines instead of worried something damaged his clothes and he was in distress. I don’t know why Harvey would freak out that Sabrina killed his dad, when he (Harvey) started the show working in that same mine, the only non-school, non-bookstore business I’ve seen open in four seasons. He should maybe have been upset that a lot of people died* before his dad. The temple and Stargate were…sure set choices. Nick’s suicide was gross and upsetting for more reasons than I care to articulate. For a show where witch deaths only sometimes matter (remember The Feast in season 1? Or the Harrowing or whatever the hazing ritual was called), we sure are supposed to care as a whole town about this one girl who, by rights and rites, should be very dead forever ago.