Sabrina’s carefully laid plans do not seem to have worked as she expected, with neither Agatha nor Tommy quite themselves. Can she put things right, or must the Reaper always have his price? Meanwhile, Susie and Roz are each reaching their own conclusions about who – and more importantly what – their best friend is.

Safe to say, this time out things get really dark for our favourite friendly half-witch, and the show does an excellent job of hammering home a message about consequences, and how nobody is immune to them.

Tommy is back, which is cause for celebration in the Kinkle household and makes Sabrina breathe a sigh of relief. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Tommy isn’t quite himself, and that all those warnings that Ambrose and Hilda gave to her about the dangers of resurrection were far from idle. When Agatha starts to exhibit strange behaviour and symptoms of her own, the secret can be kept from the Aunts no longer, and neither of them has any quick fix or words of comfort for their wayward niece.

As Sabrina desperately tries to sort things, she enlists the help of Roz to try to use her ‘Cunning’ on Tommy to discern the issue, in what I’m confident in naming as at least her second Dumbest Plan Ever. Contact with Roz while she’s experiencing a vision means that Roz sees a little more of Sabrina than she’s prepared for.

At the same time, and encounter with some bullies and Hilda at the bookshop and further conversations with her long-dead ancestor Dorothea cause Susie to start asking questions of her own about the Spellmans in general and Sabrina in particular.

Unsurprisingly, Madam Satan is eager to take advantage of events as they unfold, keen to isolate Sabrina from her ties to the mortal world and bring her fully into the embrace of the Dark Lord. When Sabrina’s last resort involves a painful bit of honesty, it seems that perhaps the former ‘Ms Wardwell’ may get her way after all.

Where the last episode fell a little flat in some ways, this one more than makes up for it. The conflict between Sabrina and her aunts, the slow realisation of others, and the show’s unflinching commitment to nailing down the concept of real and serious consequence mean that there’s not a dull moment from start to finish. I make no secret that I am a huge fan of Lucy Davis, but she takes the top spot in an episode that’s crammed with spectacular performances from all concerned.

Most importantly, this episode indicates that there will be no easy answers for Sabrina on the journey to come. Not only might it not even be a choice for her to make as to whether she can successfully straddle the line between the two worlds she lives in, but even if she can, it’s clear that she’ll no more be all good than she was ever likely to be all bad. I’m impressed that the show is displaying such commitment to subject matter that could so easily have been painfully badly handled.

Verdict: Easily the best episode of the show so far. Dark, desperate and surprisingly emotional. 9/10

Greg D. Smith