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'The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina' Is Sending Sabrina To A *Magical* New Place

by Mishal Ali Zafar

Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is finally here, and fans of the teenage witch are just getting settled into the series. In the premiere episode, fans meet Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) as she hesitates to leave her human life behind to go to a dark magic school after her 16th birthday. She loves her life in Greendale, so will Sabrina go to The Academy of Unseen Arts?

Warning: Spoilers for The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Season 1, Episode 1 ahead.

In the first episode of the series, Sabrina is contemplating the transition to becoming a full-fledged witch. Whether or not she’ll attend the Academy of Unseen Arts has yet to be seen, but the thought of leaving Baxter High School, her friends Susie (Lachlan Watson) and Roz (Jaz Sinclair), and her boyfriend Harvey (Ross Lynch) is weighing her down.

While fans will have to continue to watch the season to find out for sure, there are a few clues that indicate she may end up at the dark school after all. At the end Episode 1, viewers meet Father Blackwood (Richard Coyle), who Sabrina’s aunts Zelda (Miranda Otto) and Hilda (Lucy Davis) introduce as the High Priest of The Church of the Night and the Dark Lord Satan’s representative on Earth. But according to his character description, as reported by Entertainment Tonight, Blackwood is also the Dean of the Academy of Unseen Arts, so there’s a possibility that Sabrina will face him there as a student.

Diyah Pera/Netflix

While you won't be introduced to him until a later episode, there’s another character description that points to Sabrina joining the new school. According to Seventeen, Nicholas Scratch (Gavin Leatherwood) is a student at the Academy of Unseen Arts, and he “befriends Sabrina when she begins her studies there.” So, with that description alone, fans can assume they’ll see Sabrina taking notes in a potions class pretty soon.

Diyah Pera/Netflix

But until fans watch through the season, they won’t know exactly why Sabrina chooses to go to the Academy. When she meets Father Blackwood for the first time at the end of the premiere episode, he confronts her about her hesitations. “Oh, my child, you have no idea how special you are, how you’ve been chosen,” he tells Sabrina in a sinister tone. “Your aunts tell me you’re having doubts about your baptism, that you may in fact, not be signing your name to the Book of the Beast. That can not be, that must not be, let us see what I can do to convince you.” It’ll be thrilling to see what Blackwood does to push Sabrina onto the “dark path” and why (and if) she ultimately chooses to leave her human life and friends behind.

Diyah Pera/Netflix

You might guess that Sabrina will also be dealing with the Weird Sisters at some point. The trio of sisters — Prudence (Tati Gabrielle), Agatha (Adeline Rudolph), and Dorcas (Abigail Cowen) confronted Sabrina in the woods, threatened and dissuaded her from attending the Academy of Unseen Arts (because she's only half-witch), and then put a curse on her. They also seem to know an awful lot about Sabrina’s parents death, and I that think their appearance on the first episode foreshadows how they might bully her at the Academy.

So far, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is turning out to be a treat, and as a fan of the original comics and ‘90s sitcom, I can't wait to how dark this teenage witch is willing to get.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina premieres on Friday, Oct. 26 on Netflix.