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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Recap: Watch the Throne

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

The Mephisto Waltz
Season 2 Episode 9
Editor’s Rating 5 stars

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

The Mephisto Waltz
Season 2 Episode 9
Editor’s Rating 5 stars
Photo: Diyah Pera/Netflix

Unholy smokes! It is ALL HAPPENING in this finale. Characters reveal their true selves. Mortals and witches unite in the fight against the apocalypse. We have sexy, naked surprise-dads, boyfriend betrayals, implausible declarations of love, and unintentionally hilarious flashbacks to the dawn of time. Let’s start there: Wardwell tells Sabrina her origin story and reveals that she is, in fact, Lilith.

Teen Lilith has a toga like a freshman at her first frat party and, obviously, heat-styled hair extensions. Lucifer Morningstar, fresh out of heaven, has the very groomed facial hair of someone who isn’t living in the land before time. Both of them are so specifically CW-hot that I honestly had to pause the episode to laugh. I feel like the devil would be scruffier? Like maybe he would have chest hair? Lilith explains that she was Lucifer’s handmaiden. I’m not sure why he got to be her master if she was the one healing his wounds but that’s how old the patriarchy is, apparently.

Sabrina tells her aunts all about the prophecy. Zelda’s maternal instincts are magnificent. She will NOT allow the Dark Lord to take Sabrina as his child bride. Watching her boss everybody around to make the house a fortress (“Nicholas, you can put those strapping shoulders of yours to good use and help”) reminded me of how much I missed her while she was honeymooning, hypnotized, and then pretending to be hypnotized. Harvey wants to help because of course he does. (A+ to Kiernan for the way Sabrina says the gates of hell “are also in Greendale.”) So the mortals go down to the mines to try to find those gates and keep them closed using whatever tools they have handy. Harvey brings his sketchbook. No one brings a cell phone. JUST ADMIT THIS SHOW IS SET IN 1965, FOR LUCIFER’S SAKE.

Satan swings by Dorian Gray’s. If I knew he was going to be this young and hot I would have felt very differently about his arrival and also his thing about having sex with brides before their weddings. Lilith (who we can now call by her given name, since the jig is up) rolls in and calls him out for continuing to demote her. There’s a version of this show that explains how hell is basically Office Space, and Lilith is the woman who is always getting negged by her boss instead of being given the promotion she earned years ago. Lilith is wising up to the fact that the Dark Lord will never, ever give her what she deserves, because he is and insecure and rude. (In his defense … he is literally the devil.)

While Lucifer tends to “wayward members of his flock,” a.k.a. gives Blackwood a smackdown over this whole Church of Judas nonsense and tells him that his church is now required to “report, answer, and bow down to Sabrina Spellman,” Lilith goes to the Spellman residence to do what I had hoped she would do all along: team up with these women to take down The Man. Lilith finally reveals to the Spellmans who she really is. (Sabrina: “She was my favorite teacher and you killed her!” Sorry, but lol.)

Sabrina says she never understood why Lilith believed the Dark Lord’s lies, and Lilith explains how — in the grand tradition of abusive boyfriends everywhere — Lucifer started out sweet and soured over time. In this rare, moving moment of honesty, Lilith admits she keeps serving Lucifer because “it’s all I’ve ever known.” Sabrina’s reply: “What a terrible, weak reason.” I love watching Lilith learn from Sabrina’s moxie while Sabrina benefits from Lilith’s experience. It makes me wish this reveal had happened earlier in the season so we could have seen their relationship evolve.

Lilith brings Sabrina to Dorian’s, where Lucifer awaits her. He points out that Sabrina has loved all the amazing things he gave her — beauty, power — and I have to say, he’s not wrong. He’s been waiting for ages for “such a fit consort” and will not accept a swap for Lilith, as Sabrina suggests. Sabrina is going to blow Gabriel’s horn, put on a crown, sit in a throne, dance the Mephisto Waltz, and then spend eternity ruling over hell with this guy. Best line of the episode goes to Sabrina for her R.S.V.P. to the apocalypse: “Sorry, but I have school.”

Everyone get ready to clutch your hearts and gasp because NICHOLAS SCRATCH (whose name was admittedly a spoiler) HAS BEEN WORKING WITH THE DEVIL THIS WHOLE DAMN TIME! I feel like I did when Kat found out Patrick was paid to take her out just so Joey could date Bianca! As I guess is always the case in pop cultural relationships that begin with secret transactions between men, Nick swears he’s fallen in love with Sabrina for real. Sabrina responds by straight-up spitting in his face. Fair!

Now for the money question: Did Sabrina’s dad know about all this? “Edward Spellman isn’t your father,” Lucifer says. “I am.”

To this, I say: I AM SORRY, BUT IS THE PREMISE OF THIS APOCALYPSE THAT SABRINA IS SUPPOSED TO MARRY HER DAD?!? Like whaaaaa, ewwww, why is he calling her his consort? And also his bride? If he’s the king and she’s his daughter, doesn’t that make her the princess of hell? Why does no one address this?!

Hilda confirms that Diana and Edward really struggled to have a baby and they went to Lucifer for assistance, and then he really “blessed them with a child.” WELP. Sabrina is horrified: “He tricked my father and used my mother and now he expects me to fall in line. Well, I say: Not today, Satan.” Sabrina says she’ll always be a Spellman and Zelda is the proudest. How can Sabrina defeat the Dark Lord without her magic? Lilith has some smart ideas, but their first effort at a takedown — he’s weak where his wings used to be! — does not go smoothly. The coronation will continue as planned.

Meanwhile, the teens have found the gates of hell. Roz’s cunning hits her like a seizure. She shares her vision with Harvey by squeezing his brain with her hands so he can speedily doodle all the symbols she saw which she knows will keep the doors locked, for reasons. Theo is there providing moral support? We are supposed to believe that this half-assed arts-and-crafts project keeps the gates of hell from flinging open. This whole part of the episode feels extremely janky.

Back at the Academy, Prudence and the Weird Sisters are interrupted in their efforts to do some merry-go-round murder of Blackwood when he shows up and calls some emergency meeting of the coven. He lies about what the Dark Lord told him re: how the Church of Judas is canceled, and says everyone should take unholy communion. As you probably assumed, the wine in those cups was poison and Blackwood was trying to kill everybody before making a getaway. He splits but Prudence stays behind to try to save her sisters and the rest of her classmates. She teleports them to the Spellman residence, where Hilda sets about saving everyone’s life, and I think they ought to have a more magical word for “teleport.”

Ambrose and Prudence are a couple I believe in, by the way! “Our desire for a father blinded us to the family we already have,” Ambrose says, which is so insightful and lovely.

Sabrina remembers she has that magical Rubik’s Cube that held the Battibat and could maybe hold the Dark Lord, too. Nick pops in to explain that he liked Sabrina way before Lucifer told him to “show a pretty girl a wicked time.” He was smitten the first time he heard her sing. Sabrina is open to letting Nick help out in this crisis: “Fix that configuration, maybe I won’t hate you for the rest of my life.” Where has this snappy dialogue been all season?

Lucifer is wearing a metallic jacket from the Hot Topic Bar Mitzvah D.J. collection. Sabrina is in gold to match, with this figure skater-y illusion mesh netting that I find it hard to believe the Dark Lord would want on that gown, considering his gross sexual thing for his daughter. Her crown looks like spray-painted cardboard. (SORRY, but it is my obligation as a recapper to take these accessories seriously.) Sabrina performs “Masquerade” from Phantom, because why not? It’s all to distract the Dark Lord so they can spring that Battibat prison on him. It seemed to work but — nope, he broke out. A for effort, everybody.

There’s only one prison stronger than that puzzle box: the human body. (Dark!) Nick has time to tell Sabrina, “You taught me how to love,” before he magics Lucifer into his body, which is put under a sleeping spell. Now they have to throw this kid in hell because if the Dark Lord ever escapes from Nick’s body he will ruin everyone’s lives.

Lilith promises to take very good care of Nick in hell, over which she will rule. Then she gets all Glinda-the-Good-Witch and gives Sabrina back her powers. She carries Nick into hell through that tunnel in the mines and I write in my notes, “I can’t believe we are losing Nick AND Lilith but we are still stuck with Harvey, what a drag.”

Prudence, who, as usual, is impeccably dressed — those GLOVES! — teams up with Ambrose to hunt down Blackwood and rescue her twin siblings. Hilda and Zelda look at the surviving members of their coven and wonder what the future of their church will be; Zelda has already declared herself high priestess. Harvey is still pretending that he is in love with Roz and has no feelings for Sabrina. Theo is also still here. Sabrina wants the gang to work together to fight the forces of darkness. In a cute gesture for a queen of hell, Lilith gave Sabrina one more gift: Wardwell is back (the real one) after what seemed to her to be an “incredibly vivid dream.” Now Sabrina has just one more thing on her to-do list: “Let’s go to hell and get my boyfriend back.” Praise Lilith.

Ongoing mysteries: How long before Lilith finds her way back to Greendale? Given their attitudes about women in general (extremely vile), how will the Council react to the founding of the Church of Lilith? Next season, will we get a more legitimate contender for Sabrina’s affections than Mr. Kinkle?

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Recap: Watch the Throne