Sabrina Arriving in Riverdale Is Not What We Need to Talk About

Riverdale’s original idea of crazy was that Archie Andrews was sleeping with his teacher and Jason Blossom was very dead. Five seasons and a cult, several murders, some supernatural monsters, and two teachers randomly leaping out of the same damn window, anything goes—so at this point, the fact that a new trailer heralding a long-awaited crossover is so bananas should be unsurprising. And yet, reader. And yet.

The CW has revealed a look at the five-part event, “Rivervale,” that will both kick off Riverdale’s sixth season of shenanigans and bring in Kiernan Shipka’s dearly missed Sabrina Spellman, from the cancelled Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Although initially the weirder of the two shows given that it was, well, literally about Satanic practitioners of the dark and violent mystical arts, Shipka’s teenage witch might as well be the most normal person in Riverdale at this point.

Cheryl Blossom—Queen of the Bees—is busy leading her own cult-slash-coven-slash-excuse-for-fabulous-robes after learning that one of her ancient Blossom ancestors was burned at the stake in Ye Olden Riverdale, the most wonderful approach to leaning into spooky season imaginable. There are multiple ghouls and at least one man claiming to be the Literal Devil. Betty is talking a distressing amount about how she wants Archie’s Baby. All of this is taking place after Cheryl cursed the town and also Hiram Lodge tried to remotely denotate a bomb and kill Archie mid-sexytimes with Betty. The looking glass is so far behind us that the looking glass is a dot that executive producer Robert Aguirre-Sacasa gleefully stamped on while screaming “Queen of the Bees! Queen of the Bees! Queen of the Bees!”

Anyway, Sabrina’s here to help sort things out. Or make it weirder, I dunno, probably that actually. Riverdale returns November 16, so you have almost a month to prepare for whatever psychic damage it will throw at you.

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