A terrible threat against all of Greendale forces Sabrina into making a choice that could change her life forever.

Convention demands that when a show reaches its finale (or mid season finale – this isn’t really clear here) then there has to be a culmination. A big, blowout event that puts an emphatic full stop on proceedings and gives the audience a sort of visceral thrill of satisfaction on behalf of the characters. Somewhere along the line, that convention was amended with ‘the teaser’ – that slight element that poses intriguing questions about what might come next.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina decides to try for both, and whereas it’s a fun ride, it can’t help but feel as artificial as Madam Satan’s manoeuvring to get there. Faced with the reality that Sabrina’s ties to the mortal world are just too darned strong (because her friends aren’t instantly ostracising her and her boyfriend broke up with her but looks quite sad about it), our villain decides that she must engineer some catastrophe with which to threaten all of Greendale and force Sabrina into making the choice she’s been ushering her towards all along.

That threat manifests in ‘The Thirteen’: a coven of thirteen witches killed by the people of Greendale centuries ago, who between them elect to summon the Red Horseman – some manifestation of slaughter who will go through Greendale as an avenging angel of death, killing all of the firstborn of witches and mortals alike. Having delivered the threat, Madam Satan just needs to sit back and wait for events to take their course.

Inevitably, the Spellmans take a different stance from the Church of Night when news of this impending doom reaches them, and while the majority of the coven looks to their own safety, Sabrina and her family engineer a natural disaster of their own to encourage the mortals of the town into one safe place. And then things start going wrong (way beyond Madam Satan’s control). Yes, it’s another Joker Plan, where the main villain explains their carefully laid out plans and how everything just fell into place (literally – Gomez appears intermittently throughout the episode delivering a monologue to an unseen second, recounting events) despite the fact that many factors in that sequence of events were completely outside their control. The going into labour of Lady Blackwood, Ambrose’s lover suddenly getting very serious about things, and so on –  all these are significant factors in pushing Sabrina towards the decision Madam Satan wishes her to make, and none of them are within her power.

Still, ignore that glaring hole in the main narrative and there’s much to enjoy here. Shipka in particular deserves an enormous amount of credit for just how many conflicting emotions she can portray through facial expressions alone, as her character is faced not only with a difficult choice, but also with the consequences of that choice. Chance Perdomo continues to delight every second that he’s on screen, and Gavin Leatherwood manages to find depth and humanity in Nicholas, a character who until now has been little more than a cypher. The action is gorgeously shot and everyone is acting their socks off, and if you just focus on that, good times await.

Unfortunately, the very choice that needs to be made relies so heavily on the narrative conceit the show is trying to create that there’s simply no ignoring it, ultimately. Something this serious, based on the flimsy whim of a demon and her half-baked plan, feels like a bit of a poke in the eye for the main protagonist and the audience, and the final shot of Sabrina feels a little cheap after all the work that’s been done on building her as a complex character to this point. I can only hope that the writers are playing a longer game than it would currently appear.

Verdict: Fun in a sort of ‘leave your brain at the door’ way, which feels oddly out of kilter for this show. Ignore the holes in the plot and you’ll have a blast, right up until the ending shines a big spotlight on them again. 6/10

Greg D. Smith