Sabrina Spellman is preparing for her birthday and dark baptism, but her doubts have led to the Dark Lord taking steps to assure she follows him. Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka) kicks things off narrating how she's a half-witch living in Greendale who will soon have to choose between the magic and human worlds. She is at the movies watching Night of the Living Dead with her boyfriend Harvey Kinkle (Ross Lynch) and her friends Rosalind Walker (Jaz Sinclair) and Lachlan Watson (Susie Putnam). They leave with her giving details about zombie films, and bump into a teacher from their school, Ms. Wardwell (Michelle Gomez). Surprised to see her and feeling bad about her spinster lifestyle, Sabrina invites Wardwell to Dr. Cerberus's to talk about the movie, but she says she has papers to grade. As Wardwell drives home, a soaked girl runs into the road, and she picks her up to drive home, where she'll clean the girl up and call the doctor. At Cerberus Books, Sabrina and her friends talk about the deeper meaning in the movie they saw, although Harvey didn't pick up on the metaphors. Later, Harvey takes Sabrina to her home, a mortuary, where he surprises her with a necklace and says he loves her. She responds the same way and sends him away with a kiss. Inside, she magically turns on some music and dances around before we cut to Waldwell offering tea and cookies to the girl she found. When she inquires about if someone attacked her, the girl says it was not a person, but the woods. prompting Wardwell to bring up the 1962 witch hunt in Greendale. Thirteen witches were hanged in the forest and have haunted it since. Wardwell explains she's essentially Greendale's local historian, and when she further explains she teaches at Baxter High, the girl asks if she knows Sabrina. Confused, Wardwell asks if the girl knows Sabrina, and the girl replies in a creepy voice the she only knew Sabrina's "bastard of a father who broke sacred witch law when he married a mortal sow." As Wardwell watches in shock, the girl levitates a pair of scissors and hurls theminto her neck, causing her to collapse and die, her body gushing blood. The girl reaches into the blood pooling around her and recites a spell in Latin while tracing her finger around, suddenly taking on Wardwell's appearance and promising to the "Dark Lord" to deliver Sabrina to him. Sabrina suddenly wakes at that moment, looking at her calendar where she has marked "Sweet 16" and "Dark baptism" marked on Halloween, which is a few days away. After looking at a photo of her parents, a bat smashes through her window, and she kills it with a book, saying "absit omen" as she does so. The next morning, Sabrina comes down saying hi to her aunts Zelda (Miranda Otto) and Hilda (Lucy Davis), as well as her cousin Ambrose (Chance Perdomo). She admits to Zelda that she woke a few times the night prior due to excitement, and as Zelda assumes it was just because of the baptism, Hilda suggests a charm to help her sleep. Sabrina tells them about the bat, and Zelda immediately shoots down Ambrose's offer to bring it back to life, and Hilda says she can bury the bat in their pet cemetery. Hilda brings Sabrina a strange concoction she's expected to drink to cleanse her body before the baptism, though Ambrose coughs out a playful warning not to. Zelda then gives her a registry for Sabrina to pick a familiar, with a few suggestions and saying their dog Vinegar Tom would enjoy another of his kind. Sabrina suggests instead that she use a spell from the Demonomicon to send out a message and see if any demons would volunteer to be her familiar, finding the registry to be "dehumanizing." She also reveals she wants her baptismal name to be Edwina Diana as a way to honor her parents. Hilda says she wishes they could be there to see the young woman she's becoming, and Zelda corrects her that Sabrina is becoming a young witch. Sabrina buries the bat in their cemetery and notices Ambrose watching her, then vents about how the bat could be a bad omen and that she also found a two-headed frog in her shoe. Surprised since she seemed excited about her baptism before, he assures her it's okay to be nervous about signing the Dark Lord's book, as even he was. He is shocked to learn that she hasn't told her friends anything yet, since she'll be leaving soon, stating that she has to do it fast, but she says it's not an easy situation. He counters that she'll stay younger longer, go to the Academy of Unseen Arts where her dad was headmaster, and fit in perfectly once she's a full witch. She explains that she's already missing things she hasn't lost, and he points out that, having been under house arrest and unable to leave the grounds for 75 years, he's been missing everything. Sabrina makes her way into the forest, where she casts her spell to ask for a familiar. As she's putting her supplies away, three girls named Prudence (Tati Gabrielle), Dorcas (Abigail Cowen), and Agatha (Adeline Rudolph) appear. Prudence warns Sabrina, as "half-breed," to stay with her own kind, saying that what happened to her parents could happen to her as well. Dorcas and Agatha step in, bringing up her parents' "accident" again, and when she says they won't be able to bully her, they recite a curse and disappear, at which point Sabrina's nose suddenly bleeds. Sabrina rushes to school, where she hurries past Roz to the showers, saying she touched poison ivy and needs to wash it off. She chants a spell to scrub away the curse, then hears Susie crying when she steps out; four jocks had pulled up her shirt to see if she had breasts, to "see if she was really a boy or a girl." Sabrina rages about it to Principal George Hawthorne (Bronson Pinchot), who asks for the boys' names. Ssusie didn't give them, and when Sabrina suggests she could guess or he could question every football player, but he points out that would be a "witch hunt." She says Susie doesn't feel safe there, so Hawthorne simply suggests that Sabrina help her friend find another school. Sabrina tells Harvey about what happened, and though she suggests they each try to find out who did it, he points out that the players will come together to keep the truth hidden. Sabrina is frustrated that she'll have to let her friend suffer, but the new Ms. Wardwell enters with her own solution, inviting Sabrina to her office. There, she shares the girl's sentiments that the school foolows a kind of "puritanical masculinity," with Hawthorne as the biggest misogynist of them all. Claiming women should be in charge of everything, she says the assistant principal, Mrs. Glover, would be good, and Sabrina says she wishes someone would teach Hawthorne a lesson. Wardwell says Sabrina could be the one, suggesting that if Hawthorne, as the head of the problem, took a sabbatical, Glover would be able to help with the issue. Sabrina points out that Hawthorne never even takes breaks, and Wardwell coolly reveals that Hawthorne is scared of spiders. Armed with this knowledge, Sabrina gets a picture of Hawthorne from a yearbook and goes to Harvey and Roz with her plan: to challenge the problem at its source, she wants to make a supportive girls club. Roz shares her concerns about Hawthorne, but Sabrina says she has a plan to get it right past him that she just has to get done before Friday, her birthday. Roz wishes they could do something big to celebrate Sabrina's birthday, since it's her sweet 16, on Halloween, and there will be a blood moon eclipse, but Sabrina turns her down, citing family plans. As the trio talks, a crow is watching; it is Stolas, Wardwell's familiar, which returns to the woman. We get clunky exposition as she explains that the Dark Lord senses Sabrina's attachments, so she is there to get the girl on the witching path; she is making a miniature version of Sabrina's sweater. At the mortuary, Hilda gets a call abut a young man who was stabbed, and though she is saddened, Zelda is happy, noting that they need the boy's blood for Sabrina's baptism. The two meet with the parents of the boy, Connor, and with Hilda doing all the talking, the parents are assured Connor will have a nice funeral and hand over a picture of him for how they want him to look. Sabrina and Harvey are walking home, in the meantime, with him trying to convince her to do something with him for her birthday. He's frustrated that she can't tell him about her family obligations, and she finally reveals that she's moving and will be dropped off at her new school on Friday. Harvey becomes upset that she didn't tell any of them, and is then suspicious when she says she doesn't remember the name of her new school. He assures her there's no need to hide anything from him, so she decides to tell him the truth, taking him into the woods to a grove where she claims to have been born. She tells him about the dark baptism as well, saying she'll be reborn on Friday, comparing it to a bat mitvah or a quinceañera. He is naturally confused, so she explains that the witches coven covered up the names of those killed in the trials so they could go on, then reveals her heritage to him. He assumes she simply doesn't want to be with him and was upset about him saying he loves her, and when he says her being a half-witch is a lot to take in, she casts a spell to make him forget. Harvey wonders where they are once the spell is done, so she makes up a quick explanation that appeases him and they leave. Sabrina heads home, saddened, and tells Ambrose what happened. She says it's hard to leave everything behind, and when he wishes he could help her, she says one thing he could do in another area is help with a spell for the Hawthorne situation. He quickly agrees and she says they'll be casting at midnight, then goes inside to tell her aunts about the "weird sisters" and how they cursed her. Hilda wonders why they would do so and says they'll make sure it's gone, and Zelda simply says the girls are jealous of Sabrina because of her dad being a High Priest. Zelda brings up the familiar issue again and Sabrina says she never got an answer. Hilda has her crack an egg, and the yolk comes out red, causing her to realize it was a blood curse the girls put on her and is lingering; it will slowly eat away at her health, will, and sanity. Hilda gives her a cleansing regiment, and as Sabrina leaves, she brings up what the sisters said about her parents. Zelda vehemently and suspiciously defends the specific story about her parents being in a plane that went down during a trip to the Vatican. Sabrina goes upstairs for her bath, where she suddenly hallucinates that she's in the woods at what is apparently her own birth. Her parents (Annette Reilly, Georgie Daburas) are there but walk away, leaving her with two babies; one has cloven hooves instead of feet. She wakes up and finds it's almost midnight, so she rushes to Ambrose, who says it doesn't seem like her to use magic to settle personal vendettas. Sabrina says times are desperate but she doesn't want Hawthorne killed, only scared. When she reveals he's afraid of spiders, Ambrose says they're lucky because spiders are Hilda's familiar. They get the spiders together and Sabrina reiterates that she only wants Hawthorne scared, and Ambrose puts the picture of him into a spider case as they cast a spell. While Sabrina chants, an army of spider invades Hawthorne's house. He ends up falling to the floor trying to bat them away and is stuck terrified as they swarm all over him. With her plan underway, she returns to her room, finding it freezing with the window open. When she closes it, she hears a creepy male voice call her name. She turns around and demands to know who's there; a black figure appears at her mirror, saying he came after hearing her call in the woods. He retreats behind the mirror and scampers out as a familiar; we finally get this series's version of Sabrina's cat Salem! The next morning, Zelda is confused why Sabrina would want a feral familiar and why she named him Salem, and Sabrina simply says she and Salem are partners and he named himself. Hilda notes that it's just good she has a familiar now and that, in purifying herself, she's almost ready for her baptism, so Sabrina decides to tell them about the club. To get Zelda's approval, she compares it to a coven, and asks if they can postpone, shocking others and getting Zelda to respond that she can't just do that, especially because of the eclipse. Sabrina tells them about going next-level with Harvey, which Zelda assumes means she's not a virgin, which would go against witch law. Sabrina clears things up but says she's unsure of signing everything over to Satan, wondering why he gets to decide what she does with her body. Zelda rants that it's an honor and duty to follow him in return for their powers, and Sabrina notes that it's her name to be signed. Zelda says they all signed happily and mutters that this feeling is Sabrina's mother's influence, also blaming Hilda for them not homeschooling Sabrina as is customary. Hilda calmly asks if Sabrina doesn't want to join the church, and she replies that she just doesn't understand why she has to give up her human half. Zelda reminds her of witch law to only follow one path, and that trying to follow both almost got her dad excommunicated. Sabrina then snaps that it's weird to want to join a group that would hurt someone she cares about, and Zelda retorts that her parents wanted it for her. Hilda softly confirms this, and Zelda snarls the final decision that Sabrina will follow their customs by being baptized and joining the church. Ambrose finds Sabrina outside later and reminds her that she'll lose her powers, which she enjoys, if she doesn't get baptized. When she says she just wants to be sure, he suggests she find a "malum malus;" a man translating would call it the apple of evil, but a woman would say it's the fruit of knowledge. A person bites one and it whispers things, sometimes showing the future, and Ambrose says it might tell her which path she should follow. When she decides to get one, he tells her to go to an orchard and find the oldest tree, jokingly warning to be sure there's no worms in it. Stolas tells Wardwell about Sabrina's goal, and as she begins plotting to stop the girl from getting a malum malus, Sabrina and Roz visit secretary Mrs. Meeks (Xantha Radley). Meeks tells them Hawthorne won't be in but agrees to get their club proposal to Glover, leaving Roz amazed that Sabrina succeeded. The girls run out and get Susie, who is happy and laughs about the name choice of "The Women's Intersectional Cultural and Creative Association (WICCA)." Their joy is interrupted when Sabrina is called to Wardwell's office, happy to have been chosen as the faculty advisor. Sabrina says she's happy about the club but isn't sure what she wants to do about moving schools. Waldman pushes her to do it and asks about Harvey. When Waldman suggests they talk about it after school, Sabrina tells her she's going "apple picking," and the frustrated teacher asks where. With Sabrina going for a malum malus, things get even more complicated when Waldman sends in a foe to stop her and strange discoveries are made. There were definite fears online from fans of the old Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but this show is definitely its own thing.
First episode, we get a death in the first few minutes, and it's surprisingly graphic, with blood gushing from Wardwell's neck. Having seen that Michelle Gomez was going to be in the show and remembering her from Doctor Who, I'd assumed she'd simply be revealed as someone coming after Sabrina. While in a way this is correct, since she's trying to get the girl to join the Dark Lord, I didn't expect that she's actually a copy of the original woman and would play two people. We see the difference easily, with a different personality after that night and a more obvious change to her wardrobe, letting her hair down and being less reserved. Kiernan Shipka is enjoyable as Sabrina, showing true frustration as she tries to decide what she should do with her life, and the aunts are fun to watch. The whole show does have a level of pretty fun campiness to it, but this should be expected since the Fandom Wikipedia combines the show with Riverdale, which I often find to be pretty overly dramatic and silly. In particular, both Gomez and Miranda Otto can be a bit hammy, but in a way that makes them enjoyable to have onscreen. We're introduced to a lot of characters quickly in this episode, including the weird sisters with one of the sillier moments as they curse Sabrina. I was glad to see Salem arrive to become Sabrina's familiar, though one thing I wish the show had, like the older one did, is a sassy Salem talking to Sabrina. Much like the rest of the show, we get a much darker Salem, with his creepy demonic entrance and a later scene showing how powerful he actually is. There's an intriguing story set up with Sabrina wondering what she should do, especially as Waldman gets involved and Sabrina has her vision of her parents. The Devil seems to have taken a special interest in Sabrina, and it's pretty obvious that her parents were in something deep considering the weird sisters "hinting" about them and Zelda being so casual and sure about their death. I like that, along with the darkness of this show, like the aunts saying "Praise Satan," it's already touching on the idea of Sabrina telling Harvey the truth. Obviously he was going to have a shocked reaction, but I have to wonder how he would have ended up feeling if Sabrina had given him time to process the information. The first episode was enjoyable, and I'm excited to see where things go from here as Sabrina tries to eal with the information she gets about the path she should follow.
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