If you thought the first 11 episodes of “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” were dark — and they definitely were — wait 'til you see episodes 12-20, which begin streaming on Netflix on Friday.
Oh, and don’t miss the one with the faux Mormon missionaries. Really.
The fifth of the new nine episodes — No. 17 overall — is titled, appropriately, “The Missionaries.” It opens with a clean-cut young man sporting a white shirt, tie and a name tag who says, “Have you ever asked yourself, ‘Where did I come from? Why am I here?’”
That’s definitely on the nose. And if that’s not enough evidence that missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints helped inspire the character: The executive producer of “Sabrina,” who’s also the executive producer of “Riverdale,” asked one of the writers of the latter show about his experience as a Latter-day Saint missionary as background for “The Missionaries.”
(“Riverdale” co-executive producer Aaron Allen is a Utah native — he grew up in Bountiful.)
And before you start spouting conspiracy theories, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that “The Missionaries” starts streaming on the eve of the LDS General Conference. That's not an event that's exactly on Netflix's radar.
Not everything about the faux LDS missionaries in “Sabrina” is exactly true-to-life. They each travel alone, although there are several of them. And while the first one we see in the episode tells a warlock, “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to save you,” he says it while he’s torturing the teen.
And the missionaries’ name tags identify their church as the Order of the Innocents.
If you've seen “Sabrina,” it will come as no surprise to you that the show is very violent and, yes, super dark. No less than Satan himself — complete with a goat head, horns and claws — is a recurring character.
If you come into this thinking it's going to be anything like the 1996-2003 sitcom “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” boy, are you going to be surprised. The creepiest thing about the sitcom was the animatronic cat that looked liked an animated cat corpse; the level of creepiness in this total reboot is off the charts.
“The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” is sort of a spinoff of “Riverdale.” They were both adapted by executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sagas from the Archie comic books, and “Sabrina” was originally developed to air alongside “Riverdale” on The CW.
When the project moved to Netflix, I wondered why. When I screened the first couple of episodes, I thought, “Oh. That’s why.” And that was long before I saw Episode 14, “The Lupercalia,” about a festival highlighted by ritual sex between teenage witches and warlocks.
It’s not super-graphic in terms of the sex. And high schoolers having sex is hardly an anomaly on TV — they do it all the time on “Riverdale.” But, again, “Sabrina” is often cruel, vicious and murderous and built on black magic.
If you’ve seen any of the earlier episodes, you know that when she turned 16, Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka, “Mad Men”) learned that she is a half-witch and that she was expected to sign herself over to the Dark Lord and receive her full powers. That continues to play out in the new episodes, as it becomes more and more clear that Satan has something special in mind for Sabrina. She remains a spunky, smart teenage girl who’s not trying to avoid the dark magic as much as she’s trying to turn it to her advantage.
But no spoilers here.
Except ... wait 'til you see those faux LDS missionaries!