Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: How the Netflix Series Can Cast a More Powerful Spell in Season 2

*This article contains major spoilers for Season 1 of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Since Chilling Adventures of Sabrina premiered on Netflix in late October, it has been met with mixed reactions.

For every person enchanted with the dark universe and the more headstrong, feminist Sabrina, there’s another disappointed by the development of well-loved characters like Harvey and Salem and another unimpressed with the show’s attempt at “wokeness.” 

Based on a treasured comic property and sharing DNA with beloved TGIF favorite Sabrina the Teenage Witch, some level of disappointment is inevitable; the show cannot and should not be either of those things, no matter how hard it is to shake our preconceived ideas and attachments.

However, even with the acknowledgement that Chilling Adventures of Sabrina demands and needs to be an entirely different beast than its predecessors, watching the series, it’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s a potentially great show in there — the writers just haven’t landed on quite the right potion in the freshman season.

There are some things the show can do to make itself more magical and more powerful. While the second season is currently filming (release date TBD), I hope there are at least a few changes in store in several key areas.

While I respect the theory behind the stylistic choice of using the static motion blur/shallow focus during the magical scenes, in practice, it simply does not work.

It is beyond distracting and pulls focus in all the wrong ways. The series should nix the blur and focus on other ways to set the mood and tone visually.

Technical suggestions aside, story and character-focused changes would make an even bigger and broader impact.

Much of the first season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina focuses on Sabrina’s desire to maintain her mortal life, and more specifically, her relationships with friends Roz and Susie and her boyfriend Harvey.  

In fact, some of the key turning points of the season — Sabrina’s resurrection of Harvey’s brother and her final decision to separate herself from her mortal friends in order to protect them from her darkness — are prompted by her love for these people.

With that said, it’s never clear why she feels so connected to Roz, Susie, and Harvey. It’s better to be shown, not told, how these relationships are valuable and these connections run deep. But we never really see what keeps this core group so loyal to one another.

Susie and Roz are barely fleshed out, and the few moments in the series where they do get something to do — namely, establishing WICCA and fighting against book bans, bullies, and blindness — come off as too much of an after-school special and reveal very little about who Roz and Susie are as characters.

The Weird Sisters, as antagonistic as they may be, at least have some presence and pathos; when Sabrina joins their ranks at the end of Season 1, it’s a little hard to blame her.

If we are to have any investment in what’s at stake in the fight for Sabrina’s mortal life — and the supporting characters that inhabit that part of it — we have to learn more about Roz and Susie and who they are outside of their connections to Sabrina.

There are missed opportunities for this in Season 1, particularly as it relates to Susie and their non-binary gender identity. (Note: This phrase is never muttered during the actual season, but Lachlan Watson, who portrays Susie, identifies Susie as such — and it’s a shame that Watson’s description/analysis of Susie in interviews is far more compelling than anything we see on screen, though this is no fault of Watson’s.)

Susie’s presence in the show and value as a character does not have to be centered on this particular aspect of their identity. But in Season 2, it should definitely be explored more.

How do you solve a problem like Harvey Kinkle?

Harvey, portrayed by the endearing and likable Ross Lynch, is Khaki Personified. He’s kind-hearted and earnest (which is a welcome change from the broody TV boyfriend trope), but he’s also deeply boring.

What about him does Sabrina find so enamoring? What draws them to one another? It’s not until the end of the season that we really see even glimpses of personality. 

It seems likely that the show is gearing up for some kind of love triangle with Harvey, Sabrina, and Nick, so it would be wise to stop drawing Harvey with such broad strokes and clarify his character.

Beyond developing Harvey, Roz, and Susie more, Prudence Night should be moved to the forefront of the action.

Prudence is an antagonist for Sabrina throughout much of Season 1, and while she’s not always portrayed in a flattering light, she is — along with Aunt Zelda — the most fascinating and complex character this show has. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina needs to lead with its A-players, and Prudence certainly is one.

She has the potential to be the antagonist-turned-protagonist we root for, in the vein of Paris Geller (Gilmore Girls), Cordelia Chase (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), or Blair Waldorf (Gossip Girl).

Prudence has experienced trauma and abandonment. Many things have lined up in Sabrina’s favor and conversely have not for Prudence; that could be an interesting dynamic to explore and subsequently steer the show away from falling into the concerning Angry Black Woman vs. White Woman trope they flirted with in the first season. 

Furthermore, the series needs to make up some lost ground after the way it mishandled race in Season 1. The biggest error occurred on “Chapter Four: Witch School” when a plot line includes Sabrina choking the Weird Sisters as payback, with an unfortunate visual echoing lynchings of the past.

That Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which wants so badly to be seen as a progressive show, would include this scene without any acknowledgement of how it might come across (especially given that Prudence is played by a black woman) is incredibly tone deaf.

Additionally, race is essentially not even discussed. And while Prudence does not need to be defined by her race, it’s also foolhardy to ignore it as a reality of her experience.

Beyond that, the show needs to focus on world-building. Essentially, a little less “Praise Satan” and a little more mechanics of witchcraft.

While the first episodes of Season 1 were incredibly expository in nature, there are still aspects of the magical world in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina that are unclear, and the season is, as a whole, devoid of everyday, practical magic.

This is quite surprising given that Sabrina is a young witch supposedly learning more about the craft and is even enrolled in the Academy of Unseen Arts.

It’s unclear how this brand of magic works. How do witches learn spells? How does Sabrina have powers even before she’s signed the Book of the Beast? Exactly what is the point of familiars?

If witches and warlocks cannot feel love, how do they explain Edward Spellman’s love for his mortal wife? Given Roz and Susie’s dabblings in magic, are we to assume everyone in Greendale has some kind of connection to the dark arts?

The show throws out so many things about magic that it never follows up on, and while that’s normal for a first season, that has to be adjusted moving forward.

Lastly, if the show is going to purport itself to be feminist and intersectional, it needs to consider how to imbue that in every facet of its material. It’s not enough to talk about female power or the desire to elevate women. That has to be woven into every thread of the show.

Consider, as just one example, a few moments in early episodes that focus on Kiernan Shipka’s body. Sabrina clearly wants ownership over her own body — she says as much when discussing signing herself away to the Dark Lord. So it feels out of line with the material that there’s a series of voyeuristic shots of her naked form getting out of the bathtub. 

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina clearly wants to be feminist and inclusive, and it’s certainly made more of an effort than plenty of other shows to work towards those priorities. However, it needs to think about how it can portray these ideals from all angles, both in how the show is filmed and in the very stories it chooses to tell.

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What changes — if any — would you like to see in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Season 2? Sound off in the comments!

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