Riverdale: Kiernan Shipka Returning as Sabrina

Earlier this week, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina star Kiernan Shipka told ComicBook.com that she’d “jump at the opportunity” to reprise her role as Sabrina Spellman and it seems like Shipka won’t have to wait too long to make that jump. According to TVLine, Shipka will be returning to Riverdale as the witch later this season. Details about the return were not revealed.

Shipka first portrayed Sabrina on Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina which ran for four seasons and ended its run in 2020. Sabrina finally made her Riverdale debut in a long-awaited crossover during the show’s five-episode “Rivervale” event earlier this season. That episode saw Sabrina help her friend, Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) with a spell. Now, however, Cheryl is possessed by her ancestor Abigail and magic of all sorts is afoot in the town, so the door is certainly wide open for Sabrina to drop by again.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of younger or old. I think it was a matter of … It was really interesting for me slipping back into her shoes because I hadn’t been her in two years,” Shipka shared with ComicBook.com in regard to the experience of returning to the role. “I was surprised at just how quickly she just took over again. It was like riding a bike and you never know about that kind of thing. I’d never played someone and then not, and then gone back and did it again. So that was a new thing for me. I didn’t know how that was going to work, and I was just like, ‘Oh, this fits like a glove.’ And it was very fun.”

Recently, Shipka expressed how much she loved playing the character and why she would always welcome the opportunity to play her—or in her words, “would not decline another opportunity to put on the headband.”

 “Maybe somewhere in between the two. I love Sabrina and I will always jump at the opportunity to step back into that role, it didn’t necessarily feel like I was closing something out entirely. I love her and she’s such an important part of my life, too. So, I definitely, in the foreseeable future, would not decline another opportunity to put on the headband.”

Riverdale airs Sundays at 8/7c on The CW.