Here comes Sabrina?
Among the characters in Archie Comics one of the most popular is Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Sabrina has enjoyed success both in comics and as a hit tv show. The show Sabrina staring Melissa Joan Hart was on for 7 seasons and was on ABC and later the WB. While the show began in the mid 90s and ended in the early 2000s it is still well known by young people due to its life on reruns.The show syndicated and has been featured in reruns and on streaming services like Netflix.
The CW show Riverdale has done very well and features the characters from Archie and Josie and the Pussy Cats. While both Archie and Josie characters have been heavily featured thus far it has not shown any characters with a direct connection to Sabrina. The show also has not added much in the way of supernatural elements. However, their have been hints of things like ghosts in the show.
Riverdale has been renewed for a 2nd season with the CW after a very strong first season. The show runners have been asked if Sabrina could appear and their comments seem to leave the door open for appearance of the magical teenager. Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told Comicbook.com
“There’s no secret that I love that character, and that that character is a huge part of the Archie universe,...The truth is, we did talk a lot about introducing Sabrina, but she’s such an important character and it’s such a big idea to introduce the supernatural into a natural world that honestly when we got to the finale — it was before that, it was maybe a couple of months before that — we kind of realized that there was so much stuff to play that if we introduced Sabrina, it would kind of overshadow everything that we had planned."
This comment seems to indicate that Sabrina at one point could have been planned for Season 1 but was pulled back to not interefere with main storylines. It also seems that Aguirre-Sacasa could have been plaving the way for the appearance of Sabrina the whole time with subtle hints of the supernatural.
“The show kind of has hints of the supernatural throughout it; there are visions of Jason as a ghost, as a zombie.... Archie sees werewolves. There’s a lot of talk about angry, pagan gods and there’s a voodoo doll. We are going to continue exploring the idea of the supernatural being on the fringes of Riverdale, and that might be to lead up to Sabrina’s arrival or that might just be to make it more likeTwin Peaks and the way they dealt with the supernatural.”
The mention here of Twin Peaks is interesting here because that show began as not murder mystery that had weird elements but not supernatural until later. The supernatural elements that were introduced later on (and proved to be pivotal to the story) caught some viewers off guard at the time. The supernatural elements in the show were heavily hinted, and they also helped to add to the shows disorienting qualities that often the kept the viewers in the dark.
There is also the option that Sabrina could be added to the show but not include her supernatural elements. I tend to think this would not make her fans very happy but who knows. So far the show has surprised the heck out of me by doing things with Archie that I never thought would make any sense. The truth is it would be very interresting to see what the show runners do with Sabrina and it could open up a whole other layer of mystery into the series.
What do you think about adding Sabrina and the Supernatural in general to Riverdale? Would add to the show or ruin it? Let us know in the comments section below.
