With shared universes being the norm these days – especially at The CW – one naturally expected for Chilling Adventures of Sabrina to overlap with Riverdale. After all, both series are based on Archie Comics properties and it seemed like Riverdale had been setting up Sabrina’s arrival with the start of its second season. Heck, Greendale (the Teenage Witch’s hometown) has been name-dropped on several occasions, with the Rosemary’s Baby theme having been utilized during one of our trips there. For those unfamiliar, the classic film is quite comparable to the recent Sabrina horror comics.
But then our hopes were seemingly derailed when it was announced that Chilling Adventures of Sabrina would be heading to Netflix for two ten-episode seasons instead of The CW, where we all naturally expected it to end up. Doubly making it a painful reality was Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men) being cast in the title role, largely because she looks like she stepped right out of the comic book.
Well, we don’t mean to keep hitting you with downers, but it’s our job to report the news as it comes in. In this case, Archie Digest: A Riverdale Podcast host Chris Hayner recently paraphrased what CW President Mark Pedowitz told him, saying:
“Based on what he said, they are completely focused on getting Sabrina off the ground on Netflix and not thinking about crossovers at all, but they hope there might be a possibility sometime in the future. But they want to establish Sabrina as its own entity on Netflix before they even start thinking about it.”
While one could say that certainly offers some hope, the logistics of the situation are damning. So, unless a character or two from one series decides to stop by the other for a one-off, a true crossover is kind of hard to pull off. Think about it: Riverdale airs in an episodic format on a weekly basis on The CW, whereas Netflix is known to dump entire seasons all at once on a given date. That model alone makes it difficult to plan any kind of mashup.