kitlee625

I second that. All of the main characters have moved out of their comfort zones compared to where they started the season, which I think is going to set up a very interesting season 2. Sabrina has left behind the mortal realm, Hilda is moving more towards the mortal realm, Zelda is moving away from the church dogma and hierarchy, and Ambrose is finally leaving the house. I read that the show was greenlit as a 2 season, 20 episode block, and I think that was a smart choice because they've created a nice cliffhanger to set up season 2.

That was my initial impression too, but then we hear that there's all this potential Blackwood family drama about which of his children will be his heir and inherit his "title." Now, he certainly could be planning on training his son to earn the title of High Priest, but then why does it matter if baby boy Blackwell has sisters? I get the impression that Edward was High Priest for at least 60 years. We know that Edward was the High Priest who sentenced Ambrose to house arrest 75 years ago, and Blackwood didn't take over until after Edward's death when Sabrina was a baby (~16 years ago).

Agreed, "The Body" was a very different kind of episode. This episode wasn't really about death or the loss of Tommy. Sabrina admitted that she didn't really know Tommy. Rather, the pain that she experienced was the separation between her and her mortal friends, and the burden of having powers but not being able to use them without consequence. Sabrina's greatest flaw in this season is that she thinks that she can have it all - enjoy her powers without limitation, defeat the Dark Lord, and live a mortal life with her friends. But even setting aside the rules of the Church of Night, there are other forces keeping the mortal and witch worlds separate. Sabrina will age so slowly compared to her friends (which hasn't really come up yet - that Harvey will become an old man and die while Sabrina remains youthful) and that she has knowledge and powers that she can never share with them. I assume that for the most part, witches try to remain as separate from the mortal world as possible to avoid exposing themselves. It's just that the Spellmans seem to be particularly bad at that. Which really raises the question of why Sabrina was allowed to go to school in the first place, since their family has inevitably formed connections to the mortals of Greeendale.

Zelda: She's a grown-up witch now, and it's time she learned how the world, the realms, really work. Everything has a price. Edward learned that lesson. I learned it. It's your turn now.

I have a feeling that that's where this is heading. The Dark Lord isn't so much a character as an idea, filtered through the Madam Satan and Father Blackwood, who are set up as evil adversaries rather than allies. Blackwood may think he finished the season ahead, now that he has his male heir and his gang of warlock bros, but he a) failed in getting Sabrina to sign her name in the book, and b) has lost some of his important allies/disciples (Prudence seems to be more wary of him, and Zelda stole his kid). I definitely think that he'll be getting some comeuppance in season 2. Which brings to mind another question - what's the deal with the title of High Priest? Is it something earned or inherited? Sabrina's father was High Priest before he died, so does that mean that she could challenge Blackwood for the title?

I also wanted to add, aside from all the stuff with Zombie Tommy, I was really intrigued when Sabrina met her mother in Limbo. The show has been hinting that there’s more to her parents than what Sabrina’s been told, but this blows the biggest hole in that story - that her parents married for true love, and she and her parents were a happy family until that darn “plane crash.” I think the people who took Sabrina after her baptism were Hilda and Zelda, under orders from Edward. But why did he do that? Did he know that he and is wife were going to die?

It’s interesting just how patriarchal the witch society is, despite witches being associated with a long of strong women. The witches that Sabrina et al call on for the exorcism are all female, for example, and most of the magical characters are female, and yet they are completed subservient to the Dark Lord (coded as male) and to the High Priest. Can women even become high priest? Even within the Spellman family, Edward continues to cast this large shadow over the family, despite the fact that he’s dead, and his sisters have had to deal with the aftermath of his death (raising Sabrina).

The first several episodes had a lot of infodumping in them. I'm in the process of rewatching the show, and there's a lot of details that I'm catching the second time around.

The cannibalism ritual was pretty delightfully creepy. That being said, the final feeding frenzy scene was just plain sinister. I'm glad that most of our "good" witches seemed to be equally horrified. I think if Sabrina or Zelda had eaten that woman I would have been really icked out. I feel like Zelda is really having a crisis of faith as she's questioning some of these witch traditions now that her niece/surrogate daughter is going through them. We saw a little of that in episode 4, where she rebelled against harrowing, but it'll be interesting to see the most fervent believer of the Spellman clan questioning her faith. It's also interesting to me that Sabrina's father outlawed the Feast of Feasts while he was high priest. From what little we've learned about him, he seems like quite the rebel / church reformer, very different than Blackwell. I really hope we get to learn more about him.

I agree. Overall I like Sabrina, but her over confidence was getting really hard to watch. It's nice that it had some very real consequences, with her family basically refusing to support her crazy schemes, and even Aunt Hilda calling her out.

I got the feeling that it was so that Michelle Gomez could further isolate and torture Sabrina. Sabrina breaks the rules and uses some big magic to a save, but instead of feeling like a triumphant badass, she feels like a defeated failure. And instead of confiding in her Aunts or Ambrose, she's run back to the warm embrace and guidance of Michelle Gomez. It strengthens the trust Sabrina has for Michelle Gomez and sets up for her come running to her in the future if some other magical problems comes up. On another note, that whole thing about Sabrina's dad creating the exorcism rite is probably a lie right? So did it come from Satan himself? Or did Sabrina's father know about the prophesy and that his daughter The Chosen One would have to perform the rite and wrote it for real?

I think it was in the pilot. Sabrina has a vision of her parents. I'm not exactly sure about the meaning of the two children here, but I suspect that we're not going to have two Sabrinas, because frankly that defeats the central conflict of the story which is her dual nature. I think that the scene represents that she has both human and satanic sides to her, and she is afraid of her own dark nature.

I agree. I find the witch world, the Aunts, and Ambrose to be infinitely more entertaining than Ros, Susie, and Harvey having a party and standing up to bullies. Which is one of the weaknesses of the show, IMHO, because the weight of the dilemma is that Sabrina can't bear to leave these people and this world behind. But meanwhile I'm rooting for her to do just that so we can get to more interesting things. What annoys me about Sabrina is that she seems to think that the rules don't apply to her, and she can have both worlds equally. I know that pretty standard for the teen-coming-of-age drama, but what makes her think that she can have her cake and eat it to (i.e. powers without pledging allegiance to Satan and without giving up her mortal life)? Also, why doesn’t it ever come up that she would probably have to leave her witch family if she chooses a mortal life? Idk why, but that little scene where the Aunts go to pick up that creepy black goat cracked me up. Two weird spinster sisters dressed like they're from another era, out to buy a weird goat. What's not witchy and suspicious about that?

I think this episode does a great job uniting the mortal world and the witch world. Before this episode, the stories felt unbalanced, and IMO, the Greendale High stuff was a lot less interesting than the witch stuff. But this episode did a good job of pulling Sabrina's high school friends into the supernatural part of the story.

I think so. Ambrose also has a laptop in episode 1. I personally don't find the different accents that distracting. They've both been alive for so long, and we don't know that they've been together in the Greendale the whole time. I could imagine Zelda taking care of things at home, while Hilda wandered around England for a few centuries. Which opens up another question - roughly how old are the Spellman sisters?

I liked this episode. The first three episodes kind of dragged for me. It was clear that Sabrina was going to wind up with her powers and at the Academy, and the whole will-she/won't-she dragged on. But now that that's been established, I'm interested in getting into some adventures. Plus I think the production design of the Spellman house is pretty cool, and I liked getting to see more of it in this episode. Because it's on Netflix, each episode is a full hour, and I feel like the writing would be a little tighter if it were just a few minutes shorter -- more like the 44-ish minutes you would get on network TV. I just don't feel like there's quite enough action to fill a full hour.

I think they are filming season 2 now. Not sure when it's going to be released exactly, but I read that it's planned for sometime in 2019. I'm not sure how this going to work out long term, but I also don't think Zelda actually has a plan yet. It's certainly possible that she's going to keep Baby Girl Blackwell hidden until she's older (child/young teen), and then could pretend that she's a distant relative come to stay with them. But it's probably going to be pretty hard to keep this whole thing a secret next season, especially considering that she also has to be unholy godmother to Baby Boy Blackwell.

I missed watching Love's Labor Lost the first time around (didn't start watching the show until about season 2), and holy shit that episode is great and horrible simultaneously. It's so powerful without resorting to crazy diseases or ridiculous situations. While the later seasons definitely got weird, I think season 1 of ER gets a lot right and feels very real.

I was kind of looking forward to see the show address a post-IW world, but I'm not surprised Marvel wants to avoid it altogether.

Yeah, this doesn't seem like a good idea, and how do they know that the Odium won't overload Talbot's powers so that he destroys the world anyway? I also agree with everyone above that it's not even a dilemma in my mind. How can they possibly save Coulson if it's going to result in the destruction of the planet? This is the dumbest/easiest choice ever. Of course, that's one of the reasons why I think Coulson is probably going to be saved by some "deus ex machina" next episode, because it's too obvious for him to die. And I don't think the writers have the guts to do it. Overall the first part of the episode felt so slow, and the whole Daisy-Papa Kasius scene was like a boring high school play. All the action and excitement was in the second half. But I did like when we got to see Mack and Elena tracking down Talbot, and May and Deke fighting those alien guys and escaping. The rest of it felt like it was slowly putting all the pieces together for the finale.

Okay, with 1 episode to go this season, I'm ready to revise my prediction. Coulson's not dead, but he's not quite alive, and do think that he's going to miraculously survive. It does seem like someone is going to die. It may just be Talbot, but if a SHIELD/SHIELD-affiliated person dies, I think it's going to be either Elena or Deke. Elena has been isolated from the others lately, and still is very focused on how she can save the world. I could see a "sacrifice myself for the greater good" move from her because she's so desperate to save the world. Deke could also do it in a "I did it for lemons" way. Thoughts?

And yet in spite of it, the writers have them constantly befuddled by stupid villains, cause inadvertent catastrophes at every turn, and otherwise blunder around aimlessly.

I really want the show to end with a bunch of major characters Snappening, but my suspicion that it's just going to be some SHIELD redshirts. Or Mack. Mack could be toast.

I feel like a lot of the villains on the show have been woefully bland/pointless. Usually the Hydra ones: Malick, Malick's daughter, Whitehall come to mind as particularly dull villains. Even though I loved EJO in Battlestar Galactica, I thought Gonzales was another underdeveloped, underutilized antagonist with the whole Real SHIELD nonsense in season 2. I thought Hale and Ruby were fine, certainly better than Malick and Whitehall. But YMMV.

I didn't mean for it to sound as if I were doing that. I actually think that Coulson accepting his death and not wanting extreme, life-extending voodoo is completely understandable, and I really respect that he wants to spend his last days doing something meaningful for the world rather than trying to save himself. But there are other parts about his characterization that annoy me.