‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ Originally Planned to Do a ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ Tribute

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina dropped on Netflix yesterday and as fans may have noticed, it’s quite a bit darker than television’s previous take on Sabrina Spellman, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. That doesn’t mean showrunners have forgotten about the ’90s sitcom, however, and it turns out that there was almost significant nod to the more lighthearted predecessor.

According to creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a specific scene in Chilling Adventure‘s fifth episode was originally a big homage to Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

In the fifth episode, the Spellman family is trapped in horrible nightmares by a nightmare demon. Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) specifically has to deal with a nightmare that her boyfriend Harvey’s (Ross Lynch) family has put her in a torture device in keeping with their witch-hunting past. However, Aguirre-Sacasa told E! News originally, the scene was less scary and more fun.

“Originally, I was going to do Sabrina’s nightmare as she’s trapped in a sitcom as an homage to the television show,” Aguirre-Sacasa said. “I really was taken by that idea. My bosses said ‘listen, we love the ’90s show, we understand what you’re doing but give it a beat before you start doing stuff like that,’ and they were right. But originally Sabrina’s nightmare was going to be done in the style of the ’90s or a ’90s sitcom.”

While the ’90s homage was left out of Chilling Adventures‘ first season that doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually. Aguirre-Sacasa did say that there would eventually be some sort of tribute and while fans will no doubt be excited for that, there’s another television show that fans would like to see intersect with the Netflix series — Riverdale. Both shows technically exist within the same shared universe and Aguirre-Sacasa is behind both of them as well and while there aren’t presently any plans for a crossover, stars of Riverdale are certainly open for one eventually.

“I really want that to happen,” K.J. Apa, who plays Archie Andrews on The CW series told fans at Dallas Fan Days. “I mean, as far as I know no, I don’t think it is going to happen. But, just because they’ve got the supernatural aspect to it and we don’t really have that. But it would be sick.”

Are you disappointed there wasn’t a Sabrina the Teenage Witch homage in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Let us know in the comments.

The first season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is now streaming on Netflix.