This New Year’s Eve delivered Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Part 4, the final season of the hit Archie Comics adaptation. That wasn’t always supposed to be the case, though, as Netflix only cancelled the show after production had wrapped. Not that you’d know from watching it, mind you, as Part 4 ends in as conclusive and explosive a fashion as possible. And now that fans have no doubt binged all eight episodes, star Kiernan Shipka has reacted to the series finale.
Part 4 sees an array of ancient monsters known as the Eldritch Horrors unleashed on the world. The final Terror, The Void, proves so powerful that Sabrina can only defeat it by making the ultimate sacrifice to save her loved ones. Yup, CAOSÂ ends with Sabrina Spellman’s death. And it’s not even an ambiguous, open-ended demise, as we see her funeral play out and follow her in the afterlife as she’s joined by boyfriend Nicholas Scratch.
Fans have had their minds blown by the ending, then, and Shipka’s reaction was the same when she first found out how the season would conclude.
“I was very surprised,” she said. “I think I sort of had the same mentality as everyone else, which was Sabrina can’t die,” Shipka shared. “She is Sabrina. She can’t die. And then I was like, ‘Oh, there’s no more pages. I think that’s it.’ But it’s a dramatic ending.”
Though this wasn’t exactly where the series was meant to finish, Shipka thinks it’s a fitting end for the character as her sacrifice encapsulates what she’s all about.
“At the end of the day, I think that what it represents is she is truly a selfless soul, and she sacrifices herself for the greater good which is very hefty. And I think it hit me emotionally quite a bit. It’s not an easy ending to just digest. There is a lot of meaning and impact behind it and how we wish to read into that. But above all else, I was completely surprised.”
Having said all that, the actress has a sneaky feeling that Sabrina could return to the land of the living if CAOSÂ somehow gets renewed for more episodes in the future.
“The character does not belong to me solely. It belongs to the fans and it belongs to the viewers, and if people wanna watch the finale and think that she ends up in the sweet hereafter with Nick, then amazing,” the actress confessed. “I will say I think she’s pretty savvy and could find her way back to Greendale if she chose to. And I think just because I love her so much, that’s what I want to think happens.”
CAOS‘ cancellation hit fans hard, not to mention the cast and crew, too, with creator Robert Aguirre-Sacasa lamenting the news, especially as he had a big “Witch Wars” storyline planned for Part 5. Not to mention a full scale crossover with The CW’s Riverdale. Maybe it could be picked up by that network or even HBO Max, but for now, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has come to a very final end.
