In the 1990s, one of the main staples on TV were all the lighthearted sitcoms that made up ABC’s TGIF programming. Favorites like Full House, Family Matters, and Boy Meets World became massive hits that we still remember fondly to this day. The nostalgia factor was so huge that when some of those shows were brought back to life for revivals decades later, they became just as popular as the original series. However, while shows like Fuller House and Girl Meets World took the same formula as their predecessors to deliver what were pretty much carbon copies of their ’90s counterparts, there was one series that Netflix presented that took on a much darker tone. Lasting for two seasons that were split up into four parts that spanned 36 episodes, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina took everything we loved about the classic 1996 sitcom, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and fed it through a Gothic woodchipper that spit out a series full of horror, fantasy, and violence.
Sabrina Went From Funny to Fearsome on Netflix

Developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and starring Kiernan Shipka as Sabrina Spellman, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina wasn’t so much a traditional remake of the ’90s series starring Melissa Joan Hart as it was a reimagining of it. Rather than taking its cues from the fun-loving sitcom and the bubbly, teenage witch seen in the Archie comics of the ’60s, it was based more on the Archie comic book series that came out in 2014 created by Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack. While it certainly shared DNA with the sitcom, it was really a complete makeover. Gone were the fun, eccentric aunts who helped Sabrina navigate the horrors of high school. Instead, Zelda and Hilda Spellman were presented as witches with conflicting agendas who served their Dark Lord with full devotion. Salem the Cat went from being a sarcastic familiar who had opinions on everything, to a protector that never spoke a word to anyone, but rather shared a psychic connection with Sabrina so that she could understand his intentions. Magic also takes on a darker tone in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Instead of being used for high school pranks and to teach lessons about life, it’s a dangerous force in the Netflix series used in dark rituals — especially those performed by the Satanic coven, the Church of Night. Needless to say, you wouldn’t find this series in any TGIF line-up, because there was nothing funny about it.
‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ Deserved Better Than 2 Seasons

Hitting Netflix in 2018, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina came to an abrupt end in 2020, leaving many of its threads unresolved. The ending felt rushed, and certainly lacked closure for some of the show’s most beloved characters, like Harvey, Roz, and Theo. Sabrina’s arc left many fans with a sour taste in their mouths, which is why she was eventually brought back in Season 6 of The CW series, Riverdale, so that she could be given a proper sendoff.

Cancelled mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina deserved much better from Netflix. Had we not been thrust into a global pandemic, it could have gone on for at least a couple of more years. Instead, it continued in comic book form, which covered the “Witch War” plot that Aguirre-Sacasa was in the middle of writing for the series when it was given the axe by Netflix. Still, even with its sudden ending, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina remains a fantastic series that you can easily binge-watch in a couple of weekends. While we’ll always wonder what could have been, that doesn’t discount the fact that we’re just glad we got it in the first place.

Release Date

2018 – 2020-00-00

Showrunner

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

Directors

Rob Seidenglanz, Alex Pillai, Kevin Rodney Sullivan