Released on April 5th, the second part of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina continues the story of Netflix’s favorite teenage witch started in Part One. While I had thought this offering would feel like a second season, where while it would be connected to the last series of episodes it could be watched alone, instead this nearly directly follows part one and the Christmas special, completing the story there.
The diversity I mentioned in my review of Part One continues in Part Two. The formerly genderqueer character Susie discovers the truth, that he is in fact trans, and takes the name Theo, after the heroine ancestor whose spirit appears to him sometimes. The arc he has, though sometimes wanders a bit, is on the whole amazing, ending with him becoming a hero in his own right.
Sabrina also comes into her own, filled with rage and clear purpose, she runs headfirst into conflict with the High Priest of the Church of Night, who, in turn, spends the whole of the second part trying to turn his church of darkness backward, enacting regressive and misogynistic rules that glorify himself and the warlocks of the coven, while castigating the witches. This arc, while it is the fruit born from the Part One seeds of Sabrina calling out all of the sexism in the Church of Night, doesn’t go as far I hoped it would have. That being said, it’s still more progressive on that front than most other shows.
My only true complaint about the second Part is how it spends a lot of time meandering through world building and showing us cool things inside the world of horror Greendale, rather than focusing in on what’s going on. Talk of Anti-Popes that lasts longer than he actually does, a whole episode that would, on a show on broadcast television released week by week, be a Halloween episode that was more clip show than anything with a plot, and a flash of an episode with witch-hunters that I would have liked to have had a whole season or at least two or three episode arc for. There are so many moving parts in this story, and so few episodes, that it didn’t have time to do justice to all of the threads they wove. If Netflix had spent the time that a usual television show has, something like 13-22, they could have spent the time developing the witch-hunter plot or making the Anti-Pope matter, or perhaps even showing Zelda’s horrific honeymoon with Father Blackwood in Rome, rather than just writing her out for a while.
In the end, the series concludes in a satisfying place that largely wraps up the story so that while I do want more, I don’t need to have more. I’m fine is this is where we leave the story, regardless of the last few minutes that leave a hook for a second season or a Part Three. That, alone, makes me happy as a streaming viewer when I see that there was a plan in mind to complete a story, rather than prolong the mystery or keep it going for however long the train has wheels, which is something American television can learn from both streaming and from international television.
All in all, I would suggest watching Part Two of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina if you enjoyed Part One, or if you missed the train the last time and would like to jump on how. It’s the magic that streaming service television has over broadcast, the ability to just jump in whenever, and if you were looking for something delightfully spooky, I would suggest the chronicles of this plucky teenage witch.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, both Parts One and Two, as well as it’s Christmas special, are all available for streaming now on Netflix.
David Castro is a Puerto Rican writer from New York City. He has worked on the upcoming Undead supplement for Chill Third Edition and is working on launching a Patreon. You can find him on Twitter (@theinkedknight), on Tumblr (thedevilsyouknew), on Facebook (facebook.com/inkstainedstudios), and at davidrcastro.com.