Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Chapter Twenty-Eight: “Sabrina is Legend”
Directed by Rob Seidenglanz
Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa & Daniel King

* For a recap & review of Chapter Twenty-Seven: “The Judas Kiss,” click here.
* For a recap & review of Chapter Twenty-Nine: “The Eldritch Dark,” click here.
We begin with Ambrose narrating the fall of the House of Morningstar, telling us how Caliban took the throne as King of Hell and began a crusade, failing to take the mortal world as Hell’s Tenth Circle after the pagans beat back his armies. The pagans claimed the Earth for themselves. An “army of celestials” emptied out Hell. Meanwhile, the three betrayers were replaced with Sabrina, Lilith, and Lucifer, each encased in stone among the Ninth Circle. They remained so for decades. Everyone Sabrina knew had all passed away. The witch could only rely on herself.
Sabrina’s able to free herself from the stone through the weaving of space and time. She has to get the Unholy Regalia and take back Greendale, as well as the Earth, from the pagans. No more explaining or else a “timeline catastrophe” is imminent. Sabrina doesn’t get it, so the second Sabrina tells her it’s like Back to the Future, only with magic.

Herod, Vlad, and the others have shown up in Hell since it was cleared out. This is going to take more ass kicking from the former Queen of Hell. She stops them and they tell her how the archangel Michael killed Caliban and gutted Hell. The Unholy Regalia were hidden, now she’s found them. She makes it out of there, artefacts in tow, and goes back to the Spellman place. The house is overgrown with plants, left open to nature. The skeletons of Prudence, Agatha, Mambo Marie, and Zelda remain there, while Hilda and Salem are buried out back. A tragic return home. Sabrina feels nothing but guilt for not being there for her loved ones when they needed her most. Her arrival there is like a Gothic coming home, full of only sadness.
That’s not even the worst part. The place starts coming alive with shrubby demons. Sabrina gets away, then someone takes the demons down— Vlad and the rest have followed, because they’re eternally linked with the Unholy Regalia. Might be okay to have those guys around, so long as they’re on her side.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there
when you needed me”

Sabrina and the lads head back to the carnival, where the Green Man structure stands stall, sprouted with much more growth than last we saw it, after Harvey was placed inside. She takes a look around, noticing the statues and more of the dead. She sees Roz and Theo’s skeletons. And then there are more shrubby, demonic things lurking and pouring blood into the grass. One person who’s alive? Ambrose! Bless his beautiful heart.

The cousins head off with Vlad and Co. while Ambrose explains what happened after the pagans won the big battle for Earth. They’re headed into the mines, where Ambrose has fortified the place with spells to keep the pagans out. He’s been saving his mental health with books, after going mad for decades. Sabrina naively believes they can fix everything somehow, whereas Ambrose watched everyone he loves die, along with the Earth being taken over, too. He resents her somewhat. She has an idea to use the “egg‘s magicks” and the Unholy Regalia’s powers in order to turn back time. Ambrose figures they should make “a morning star” for Sabrina to wield using the melted down regalia. Then they need a “sacred place” to conduct a ritual properly, so she can gather the egg’s magic energies into a vortex. Where? The Academy’s stone circle. Not as easy when a feral Faustus, bearing the Mark of Cain, and his pals hold court.

At the Academy, Sabrina goes inside alone. She finds Faustus there cackling in the dark about the “eldritch terrors” he worships. She and Ambrose wind up in a little trouble after Blackwood gets hold of them, cracking their necks. It’s all a vision, though: Batibat is one of the creeps along for the ride, helping them out by putting Faustus in a sleepy dream state. What a wonderful trick! In the stone circle, Ambrose and Sabrina conduct the ritual, allowing her to manipulate time and space with the egg and the morning star.
And then, she’s back in time.
Faustus is still searching for his prize. Sabrina transports back to the Spellman morgue, alerting Mambo Marie, Prudence, and Ambrose what’s about to happen with Blackwood coming to murder them. She can’t explain it all at the moment, so they put their trust in her. Already she’s changing the past, even if it’s confusing to everybody else.

Sabrina quickly jumps over to see Nick, Roz, Theo, and Harvey. She quickly takes them to the Academy with the others, right as Zelda wakes up with the knowledge re: the moon that she believes will help them conquer the pagans. Although one big of continuing tragedy is Hilda hasn’t risen from the Cain Pit. Yet Zelda “saw the future” and she won’t have any of this bullshit. Once again proving why Aunt Zelda, for all her stubborn faults, is a goddamn bad ass.
The coven perform a ritual outside at the Cain Pit. Zelda calls to Hecate, one of the O.G. witches, asking for her divine power to help bring Hilda back to life. She offers to pray to the goddess forever, should they be granted this favour. The Church of Night will honour her. And this is enough to bring Hilda back out of the grave. She’s filled in about what’s happening with the pagans.
Except, how do they save the town and the world?
They need to put Greendale to sleep while Sabrina tracks down Ms. Wardwell, the other virgin in the pagans’ plan. They sing “Tender Shepherd” as a lullaby to put everyone in town to sleep, from the kids at school to the miners at the tunnels. This puts a real kink into things at the carnival, pissing Pan off. That is, until Robin arrives with Mary tied up, offering her up to them. Sneaky sneakerton.

Thus, Mary’s placed in the Green Man structure. The pagans prepare for the Great Flowering. And Mary begins to be twisted up inside the flowery man. The pagans are surprised to see the structure die, blackened like ash in the wind. It’s Pesta inside wearing a glamour of Ms. Wardwell. Robin’s not even there, either— that’s Sabrina. Goddamn, girl! The coven are right behind her, too. The pagans decide to turn tail and run rather than fight. This doesn’t stop the witches from hunting them, one by one. Harvey, a bit cocky comparing himself to Perseus, goes after the Gorgon, Medusa, using a mirror to try and combat her stony stare. It isn’t a great plan. Roz lops the snake lady’s head off (great homage to many paintings, like Caravaggio’s and others), then she and Harvey share a kiss. In another tent, Hilda confronts Circe about their first meeting when the latter called her “a weaver,” before turning her into a spider. This Spellman sister may be sweeter than the other, that doesn’t mean she’s not into getting some revenge for herself. She twists Circe into knots with a voodoo doll. Outside, Ambrose and Zelda confront Pan in his true form. They distract him long enough so that Prudence can run him through with a sword.
All’s well in Greendale again.
Sabrina still has to go back to Hell right now. Always something! Not all goes as expected, when Sabrina runs into another version of herself, free of the stone before there ever was a time loop. The other Sabrina wants to have her cake and eat it, too. They decide to each split up one life, so that one can go be a regular teenager with her friends and the other can do what’s necessary in the witch world/Hell. Sabrina goes back with the silver to taunt Caliban, sealing him up in the stone tightly before returning to the Infernal Kings and the others. She presents Judas’s silver, reclaiming the Throne of Hell. She’s ready “to be married to Hell.”

While the coronation is ready to commence, Greendale gets back to a sense of normality. The Church of Night becomes the Order of Hecate instead. Not everything is happy: Prudence blames Ambrose for not letting her kill Faustus, causing so much tragedy, like the death of Dorcas. Interesting to see Zelda and Mambo Marie kiss, leading to new relationships within the restructured coven, not unlike Prudence and Nick coming together in their respective heartaches. Lilith prepares the new Queen of Hell for her great ceremony. Nobody knows that Sabrina’s pulling double duty using her double selves, able to be in Hell and at home with the family at the same time. She does admit it to Ambrose and freaks him out.
In the dark woods, Faustus and his children are calling out to terrible things. He stabs the egg and screams fill the air, as well as flashing light. Something’s broken free from the egg and been birthed into the world. What? “The beginning of the end,” Faustus says.

“Every girl must prepare for war”

A fittingly wild, weird, and wonderful finale!
Part 3’s been intense. It’s also led to Sabrina’s genuine want for the throne, which will make things all the more compelling in Part 4. Father Gore’s excited. Each season feels like it gets better, even at times when it falters a bit. This new development with Sabrina’s two selves is going to prove quite crazy and fun. In a way, time travel stuff is cheating, especially when you save everybody (or most everybody) from death. What’s interesting is the series is clearly bent on looking at the repercussions of what Sabrina’s done, as usual.