This will serve as a retrospective over the entire run of the Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, serving not necessarily to give an ultimately score of the series but more to talk about it in generally, the highs and the lows and what became of it in the end. I will be referring to each part as a season, because let’s face it that’s what they are, Netflix you aren’t fooling anyone.
So, when the CAOS was first announced I was excited, the idea seemed interesting, Riverdale was still good (yes such a time existed, the first season and the first half of the second season), it had not yet lived long enough to become the villain it is today, everything seemed to be in its favour.
When the first season came around everything went well, Kiernan Shipka and the rest of the cast perfectly fitted the shows sense of style, the tone maintained a good balance between scares and teen antics. All was well with the world, of the show that is.
Then came the second season, and things were still good: we got to see more of the world, Hell became a more regular player in the show and that allowed it to open up in a number of interesting ways. However, the cracks had begun to show many of the characters would go on cringey and forced rants about trendy political talking points, in perhaps some of the most token ways possible the show was trying to be woke. The subject matter itself was not the problem it was the way it was handled in the writing that becomes an issue, with the ideal of subtly being well and truly dead. However, I still enjoyed the show and skipped most of the needlessly political speeches, and I binged the second season in a handful of days.
Then came season three and the shows fall from grace. There was so many things wrong with season three I don’t know where to begin, go and read my review of that season for my comprehensive thoughts on it. Making Sabrina a cheerleader? The forced musical numbers and scenes that were widely mocked and condemned online, making the series into Riverdale, really forcing politics into every part of the show, I could go on. This was by far the worst season of the show, and the first I struggled to sit through, and the show seemed to realise that itself.
With the final season the series tried to fix some of its past mistakes, it tried to get the tone and soul of the series back to what it used to be. It had some good scary moments, was it back to the heights of season one? No, not by a long shot, again why do we need musical interludes every few scenes? Although it was better than season three and that was the crucial point this season needed to land.
The ending was very fitting of the show, I wont spoil it as it is still fairly new, but it ended in a way that felt correct that felt right by the characters with enough room there to come back in some way if Netflix has a change of heart.
Overall, in the beginning CAOS was something special and thanks to a very talented cast it never became truly bad though it did lose its way, it tried to return to its roots in the end with mixed results.
Another Millennial Reviewer 