Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina

[Bartmanhomer]

I'm watching Season 4 of Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina right now and it's great.

If you're unfamiliar with the show, It's about a teenager who's half-mortal and half-witch who lives with two aunts who raised her and she got to two schools one a regular mortal school and a demonic arcane school. So anyway the show is pretty demonic, dark, and grim which I exactly enjoy.

[KillianHawkeye]

Is a witch not mortal in this series? :smallconfused:

[Bartmanhomer]

Is a witch not mortal in this series? :smallconfused:

I'm confused myself. :confused:

[Iruka]

Is a witch not mortal in this series? :smallconfused:

'Mortal' is their word for 'Muggle'.

[Rynjin]

They're also...pretty darn immortal. They were in the original show too, living for hundreds of years. Sort of.

[Ramza00]

Is a witch not mortal in this series? :smallconfused:

Some witches have lived for thousands of years. There is delayed aging, and other health benefits. Furthermore there is resurrection magic. Witches can get hurt though and they can die.

All of this is possible due to some form of essence that is in witches that mortals (aka muggles) do not possess. Likewise other magical species have their own essences that are unique to them. The witches really do not know all the mechanics of this, though they do learn more throughout the series via discovery, for it is an organized religious metaphor.

No organized religion tells you everything about the nature of reality and the stuff you are made of (and other things are made of.) That said there is some “important bits” of reality that is repeated socially as tradition, a sacrament. But this sacramental knowledge is not like other forms of knowledge where one accrues it via a mixture of experience plus theory, and that theory turns out to be correct. We have hope / faith what we were taught as children, and what we learn as adults from our community that this is the correct information.

Those 3 above paragraphs are of course reductive and the story lore is more than what I wrote but to simplify it as 3 paragraphs even with spoilers would be telling a misleading truth via the process of simplification. The metaphor of knowledge is like an onion, one expands our knowledge one layer at a time. 🍎 a Malum Malus if you will.

[M1982]

The show really became a huge mess in season 2 onward.

It started strong but then lost all coherency in character arcs and it's own mythology

[Psyren]

I find it hard to root for Sabrina because she's so frequently selfish and downright stupid, but gets through situations because her magic is just so crazy OP compared to everyone else's. As if she weren't powerful enough, there are eventually two of her running around, with no loss of potency and barely any negative consequences of any kind. By the end of it, having her curbstomp a bunch of Lovecraftian outer gods nearly solo felt like the writers were tired of making the show and wanted to wrap things up quickly. (That's more readily explained by it having been cancelled (https://www.newsweek.com/chilling-adventures-sabrina-part-4-canceled-caos-ending-netflix-kiernan-shipka-michelle-gomez-1558218) though.)

I compare this to The Magicians, where the characters frequently have to use their wits moreso than raw power, and the screentime is much more equitably shared among the central "scooby gang" ensemble cast, while still nailing the themes of camaraderie and female empowerment (minus a rocky first season or two for the latter.)

[Thrudd]

Yeah, I liked the first season, I loved how hard they leaned into the Satanic church element and the debauched ways of the witches (not a spoiler, you get that in the first episode). In season 2, all the main characters started annoying me and I was disappointed with the presentation of the "old ones", though I was excited to see what the show would do with Hecate as their new patron and the promise of apparently Lovecraftian horrors on their way. I started the last part of the season, and with no appearance of Hecate or anything related to her and a completely uninspired threat of a supposed "eldritch terror" that was defeated far too easily in the first episode, I didn't really feel like continuing. I didn't have any faith at that point that the show runners had any good ideas for the story or setting, and the teenaged characters we were supposed to be rooting for are all annoying, stupid or both, with ill-defined abilities. I wanted to see the new religion of Hecate given the same attention as the Christian mythology they used so heavily in the first season. Since we get to see Lucifer personally interacting with the witches he is empowering, it stands to reason that Hecate would make herself known in a similar way, and we'd get a more classical mythology perspective on things. But instead, it seemed like it was just a throwaway in order to allow the witches to continue having powers despite having left Lucifer's control. They realized they had an ancient history and religion that Lucifer and his patriarchal minions had suppressed, which apparently was quite easy to uncover once Aunt Zelda had a couple visions, and that was the end of it.
It makes sense why Netflix cancelled the series after they saw the first part of the second season. The people running the show just could not properly develop the ideas they had, and the characters all went off-the-wall.

[Ramza00]

Yeah, I liked the first season, I loved how hard they leaned into the Satanic church element and the debauched ways of the witches (not a spoiler, you get that in the first episode). In season 2, all the main characters started annoying me and I was disappointed with the presentation of the "old ones", though I was excited to see what the show would do with Hecate as their new patron and the promise of apparently Lovecraftian horrors on their way. I started the last part of the season, and with no appearance of Hecate or anything related to her and a completely uninspired threat of a supposed "eldritch terror" that was defeated far too easily in the first episode, I didn't really feel like continuing. I didn't have any faith at that point that the show runners had any good ideas for the story or setting, and the teenaged characters we were supposed to be rooting for are all annoying, stupid or both, with ill-defined abilities. I wanted to see the new religion of Hecate given the same attention as the Christian mythology they used so heavily in the first season. Since we get to see Lucifer personally interacting with the witches he is empowering, it stands to reason that Hecate would make herself known in a similar way, and we'd get a more classical mythology perspective on things. But instead, it seemed like it was just a throwaway in order to allow the witches to continue having powers despite having left Lucifer's control. They realized they had an ancient history and religion that Lucifer and his patriarchal minions had suppressed, which apparently was quite easy to uncover once Aunt Zelda had a couple visions, and that was the end of it.
It makes sense why Netflix cancelled the series after they saw the first part of the second season. The people running the show just could not properly develop the ideas they had, and the characters all went off-the-wall.

I actually preferred the 2nd season to the 1st. I gave up by the 4th.

[Rater202]

My introduction to the show was walking out of my room to see my mother watching an obviously insane woman slit her own throat and then a bunch of people in a church grabbing knives and forks to cannibalize the woman before she'd even properly died.

And I thought that Riverdale was bad.

The interest in grim, gritty, violent, sexualized Archie Comics properties baffles me. Archie's hole gimmick is that it's as innocent and wholesome as it gets.

[Thrudd]

I actually preferred the 2nd season to the 1st. I gave up by the 4th.

There's technically only 2 seasons, both split into 2 parts. The 4th part you're referring to is the second half of season 2, which is also when I gave up. I liked the 2nd half of season 1, as well.


My introduction to the show was walking out of my room to see my mother watching an obviously insane woman slit her own throat and then a bunch of people in a church grabbing knives and forks to cannibalize the woman before she'd even properly died.

And I thought that Riverdale was bad.

The interest in grim, gritty, violent, sexualized Archie Comics properties baffles me. Archie's hole gimmick is that it's as innocent and wholesome as it gets.

I didn't care about Archie comics or Riverdale at all, and I really just watched the first season because it was Halloween time when I noticed it and it looked like a darker take on witches than we usually get in shows about magic girls (like Charmed).

[Bartmanhomer]

I like all four parts of Sabrina. :biggrin:

[Peelee]

My introduction to the show was walking out of my room to see my mother watching an obviously insane woman slit her own throat and then a bunch of people in a church grabbing knives and forks to cannibalize the woman before she'd even properly died.

And I thought that Riverdale was bad.

The interest in grim, gritty, violent, sexualized Archie Comics properties baffles me. Archie's hole gimmick is that it's as innocent and wholesome as it gets.

I would like to purchase a ticket to ride on your train.

[Rynjin]

My introduction to the show was walking out of my room to see my mother watching an obviously insane woman slit her own throat and then a bunch of people in a church grabbing knives and forks to cannibalize the woman before she'd even properly died.

And I thought that Riverdale was bad.

The interest in grim, gritty, violent, sexualized Archie Comics properties baffles me. Archie's hole gimmick is that it's as innocent and wholesome as it gets.

The problem isn't grim, gritty Archie Comics. It's shows with very bad writing and characterization.

Archie has had several successful dark renditions of the actual comics, like the big zombie apocalypse one. They were good.

[Peelee]

The problem isn't grim, gritty Archie Comics. It's shows with very bad writing and characterization.

Archie has had several successful dark renditions of the actual comics, like the big zombie apocalypse one. They were good.

Yes, but this was made by the CW, which is generally not known for its nuanced takes on writing and characterization.

[Rater202]

I would like to purchase a ticket to ride on your train.

My train goes to some pretty screwed-up places.

It's just that none of them are in Riverdale or associated locations.

I mean, dear god, Frank 'once tried to shoot an eleven-year-old girl in the face at point-blank because she and her friends broke into their own building to retrieve their own property' Castle once went to Riverdale and couldn't bring himself to kill the guy he was after because the innocence of the place was palpable and he didn't want to ruin that.

I mean, I get it. I liked Archie's Weird Mysteries and the act that Sabrina is a recurring supporting character in Archie's series in the comics instead of the title being off in it;s own little world(and her aunts being more stereotypical witches) means that there's a hint of the supernatural and sometimes something sinister below the surface but there are limits.

Riverdale crossed the line and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina rode screaming past it without blinking in a goddamned bullet train hurtling down the tracks at 200 miles an hour.

You know what the deal with Afterlife with Archie was? It was a limited series with no impact whatsoever on anything else that existed outside of continuity.

It was also only the equivalent of a PG 13 rating and honestly was just kind of off the wall to begin with. They were just throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck and were having fun with the fact that it was completely non-canon.

These two shows cross the line, try to be serious, and there's no "real" canon counterpart running concurrently with them and...