Despite coming from the same comic book universe and the same executive producer, Netflix’s upcoming series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina will not (at least yet) cross over with The CW’s mega-hit Riverdale.
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That is in spite of initial plans to bring the teenage witch to the town with pep…as the bad guy.
“During season 1 of Riverdale — before Riverdale exploded and found its footing as sort of a noir, crime, pulp show — we had said, ‘Maybe season 2 will be like [the comic] Afterlife With Archie,” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told EW. “We’ll do a big genre switch and it will be horror, and it will be Afterlife and Sabrina could come and be the antagonist. There was even a time when we talked about the season 1 cliffhanger being the arrival of Sabrina.”
That last bit was widely rumored at the time, especially since the finale featured a cameo by a comic in which Sabrina was featured. A cameo was not to be, however, especially as the show tonally became more distinct from the comics source material and Aguirre-Sacasa unsuccessfully shopped Sabrina to Blumhouse as a feature film.
“For various reasons, and I think partly because Riverdale found its footing as more crime show, that felt less and less like the right fit,” Aguirre-Sacasa explained. “It felt like if Riverdale is crime and pulp and all that stuff, then Sabrina could be horror. It felt like there was a separation between Greendale and Riverdale — magic should exist in Greendale, but not in Riverdale. That was the thought.”
Recently, ComicBook.com was on the set of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and series star Kiernan Shipka compared the two projects.
“There’s definitely that same edge-of-your-seat quality to the show,” said series star Kiernan Shipka. “There’s obviously the timelessness of it, the really wonderful cinematography and fun references to different things, and the total suspense is right there. The shows are wildly different, but Roberto [Aguirre-Sacasa is] brilliant, and he’s he’s behind both of them, so there’s definitely a vibe, just sort of a general, addictive quality to both shows that people are really going to respond to.”
The series deals with Sabrina Spellman, 16, as she finds her way in the world of magic and struggles between her destiny as a witch and the human life that she will have to leave behind.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina season one will launch on Netflix on October 26.
