Sabrina starts at the academy, but Prudence and her two fellow witches aren’t going to make things easy for her. Hilda helps Ambrose out with his love life, with potentially disastrous consequences, and Zelda starts to reveal a slightly more human side to her nature.

There’s a lot going on again in this episode, and where some of it is absolute rivetingly wonderful to watch, parts are also unfortunately going into the box labelled ‘problematic’.

Let’s start positive – Sabrina arrives at the academy for her three day ‘immersion’, per the agreement made last time out, and she’s immediately introduced to a friendly helpful young lad called Quentin, who will become very important as events progress. Not everyone is thrilled to see her arrive, of course, and Sabrina finds herself quickly the subject of Prudence et al’s attentions with a ‘Harrowing’ – a sort of witch version of extreme hazing where new arrivals are made to endure horrific trials which will either make them stronger or break them.

Back home, Susie has Roz come over to keep her company while her father is away, which leads to Roz meeting Susie’s ‘ill’ uncle, who is confined to his room in the house. What comes out about how he became ill gets back to Harvey, who has a very personal reason for wanting to meet the man himself and compare some notes – that doesn’t, however, go well.

And at the Spellman residence, Zelda is taking every opportunity to remind Hilda of her excommunication and shame, which means when Ambrose asks for Hilda’s help with doing something he really shouldn’t so he can ‘meet’ the boy he’s interested in for coffee, Hilda agrees as much out of an opportunity to spite her sister as anything else, with some potentially disastrous consequences.

What the show gets absolute right is in relation to the Harrowing. Sabrina begs her aunts for help, and we get to see a quite different side of Zelda as a result, in more ways than one. We also get to see some absolutely lovely moments from Lucy Davis as Hilda – this is what happens when the quiet, shy kid who always got bullied spies a chance to instil some balance in the world with a bit of good old-fashioned revenge/justice. Everything around the Aunts in this regard is fantastic character development and the sort of thing I want to see the show do more.

Unfortunately, the Harrowing and its resolution also leads to that problematic bit I mentioned at the beginning. It’s lovely to see more shows having diversity in their casts, but there’s a responsibility that goes alongside that with regards to the imagery used and associations that can be drawn. It’s possible to argue that the show leans into its diversity by not making an exception, I suppose, but it strikes me that a different, less troubling resolution could have been done with no harm to the narrative or integrity of the world being created at all.

What is clear is that Blackwood and Madam Satan may have more of a fight on their hands than they realise. Blood is, after all, so much thicker than water and wine.

Verdict: When it gets it right, it sings. If only the writers and producers had thought a little bit harder about all the variables it might have been perfect, instead of just very good. 8/10

Greg D. Smith