With or Without a Crown, Sabrina Makes a Decision in The Finale of ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ Part 3 — Recap
Spoilers for all of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Part 3 ahead.
The second to last episode of Part 3 left Sabrina and friends in such negative situations. Not only was Sabrina out for the count as a statue, but everyone was dead. All the main characters we’ve grown to love — Nick, Harvey, Roz, Theo, the Weird Sisters, and the Spellman aunties — are gone. Of course, with nearly an hour left of the season, Sabrina is going to be saved somehow, and the answer is the only satisfying one there can be.
Sabrina saves herself
We find out, via storybook, that Caliban tried to claim the Earth as King of Hell after he imprisoned Sabrina, but he ran into a pretty big problem. Earth was already taken over by the Old Ones. After they used Harvey’s blood to ignite the Green Man, it kept going from there. An army of celestials came down to wreak some havoc as well, and it’s been decades since the last episode.
But, Sabrina is saved, and by the only person who could help her in this instance: herself. An identical Sabrina from her future (or past) has come to switch places with her. She doesn’t give her a ton of information, other than the warning that she needs to come back and do the same so that it’s a neverending loop of Sabrina staying in stone and saving the day.
Sabrina grabs the Unholy Regalia, and since Hell is her domain, she’s able to bring it back to Earth with her without the guardians of the items taking them away. She discovered that everyone died, and there are zombie-like creatures with flowers for eyes. The zombies are still pouring blood on the Green Man, the thing that sucked Harvey of his virgin blood to begin with.
Ambrose is not happy with how things turned out (duh)
The last remaining Spellman other than Sabrina is Ambrose who, of course, hasn’t aged a day when he finds Sabrina. There’s joy at first, but the longer they talk, he gets more upset. “You should have been with us,” he yells at her, even though he urged her to go on the quest that put her in stone in the first place.
But, as you’d expect, there is a way out of this mess, and Sabrina has an idea. She already knows that she can pass through time somehow, which is how her other self set her free. She offers the idea to use the aquatic time creature to help her go back and stop all the deaths and apocalypse. Sabrina has more power than before, but in order to go back in time she also needs to melt down the Unholy Regalia into a morningstar weapon to gather enough energy to go.
After she captures Blackwood by making a pact with Batibat, Sabrina uses those two items and the stones at the Academy to shoot her back in time.
For the first time this season, Sabrina stays to fully help her family
Part 3 revolved around all the juggling Sabrina had to do between Hell, her mortal friends, and her commitment to the coven. Simultaneously as impending doom from multiple sides comes their way. But for the first time, Sabrina puts all her energy in helping her family: her coven and her best, mortal friends. As she tells Nick after she saves the coven from Blackwood, he was right. She was letting herself get pulled away by Hell when she was needed on Earth the most.
We finally hear what Zelda figured out in the Nether Realm. The Triple Goddess is who the coven should be worshipping, not Satan. Even when they chose the Dark Lord, the Triple Goddess, aka Hecate, stood by Zelda. It’s another Greek mythological reference; Hecate is the Greek goddess of magic and witchcraft, which is fitting of course. With Hecate’s help, they’re able to bring Hilda back and the gang’s all there.
They’ve stopped Caliban, but in order to get the pagans, they decide to put the town to sleep and stop the Old Ones from getting a virgin for the Green Man. This results in Sabrina wearing a glamour to look like Robin and she brings Ms. Wardwell to them, since she was one of the marked virgins. However, it’s not really Ms. Wardwell; it’s Pesta, the hedge witch who can destroy wildlife and is “good with decay and rot.” With the Green Man dead thanks to this plan, they’re all able to run the pagans out of Greendale.
Two is much better than one
Instead of going back to the trapped Sabrina decades in the future, this Sabrina goes to the point in time right before she accidentally hands Caliban the 30 pieces of silver. This means that she never gets stuck there, and the horrible future where everyone’s dead doesn’t happen. There are now two Sabrinas, and one goes on to her coronation and becomes Queen of Hell, while our Sabrina heads back home.
All is seemingly swell: It’s the “story of how the world ended, and did not,” and all is right. The natural balance of things is reinstated since Morningstars are on the throne in Hell. Everyone is alive, the couples are back together, and even Dr. Cee isn’t dead.
However, Agatha still killed Dorcas, which devastates Prudence. This causes her to blame Ambrose for not letting her kill Blackwood in Scotland. She’s convinced everything wouldn’t be this bad if she had, and for that, she leaves him.
The Order of Hecate is now in charge, but are things okay?
The Church of Night is now The Order of Hecates, with Zelda as its leader. Even though she and Mambo Marie are a couple now (which sort of came out of left field, but also didn’t, in a way), the voodoo priestess warns Zelda of an even darker force on the horizon. She calls it a “sa ki mal,” or evil, that “lingers in the air.” She said they should prepare for war. Something Lilith tells Sabrina a Queen of Hell should always be ready for. With both Earth and Hell geared for war, it’s bound to be something huge that comes after them.
Whatever is in store, Sabrina’s little switcheroo is bound to bite her in the butt as well. When Ambrose figures out what she did, he freaks out. He says she created a time paradox and Sabrina, being the naive witch with magnificent power she is, she brushes it aside. However, with the omen of a smashing clock in the final moments with the Spellmans, something is going to go down because of Sabrina’s somewhat selfish decision.
The cosmos are not happy, that much is obvious. But Blackwood is also out to destroy Sabrina. He unleashes whatever is in that time egg and vows to be its vessel. He calls it the beginning of the end for all things, specifically the Spellmans. Part 4 has a lot of ground to cover and it doesn’t even have a release date yet.
