News of an accident at the mines brings fresh worries for Sabrina, and a new struggle between her duties and abilities as a witch, with assistance from an unexpected quarter. Zelda undertakes a confession to Lord Blackwood with surprising results. Ambrose has another chance at a pardon for his crimes, but only if he can go against his own principles.

Fresh from the horror of the Feast of Feasts in the witching world, Sabrina is confronted by horror of a different sort this time out as Black Friday sees a disaster at the mine. Fearing the worst, Sabrina immediately rushes over to see if Harvey is ok, but as it turns out, something far worse has occurred.

Of course, it’s not long before it becomes clear that there was nothing natural about the disaster. We did after all see Dorcas and Agatha last week enacting some strange ritual with dolls and rocks aimed at harming the Kinkles in recompense for their family’s past persecution of Witches. Though Sabrina cannot know this at first, she’s pointed towards it from an unexpected source after a hastily convened funeral, and her theory only serves to confirm suspicions someone else already had, meaning she ends up with some strange allies indeed.

Elsewhere, Zelda worries that she is failing in her service to the Dark Lord, with the Spellman household consisting of her, a halfbreed, an inmate and an excommunicate. Unburdening herself to Lord Blackwood has some surprising and fairly unexpected results.

And Sabrina’s friends are now all definitely affected by weirdness. Harvey saw whatever he saw in the mines, Susie seems to be having conversations with a long-dead ancestor and Roz is now apparently afflicted with ‘The Cunning’. It’s starting to feel a little like the whole of Greendale are going to end up having some supernatural alignment or other by the time the series ends.

The plan which Sabrina ends up enacting feels a little too neat in many ways – both in the attempted hoodwink (as per normal) of powers beyond mortal ken by Sabrina and in the way it serves both her own agenda and that (apparently) of Madam Satan and the Dark Lord himself. Admittedly it’s great to see the unusual alliance, but it still feels a little too gift-wrapped, narratively.

My other issue is the inconsistency of certain characters, whether it’s the uber-rebellious Ambrose (who, let’s not forget is under house arrest for having tried to blow up the Vatican) suddenly becoming very scolding of Sabrina for attempting things she shouldn’t or the frankly wonky trajectory here of Zelda who goes from unexpectedly maternal Aunt to… well, something else, in the blink of an eye. It’s welcome to have characters that don’t conform to rigid stereotypes of course, but less so when it sees marked inconsistencies in those characters from one moment to the next.

Verdict: A little bit of a Jekyll and Hyde episode, with some great flourishes, some odd inconsistencies and a slightly overly artificial-feeling plot. Not one of the better instalments. 6/10

Greg D. Smith