Sabrina starts leaning into her darker side more, deciding to go full time at the academy. But when she seeks to challenge established tradition by competing for the position of ‘Top Boy’, she may have called down more trouble upon herself than she can handle.

After the scattered, throwaway feeling to events in the last episode, this second part of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina gets off to a more assured, solid start with an episode that has a firm focus. Sabrina has elected to take some time away from high school and attend the Academy full time. Her reasons for doing so seem to be a combination of giving in now that she’s signed the Book of the Beast and a genuine desire to keep herself and any bad influence she may represent away from her mortal friends.

But this is Sabrina, so she’s still set on causing trouble and upsetting the apple cart whenever she can. When the nominations for Top Boy are made at the Academy, of course she puts herself forward, causing an immense amount of ruckus among the Warlocks and the High Priest in particular.

It’s interesting how the show has this play out, on several levels. For starters, it’s been clear since the beginning that the Coven and its ways are more than a little sexist, and now that Sabrina has fully embraced the life of a witch and all that means, she’s in a better place to start challenging it. It becomes clearer here than it perhaps was before that her acceptance of the need to sign the book didn’t constitute her acceptance of all the ways and traditions of the Church – in fact here she actively declares to someone that she intends to challenge every one of the traditions she finds problematic, and even that her ambitions might be loftier still.

Meanwhile back at Baxter High, Susie is having her own parallel crack at the Patriarchy by trying out for the boys’ basketball team. What’s interesting is that now the school is under a new principal – Miss Wardwell aka Madam Satan – things are getting a bit of a shakeup. Susie’s tryout for the team might also not be the direct assault on the patriarchy it first appears, as the character takes a developmental turn which is both not unexpected but still pleasing to see – here’s hoping the writers stick the landing on this one.

But mostly this episode is about Sabrina herself, challenging traditions, seeking help from unexpected places and seeing harm or intended harm from equally surprising quarters. The show never lets our protagonist off with an easy answer, nor allows her to settle into anything approximating a comfortable regime. It seems that – at least for now – Miss Spellman is destined for conflict in all that she does.

Verdict: Much better than the episode which signed off the first part of the series, this feels focused, purposeful and not a little unsettling, both for our protagonist and the audience. Here’s hoping it continues in this vein. 8/10

Greg D. Smith