It’s been years since the Eldritch Terrors descended on Greendale, yet fans are still arguing about that finale. Honestly, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Season 4 remains one of the most polarizing chapters in modern supernatural TV. Netflix made the call to end the show earlier than Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa probably expected, and you can feel that frantic energy in every single frame of the final eight episodes. It wasn’t just a "monster of the week" setup. It was a race against the clock.
The season dropped on December 31, 2020. People were stuck at home, looking for a dark escape, and what they got was a cosmic horror fever dream that killed off its protagonist. It was bold. It was weird. It was occasionally nonsensical.
The Eldritch Terrors and the Stakes of Season 4
If you thought the high school drama was the biggest threat, you clearly weren't paying attention to Father Blackwood. Richard Coyle played that role with such a delightful, slimy menace that you almost forgot how ridiculous some of the plot points were. In Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Season 4, the threat shifted from individual demons to primordial forces known as the Eldritch Terrors.
These weren't just spooky ghosts. They were concepts. The Darkness. The Uninvited. The Weird. The Perverse.
The show tried to tackle these massive, Lovecraftian ideas within the confines of a teen drama budget. Sometimes it worked brilliantly. "The Weird," where a parasitic creature begins to merge with Sabrina, felt genuinely unsettling and leaned into the body horror the show always flirted with. Other times, like with "The Returned," it felt a bit like a rushed excuse to bring back dead characters for a quick cameo.
The pacing was breathless. Because the writers knew this was the end, they crammed what probably should have been two seasons of buildup into a handful of episodes. You barely have time to process the horror of one Terror before the next one is knocking on the door of Spellman Mortuary.
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Two Sabrinas, Double the Trouble
The central conflict of the season—aside from the literal end of the world—was the paradox of Sabrina Spellman and Sabrina Morningstar. Kiernan Shipka had to pull double duty here. One Sabrina stayed in Greendale to live a "normal" life (as normal as a half-witch can get), while the other sat on the throne of Hell.
It was a classic "be careful what you wish for" scenario. The universe, apparently, doesn't like it when you duplicate yourself to avoid making a choice. This duality is what ultimately leads to the tragic conclusion of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Season 4. The "Cosmic" terror really hammered home that these two couldn't coexist without destroying the fabric of reality.
That Meta Episode Everyone Obsesses Over
We have to talk about "The Endless." It’s arguably the best episode of the season, if not the entire series. Sabrina Morningstar travels to a parallel universe that is actually the set of a sitcom—the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Seeing Beth Broderick and Caroline Rhea return as Aunt Zelda and Aunt Hilda was a massive "trip" for anyone who grew up in the 90s. But it wasn't just fanservice. It was terrifying. The episode turned the concept of a "TV set" into a literal prison where the actors are forced to repeat lines for an invisible audience. It showed the range the show was capable of when it stopped worrying about the Archieverse connections and just went full-blown Twilight Zone.
The contrast between the bright, multicam sitcom lighting and the looming threat of the Void was a masterstroke. It reminded us that while this show started as a Riverdale spin-off (sort of), it had evolved into something much darker and more experimental.
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The Ending: Why Fans Are Still Angry
Sabrina dies. There’s no way around it.
In the final episode, "The Mountains of Madness," Sabrina Spellman sacrifices herself to stop The Void from consuming everything. She bleeds out on a stone altar while her friends and family watch. It’s heavy. For a show that often felt campy and fun, the finality of that moment was a gut punch.
But the real controversy? The Sweet Hereafter.
In the final scene, we see Sabrina sitting in a white, minimalist version of the afterlife. Then Nick Scratch shows up. He tells her he went swimming in the "Sea of Sorrows" and got caught in a literal undertow. Translation: he died by suicide to be with her.
Critics and fans rightfully called this out. Romanticizing a partner following someone into death is a dangerous trope, especially for a show with a huge young adult audience. It felt like a rushed attempt at a "happily ever after" that completely ignored the weight of what it was suggesting. If the show had been renewed for a fifth season (which was supposed to be the "Witch War" crossover with Riverdale), it’s likely this death would have been reversed. But as a series finale? It left a bitter taste for many.
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Production Reality and the Canceled Part 5
Why did it end this way? Netflix usually cancels shows after three or four seasons because the costs of production and talent contracts spike. Sabrina was expensive. The sets were intricate, the creature effects were high-end, and the cast was large.
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has since revealed that Season 5 would have finally brought the Riverdale crossover to life. We saw a hint of this later when Kiernan Shipka appeared on Riverdale as Sabrina, proving that she didn't actually stay dead in the grander multiverse, but for those who only watched the Netflix series, the ending remains a confusing stop sign.
What You Should Do Next
If you’ve just finished Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Season 4 and feel like there’s a hole in your heart (or you’re just confused), here is how to get the full story:
- Read the Comics: The show is based on the comic series of the same name. If you want a more cohesive, even darker version of the story, start with Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #1 by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack.
- Watch Riverdale Season 6: Specifically, look for the episodes "The Witching Hour(s)" and "Return to Rivervale." These episodes act as a soft sequel to the Netflix show and explain how Sabrina managed to return to the land of the living.
- Explore the Lore: If the Eldritch Terrors fascinated you, dive into H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu or At the Mountains of Madness. The show borrows heavily from these texts, and seeing the original inspiration makes the season's villains much more terrifying.
The show wasn't perfect, but it was unique. In a sea of generic supernatural procedurals, it took risks. It gave us a protagonist who was messy, selfish, and incredibly brave. Even if the ending was flawed, the journey through the night church was worth the ride.