REVIEWED: SEASON 3 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: NETFLIX

Part three of Netflix’s Satanic teen witch series opens with the whispered words, “Welcome to Hell.” From that point on, viewers are off to the races for eight episodes which seek to expand the mythos of the Riverdale-adjacent program, while still giving fans the quippy dialogue and weird characters they’ve come to expect.

Riverdale-adjacent is a solid way to begin to describe part three of Sabrina. At times, the show leans hard into the things fans of the CW’s teen noir have come to expect: overly-choreographed cheerleading routines set to pop songs, as well as relationship angst and a garage band (also playing pop songs). Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) and Roz (Jaz Sinclair) join the Baxter High cheerleading squad, while at the same time, Jaz, Harvey (Ross Lynch), and Theo (Lachlan Watson) have formed Fright Club, which practices in Harvey’s garage, playing songs like the Knack’s ‘My Sharona’ and ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ by Wheatus.

Fright Club seemingly only exists to provide a couple of relaxing musical breaks, while the cheerleading squad actually pays off in the seventh episode, ‘The Judas Kiss’, wherein Toni Basil’s ‘Mickey’ is used as a summoning spell, with the cheerleaders as a coven. It’s a stretch, but so perfectly-suited to the show that it’s kind of a joy.

But that’s just one aspect of an eight-episode arc which also includes a group of pagans who come to Greendale as a travelling carnival, hoping to use the citizens of the town to resurrect the Green Man, the oldest of all the old gods. That itself – the frequent invocation of old gods, beginning with the second episode of this series, ‘The Hellbound Heart’, wherein there are mentions of “eldritch terrors,” right on through to the eighth episode, ‘Sabrina is Legend’, when they’re mentioned yet again, teases of possible Lovecraftian horrors, including a creature from Loch Ness obviously meant to be a nod to the Deep Ones in episode two, ‘Drag Me to Hell’, and mentions of the Mountains of Madness at one point.

Going into part three of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, one expected that the whole eight-episode arc would be about rescuing Nick Scratch (Gavin Leatherwood) from Hell, where he ended up at the end of part two. However, he’s rescued from the clutches of Lilith (Michelle Gomez) within the first 15 minutes of the first episode, so viewers are instead treated to the pagans showing up and really presenting a major threat to the former Church of Night. At the same time, Sabrina’s role as the Queen of Hell is challenged by Caliban (Sam Corlett), a man sculpted from the very clay of Hell itself. He’s akin to a bargain version of Chris Hemsworth, but in a really good way which is charmingly bro-ish.

The theme of this series shaped up to be one of shifting alliances. Sabrina’s torn between the coven, Hell, her friends, her boyfriend, with all of those groups and people having their own internal issues. At one point in ‘The Hare Moon’, Nick says to Sabrina that it’s all about her, and he’s really not wrong. By the end of this run of episodes, Sabrina has done some things which are both banal in terms of selfishness, as well as possibly contributing to a massive collision and paradox in the fabric of spacetime. The usual placing of what she thinks needs to be done over her friends’ and family’s very well-reasoned concerns make one wonder just when things are going to go wrong, to the point where their consequences are irreversible.