If season one of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was about a “meek” little mortal coming to terms with her witchhood on her sixteenth birthday, season two is all about how she’s chosen to embrace it, full-tilt, taking on the old guard institutions represented by the Academy of Unseen Arts where she’s decided to attend full-time and the nefarious Faustus “Father” Blackwood (Richard Coyle) who runs it.
Right down to the supporting characters (particularly Susie [Lachlan Watson]-turned-Theo), everyone in season two is at odds with an old way of life–from no girls allowed on the basketball team to witches being deemed by Blackwood as subservient to warlocks.
With a running motif of religion–specifically a foil to Jesus coming into his own to perform miracles–the intertwinement of the bible narrative (with a little Shakespeare thrown in here and there) perfectly suits the complementary notion of railing against an irrelevant patriarchy, still gasping out orders at a youth it relates to not. Granted, in Sabrina’s case, she’s less Jesus and more antichrist. Of course, show creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has been more than hinting at Sabrina’s pull to the dark side since the season one cliffhanger and the bridging Christmas episode, “A Midwinter’s Tale” (if you’re wondering why there’s nine episodes in season two, it’s because this special counts as a part of it). It was in this narrative we were introduced to the stalking three kings that turn out to be Beelzebub Lord of the Flies, Asmodeus Lord of Vermin and Purson Lord of Shadow. All who turn out to be acting of their own volition without conjuring or summoning in order to assure “the half-breed doesn’t ascend.”
As season two’s inaugural episode, “The Epiphany,” begins with yet another one of Sabrina’s horrid being born nightmares (the tableau of which evinces obvious echoes of the birth of Jesus), she nonetheless awakens in good spirits to the tune of Devo’s “Girl U Want” (because the series tends to feel outside of any specific decade, hence the inclusion of a David Bowie poster in Sabrina’s room). She’s made it her new and unclouded mission to focus on the study of witchcraft. Alas, her good mood is dampened when Father Blackwood announces the running for a new Top Boy, which, apart from being an ostensibly chauvinistic title, also seems to be a rigged game in that everyone in the school immediately nominates Nick Scratch (Gavin Leatherwood) without so much as a consideration for anyone else, let alone the prospect of a female. It is here, naturally, that Sabrina throws in her gauntlet for a nomination. Nick obliges her by nominating her himself, apparently unwitting in his condescending statement, “I don’t mind a little competition, especially when it’s so damn cute.”
As the bid for Top Boy starts to heat up, so, too, does the Three Kings of Hell’s lust to make sure Sabrina doesn’t “ascend,” coming, as usual, at an unfortunate time, when Sabrina is trying to prove her “woman’s worth” in studying for her competitions against Nick. Her irritability over being attacked gets taken out on her cousin, Ambrose (Chance Perdomo), as she declares upon his return from a night out with the boys at Dorian’s Gray Room (which one envisions becoming a ready-made Instagram-tailored pop-up), “I want to be Top Person because I believe I can make the coven better…. Top Boy? Seriously? Blackwood takes warlocks out for drinks at a gentlemen’s club? What century are you living in?” It’s a question women still tend to ask daily, even with all the “generous rights” men have “bestowed” upon them. A mockery in terms that Lilith (inhabiting the body of Mrs. Wardwell [Michelle Gomez]) has been dealing with literally since the beginning. One that is explored in “The Passion of Sabrina Spellman,” as the Academy of Unseen Arts gears up for Blackwell’s rewriting of a play called Lucifer and Lilith (Baxter High, meanwhile, sticks with Romeo and Juliet, not to be the last instance of Shakespeare in the season). With Sabrina in Lilith’s role and Nick in Lucifer’s, Lilith as Mrs. Wardwell watches from afar, growing teary at reliving the moment she gave it all up for a man, has it all flash before her eyes once again (and this after making such a feminist statement about not lying underneath Adam while they had sex–the very thing that got her cast out of the garden in the first place). At the end of the episode, as she kneels before him once more, Lucifer sneers (well, he would be sneering if he wasn’t an expressionless goat-type incarnation), “Are you humbled, Lilith?” It is largely this query that is the crux of what keeps men and women at odds with one another, particularly when coexisting in “age-old” institutions (i.e. government) that have never afforded women the same chances for the sake of “tradition” (but, of course, it is not tradition but fear that continues to compel men to subjugate women).
Lilith’s increasing bitterness and resentment over all she’s given to and given up for Satan crystallizes in a speech she gives Mrs. Wardwell’s fiancé (who assumes it’s still Mary–another fittingly biblical name–that he’s returned to see). Upon asking her if she finally wants to get married, Lilith returns, “Have you really, ever, really thought about what a marriage is?” The mortal replies with the straightforward interpretation, “It’s two people declaring their love for each other for the world to celebrate. It’s a blessing.” Lilith eye-rollingly counters, “For the man, perhaps. But if it really were a blessing, truly a desirable state, would we need to dress it up with lace, silk and frill? Litter the bride’s path with rose petals? No, but we do. Because marriage is a walk down the primrose path towards a woman’s destruction. It’s nothing less than the complete obliteration of a woman’s personhood. It takes everything from her. Her body, her independence, even her soul. And gives nothing in return. Nothing she’d want at any rate.” So yeah, that would be a hard no to his proposal. And a strong case exhibiting that one of the many “puppet” institutions of men is marriage, somehow still an industry even now. At the same time, women, in their youthful naïveté–just like Lilith once experienced–can be prone to the fairy tale allure of “true love,” get swept up in the “(dark) magic” of it all enough to do things–surrender aspects of herself–that she ordinarily wouldn’t.
In this regard, Sabrina begins to know this plight as it pertains to ol’ Lucifer Morningstar (Luke Cook) all too well, finding herself announcing that she is “the Dark Lord’s sword” in episode seven, “The Missionaries.” Featuring some not so cherubic exterminating angels doubling as witch hunters, Sabrina and her “kind” are preyed upon to the point that Sabrina must use her mortal half to gain entry into a newly consecrated church the witch hunters have sealed to begin their “conversions.” Informing Nick and Harvey that she plans to fly solo on this endeavor to save her captive brethren, the deliberately sexist tinge of the show is accented by Harvey demanding of Nick, “You’re not seriously gonna let her go alone, are you? It’s a suicide mission.” Nicholas snaps, “You don’t seriously think I tell her what to do, do you?” His comment shows his quick evolution during his time spent with Sabrina, more attuned than his first episode remark about her being “damn cute” as his competition.
After experiencing her Jean Grey transformation (that’s what comic book nerd Harvey likens it to after seeing her levitate and go white-eyed), Sabrina falsely assumes she’s been imbued with these new, inexplicable powers to do good. But oh, how wrong she is. For while she tries to believe her powers might be used to bring harmony among witches and mortals, it is in “The Miracles of Sabrina Spellman” that Harvey urges her to come down from the roof before flying off of it on a broom in front of a crowd of mortals. He needs her to see an illustrated prophecy in the mines, one that very clearly demarcates her as the herald of hell. Luckily, dancing with the devil comes easily to Sabrina when she knows in the back of her mind that she has a trick, or rather, trap up her sleeve, specifically the same one used to ensnare Batibat–the Acheron Configuration–in season one.
Her revelation, paired with a “glamor to end all glamors” (including use of “Masquerade” from Phantom of the Opera), does not come before a heart to heart with Lilith about the poor, subservient choices she made to get them all to this place. Yet she tries to explain that at the outset, like all abusers, he was gentle and kind, adding that, “The more time passed since his fall, the more he turned into this thing of darkness.” Sabrina questions, “Why do you still serve him? Even now?” Lilith shruggingly states, “It’s all I’ve ever known.” Sabrina, ever of the pussy grabs back generation, returns, “What a terrible, weak reason.”
Disappointed in her gender’s spokeswoman, Sabrina goes through the motions of the coronation upon being forced to sound the horn. Even in the apocalypse, the upper echelons still get special treatment, with Lucifer insisting Sabrina blow the horn of Gabriel to first let out the aristocracy of hell. In truth, Lucifer’s sales pitch to Sabrina sounds a lot like something Trump might have said to Melania as he insists, “You and I will rule over Hell on Earth for all eternity.”
That the apocalypse is imminent also appears to mirror the constant feeling of being in the present, where every weather pattern, every natural disaster could signal the end of days. To that effect, the persistent treatment of women by the old guard as a hostile presence in need of being “quelled” isn’t so far off from reality either. But Chilling Adventures of Sabrina seeks to amend the one place where feminism has never gone before: straight to hell. And it is one of the final scenes of the episode, as Lilith dons her rightful crown and carries Lucifer (entrapped in the Acheron Configuration flesh prison of Nick) through the gates to the tune of The Doors’ “The End” that we are presented with a surreal, visually assaulting symbol of all women carrying the weight of men from the beginning and through the eons. They might as well fucking get to rule in return for their sacrifices.
The cap of this memorable image seals the season-long ferocity with which Chilling Adventures of Sabrina interprets the bible…as brutally as it ought to be. For there was nothing forgiving or wise about a male God’s whimsically violent acts for the majority of his appearances. And yes, the season comes just in time for the month of Easter, celebrating the foil to opening the Gates of Hell in Jesus’ resurrection to potentially allow for heaven on earth (that obvs didn’t manage to happen).
Regardless of how one envisions the bible and its key players, when it comes to oppressing women, let us quote Sabrina as she vehemently touts, “Not today, Satan.”
