On December 31st, 2020 the final season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (CAOS) was released to the public on Netflix. The show-runners announced in July that the show had not been renewed for a fifth season and that this was going to be the end of CAOS. Of course, as an avid fan of these fabulous teenage witches and warlocks, I was pretty disappointed by this news. However, four seasons is a good run and I like it when shows end on a high point, rather than dragging out every last mediocre second. So naturally, my best friend and I sat down on New Years EXTREMELY excited to watch the final season of Sabrina!
The season three finale of CAOS left the audience on a pretty big cliffhanger because Sabrina had decided not to complete a universe threatening time loop and instead let both her two selves live. One ruling as queen in Hell and the other just living a normal life as a teenage witch. Obviously, this set up complete chaos, as anyone who’s ever watched a show with a time loop knows you MUST complete it or a paradox is created. I thought this was a solid ending because now there are two incredible worlds that the writers built (Hell & Earth) and I was thrilled to see how they intertwined in this final season. They even had two INCREDIBLE villains that had been built up over the past three seasons: The Dark Lord Satan and Father Blackwood. I thought, even if it’s not perfect it can’t be too bad because seasons 1-3 of Sabrina have incredible character development, well thought out plots, and wonderfully evil villains. However, this is NOT the case with season 4.
Season four of Sabrina feels like the writers forgot they had to write an entirely new season and scrambled to write it all in 24 hours. It’s as if they got rid of the original Sabrina writers, threw the responsibility to the Riverdale writers, and said, “Have fun!”. Disappointing doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt and I am truly shocked by how awful the ending was. The last season had MANY issues, from small things like the uselessness of Sabrina’s mortal friends to enormous errors like making Roz a witch and completely disregarding the original basis of her character. Anyways, as I said there were many bad choices made, but the three main problems I had with season 4 are:
NO development for characters or plot
Villain choices??? Where was my Satan/Lilith power team???
The ending….LITERALLY NO CLOSURE
My biggest problem with the season overall was the lack of development for almost every single character and plotline. There was WAY too much going on. As soon as a storyline began, another one was introduced. It was almost like each character was being controlled by dice and their decisions were just random acts of fate. The lack of planning concerning the plot was absolutely ATROCIOUS. The sheer number of subplots that were thrown in at inopportune times was hard to fathom. There are literally scenes that have no contribution to the plot or the characters and are seemingly just thrown in an attempt to be progressive or push agendas for two minutes. One scene in particular that irritated me was when Roz randomly starts talking about how their school doesn’t teach sex education. Great thought Roz! ….but the characters literally never mention sex education again for the entire rest of the season….so what was the point? I’m literally the most sex-positive person you could meet and I HATED that scene because it felt pointless. CAOS is one of the most progressive and outwardly feminist shows on television right now, so why did the writers feel the need to throw in poorly developed scenes like this? Another plot that seemed to be taking off, but then after two scenes, was never brought up again, was Sabrina and Roz’s co-presidency of Baxter High. We literally see them doing something for the school one time, and it’s just to collect a broken telescope that Ambrose uses to see another universe coming at them. ….. I’m sorry — Ambrose doesn’t have a telescope? You’re telling me that if Sabrina and Roz hadn’t become co-presidents and hadn’t collected that broken telescope from that random kid, that they wouldn’t have noticed another universe barreling towards them????
So many incredible plotlines were thrown aside during this season to make way for absolutely terrible ones. Prudence’s story of overcoming adversity and childhood trauma, was reduced only to her need for revenge. Lilith’s entire story arc and plot — GONE. Satan’s entire story arc and plot — GONE. Basically, all of Hell in its entirety was just thrown aside, even though it really felt like that is what the show was building to for its first three seasons.
This point leads me to my second biggest problem with this season, which was the lack of a threatening villain. This is INSANE because the first THREE seasons of Sabrina were all about building up the horrifying and undying power held by Satan. In the first season, Sabrina couldn’t even refuse to steal a pack of gum for Satan. He quite literally held all their power and could literally take it away at any second, leaving them helpless. However, again the writers seemed to have thrown out this character development without any thought. Even Blackwood was a great villain who you hated so much that you wanted the witches and warlocks to overcome and defeat by any means. But I guess the writers decided to throw all that out the window this season and instead give us the Eldritch Terrors. There are eight and each is as boring and unthreatening as the last. This all due to the lack of development for these characters. Each episode is a different terror that (usually) comes in the form of some sort of people or beings. However, I don’t care about these villains. I just met them and don’t have any attachment to whether they live or die. All I know is that there are eight, so all the characters are probably going to live until the eighth one anyway, so no need to feel any suspense until the final episode. The terrors were also pretty sympathetic at times; for instance, the uninvited I honestly felt extremely bad for when they tricked and trapped him. It felt like they were just fighting the wrong battles throughout this season. The feminist power that the first three seasons had is gone and now instead of fighting against society, they’re just fighting useless, seemingly harmless, monsters. The best episode of the season was probably the one where Blackwood wishes on the imp and becomes a Hitler like ruler of Greendale. That in itself could have been an entire season, but thanks to bad writing it was just a below-average, mediocre episode.
I will give the writers some credit though — I truly think the lack of interest I had for these Eldritch Terrors comes from my INTENSE interest in Satan. The character development for Satan and the writing behind his scenes are absolutely incredible. The dynamic between Satan and Lilith is remarkable and their relationship is fascinating. Season four of CAOS reduces their relationship to mere seconds of screentime and we barely get any closure on the endpoint of their characters. Both Satan’s powers and story arc, as well as Lilith’s, are completely thrown aside and dismissed to make way for the horribly boring Eldritch Terrors. Sure Satan’s a sadistic monster, but the audience is still half rooting for him to succeed and rule hell with Lilith by his side. So that begs the question…. WHY would they COMPLETELY disregard his character in the last season??? The audience response to Satan’s character was overwhelmingly positive (almost too good), so it obviously wasn’t a question of popularity. There was still so much there to unpack and the universe of Hell was incredibly intriguing. I guess we’ll never know.
My third biggest problem with the final season was the ATROCIOUS ending they gave us in episode eight. First of all, I didn’t even realize it was the last episode of the season until halfway through, because the finale felt like a midseason, loosely brought together plotline. The finale episode ended leaving SO many questions left unanswered and left me feeling extremely confused. There was also almost no closure for any character, even Sabrina who we probably see the most of. What happens to Harvey, Roz and Theo? How do they cope with Sabrina’s death? What happens to the Academy? Did Lilith really take Satan’s power away with one stab of a knife? And if so… WHY DIDN’T SHE DO IT EARLIER??? BEFORE SHE SACRIFICED HER CHILD??? This conclusion for Satan and Lilith makes absolutely no sense if you take into account the previous three seasons and is utterly unsatifying.
Another major issue I have with this ending is that Sabrina has survived far worse perils than what she was up against in the season four finale and has survived almost effortlessly everytime. However, when Sabrina dies on that stone, everyone just accepts the fact that it happened and it’s over (even Sabrina), which is straying SO far from what any of these characters have done in previous episodes. When Hilda “dies,” all the witches of the coven band together to bring her back. However, with Sabrina’s death, there isn’t even a conversation about how to save her — they just jump right to her funeral. Like…. don’t they have soil that magically brings people back to life? Just throw her in ya’ll!! This isn’t even the worst part about the finale episode.
The absolute WORST part about the ending is in the last three minutes when Nick joins Sabrina in the afterlife. Their dialogue HEAVILY implies that Nick had nothing to live for after Sabrina’s death and decided to literally kill himself to be with his girlfriend who he got back together with two episodes previously? Romanticizing suicide? Not really a good message for kids ya’ll. It doesn’t matter how it’s worded or portrayed, when shows suggest suicide within their final message it’s proven to cause an increase in real-life teen suicides. This issue has already been a conversation with Netflix because of their previous series 13 Reasons Why. The fact that Netflix would allow another teen show to end in suicide is thoughtless and extremely inconsiderate.
Overall I absolutely loved The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and seasons 1-3 were very enjoyable to watch. It was a fabulous campy tribute to an old popular comic series. This ending is not what the show deserved and has personally left me feeling extremely disappointed. Sabrina writers…. how did you go so wrong???? As far as I’m concerned, season four doesn’t exist!