Under Sabrina's Spell

Brittany Doyle
Apr 8, 2019
4 min read

Spoiler Alert- Mild

Check out my review of season one if you have not yet watched it:

https://www.auspartanmedia.com/2018/11/08/theres-a-new-witch-on-netflix/

The witching hour is upon us, season 2 of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is here and it did not disappoint. Have your familiar by you; this season gets pretty twisted and there will be blood. Following the Christmas episode that dropped in December, this season featured nine episodes and came out on April 5th, 2019. All hail Netflix for only making us wait six months for another season of their show. Everyone in the cast is back and Sabrina is a new witch and you’re not even ready for her.

This time around nothing is easy for Sabrina, she challenges the power dynamics at the Church of Night in the first episode taking on Nicholas in a showcase. While she has the Dark Lord whispering into her ear throughout the season, Sabrina still struggles to balance with the real world and the magic one. But now that her friends know her secret nothing is the same, including with her ex-boyfriend, Harvey who now has eyes for someone close to Sabrina. While Zelda Spellman grows closer to Father Blackwood, the family is wary of it. The season is much more intense than the first, and it worked so well with the progression of the characters and the darker growing story line. Kiernan Shipka’s (Sabrina) performance this season is a memorable one along with Tati Gabrielle, Prudence Night, as her and the Weird Sisters still torment Sabrina. Their strong voices and confidence while playing their roles makes them the focus on the screen. Each episode of this season remained important to the story line and featured intriguing special effects, foreshadows, themes, characters, and camera angles.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is pleasing to the eye with the balanced shots and the constant dark/light contrasts in the scenes. Red and blue play a prominent color in the shots signifying good vs. evil. Something Sabrina constantly worries about is if she is truly evil. All season we see her attempt to hold back from dark temptation and instead try to help out her friends. Rosalind faces a personal tragedy but refuses to be helped and we see Susie becoming the boy she always wanted to be. Sabrina opens up a story line that we do not always get to see and this season we meet Theo. He wants to go out for the boy’s basketball team but since he looks like a girl, everyone gives him a hard time, but he’s got the support of a powerful witch behind him. A heavy theme this season is the power dynamics specifically between male vs. female and who the stronger gender is.

Chapter Seventeen: The Missionaries is the standout episode of the season, while I do not want to give too much away; witch hunters come to town and Sabrina must figure out how to save her people. The ending is a game changer for the rest of the season and the effects are not one to miss. Among the dark lighting in the show, long shots of magic effects take up the whole screen and brightens up the scene for just a moment. Specific camera angles give us the uneasy feelings of this magic world. For example, in the first episode, when Sabrina is running in the woods away from the birds the camera is at an off-angled long shot to make the viewer on edge. All this helps bring together this dreamlike supernatural world they created in the show.

They give a little homage to the original television show, with Sabrina spinning in the mirror and her outfit magically changing. But if this season proved anything, it’s nothing like the TV show. As adorable as little Sabrina Spellman is, we learn first episode no one is to mess with her. I always say that Netflix tends to have the first and last episodes of their shows be the best; this time around it was the episodes that filled the season that were the outstanding ones. The ending definitely makes us want to learn more about what Sabrina has up her sleeves, and hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for it.

I give it 9/10 stars.

Why Does it Matter?

This show can teach us that when there are actions that are taken, consequences can follow. It’s all about the choices we make in our lives and we should be careful if it’s for the good or bad. Sabrina also brings us story lines that really matter to people like Theo’s, played by Lachlan Watson, who gets to share their story through Sabrina as well. But Lachlan likes to go by pronounces like them/they and it’s important to respect people’s wishes and understand who they are. And of course, we all need a little magic in our lives.

Check out some photos below I took...