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  • Elizabeth Drake

Revamping Your Favorite Teen Witch: Tracing the Charms of Sabrina from the 90’s Sabrina the Teenage


Here we have our *Butterfly Clip Queen* Melissa Joan Hart starring as Sabrina on Sabrina the Teenage Witch which (lol) aired for seven seasons on ABC and the WB...

She’s got her wacky two blonde Aunts, Hilda and Zelda, who you can always count on for tight sweaters, flubbed spells, groovy girl-talk, and more butterfly clips...

And my personal favorite character—Salem! Definitely the best cat on sitcom television, Salem is a 500 year old witch who has been spelled into a cat’s body as punishment for pursing total world domination. He’s power hungry, he cries when he’s sad, and he’s full of love for his “Sabreeny” <3

Fast-forward to 2018. We’ve got a new blonde witch in Greendale. And it’s Sally Draper...

Our darling Kiernan Shipka of Mad Men has entered the Riverdale universe (I’m not kidding-- Greendale is across the river from Riverdale) as a new witchy-feminist icon Sabrina...

She’s adventurous, she’s conscious of social issues, she fights traditional witch (and gender!) norms, but she still loves Harvey Kinkle—although this Harvey is no longer a goofy jock—he very much aligns with the trend of soft, sensitive boys ala Noah Centineo in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and Sierra Burgess is a Loser...

But I digress…Sabrina in 2018 is expected to save herself for the Dark Lord *Satan* as her Aunts and all witches have done before her. But our rebel-rouser wants to make an educated choice (buuut it’s her saaacred duuuty!!) to give herself to the Dark Lord and the Church of Night. In exchange for signing her name over to Satan during her Dark Baptism, Sabrina would get hella power and magical ability—but she’d have to dump the sensitive Harvey and join an organization that worships Satan and rejects the boringness of humanity…

But this Sabrina, a half-witch girl who created a W.I.C.C.A. (Women’s Intersectional Cultural and Creative Association) at her high school can’t be tempted that easily by the wiles and guiles of Satan.

Check the show on Netflix out to see if 2018 Sabrina succumbs to the charms of *~sAtAn~* (!) in exchange for sick magical power or if she embraces her humanity and her mortal boyfriend…

And even though there’s no Salem who talks in this revamping, there is the compelling cousin Ambrose the mortician. He’s puck-ish, he’s pan-sexual, and he’s prettyyy pretty.

If you do end up watching the series—I’d love to know what you think about the revenge scene in the devil/coal mine tunnels where the Weird Sisters srsly mess up some Football bros—I need to talk to someone about this (!!!)

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