It’s perhaps impossible not to watch the final episode of Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina without reflecting on the season as a whole. From the beginning, creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa set up the show’s witchcraft/Hail Satan conceit as a means of examining patriarchy in the real world.
In some episodes, that work was clever and surprising, like “Feast of Feasts,” when Sabrina (Kieran Shipka) forces Prudence (Tati Gabrielle, who might be the show’s most promising untapped asset) to question what the men in authority tell her.
Other times, it fell into the same social traps it was trying to critique — the frequent gay panic used against the bully jocks who terrorize, but particularly in the 2nd episode, “The Dark Baptism.”
Unfortunately, the finale not only seems to share that same confusion, but accidentally calls into question whether Sabrina is our protagonist at all.
Though the series begins with a voiceover by the titular teen witch, its final episode begins with a voiceover from her main adversary–or at least the character the audience knows is her true adversary throughout the season–Ms. Wardwell (Michelle Gomez). Gomez’s duplicitous, almost wanton performance is one of the show’s best features and it takes center stage here.
With smug triumph, Wardwell relays the episode’s events to some unseen listener, telling us right off the bat that she finally succeeds in delivering Sabrina to the Dark Lord. The framing device is supposed to create suspense about how things could go spectacularly wrong, but it also has the added side effect of taking all the tension out of the episode.
That said, much of the season is a slow process of making Sabrina less active in her own story. For most of the characters, when we meet her, Sabrina is a young girl desperate to keep her humanity and autonomy rather than pledge her undying loyalty to a male figure who wants to control her. But as she’s manipulated by various characters and pushed to make one bad decision after another by her terrible role models, it becomes more and more difficult to see the show as her story. The writers take her autonomy away even before the Dark Lord gets his hands on her.
Still, frustrating as it is to see Sabrina take a backseat in her own adventures, part of what makes The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina so compelling is the world it creates and the excellent ensemble that populates it. And while each of those characters has a major moment to shine in the finale, we’ve ultimately spent so little time digging into their emotional lives that it’s difficult to invest in their final beats.
Aunt Hilda (Lucy Davis) may have found love and self-confidence, but moving out of Zelda’s (Miranda Otto) room for another in the house seems like too small a victory. Zelda’s arc may have been a slow process of unraveling, but having her steal Faustus’s (Richard Coyle) daughter to raise on her own is too heavy-handed a metaphor for her mother instincts.
Worst of all, though, is Luke’s (Darren Mann) confession that he’s in love with Ambrose (Chance Perdomo). Luke has barely been onscreen as anything but an object of desire, so it’s difficult to believe his declaration isn’t some manipulation demanded by Faustus. Indeed, the couple’s final moment of the season suggests Luke can’t be trusted: they stand in a room full of exclusively men, led by Faustus, celebrating his heir and the continued male power he represents. Perhaps that moment is an intentional parody of patriarchy, but it’s hard to say.
Perhaps the show’s most important expression of its confusion about what it wants to say about patriarchy is the way it handles the final beats of Harvey’s (Ross Lynch) story. When we first meet Harvey and Sabrina, they are the perfect picture of young love. They’re emotionally open with each other even if Sabrina is hiding one major secret. However, the more Sabrina lies to him, the less plausible they seem and her failed attempt to resurrect his brother, Tommy (Justin Dobies) is just the nail in their relationship’s coffin.
Given that, it makes sense that Harvey wouldn’t trust witches and would actively be repulsed but the sight of Sabrina. What doesn’t make sense, though, is his reaction when Sabrina tells him he has to take shelter during the storm. More than any mortal in Greendale, he should understand how dangerous magic can be. So, his decision not to listen to her and try to protect his home and father on his own comes off downright stupid. Harvey claims it’s what Tommy would have done and he may argue that it’s what he has to do in order to stop being a coward, but to a viewer who knows better, it feels like the moment a nice, sensitive boy falls prey to toxic masculinity. And that’s all without including what his decision means for Sabrina.
When Sabrina refuses to sign her name in the Dark Lord’s book in Episode 2, her relationship with Harvey is a big part of her decision. So, it’s upsetting that that same love eventually becomes the reason she forfeits it all. Sure, she does it to save her friends and family too and she gains unspeakable power in the process, but it’s impossible not to feel anything but nauseated watching the episode’s final moments. How could the audience not feel hopeless watching Fox News-blonde Sabrina, dressed like some creep’s teen dream, blissfully ignorant of the fact that the Dark Lord may want her for his bride?
So, after all that, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina puts us right back where we started—or at least very close to it. And while ending the season with Sabrina signing her name in the Dark Lord’s book isn’t necessarily a bad plot point, it comes at the wrong time. If this was always the ending Aguirre-Sacasa intended, then it should have happened in the second episode and the season been a little less monster of the week.
Sabrina still could have learned all the same things about the Greendale witches and worked just as hard to subvert The Dark Lord’s control and it would have made her ultimate rejection of it (something it seems inevitable we’ll see in a future season) feel like a triumph. Instead, by putting it at the end, it makes the whole season feel like prologue.
Witches may be perfectly suited as a means to exploring concepts of female power and autonomy in this moment, but watching the patriarchy win aided by a woman willing to sell out her sisters for power just isn’t the narrative anybody needs to see right now. In real life, we see it all the time.
