Well, that has to be the highest death count in an episode
of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina yet. By the end of the episode, Hilda’s still dead, all three Weird
Sisters are goners, Zelda has been re-killed, Robin and Nick are dead, Roz and
Theo are in the midst of dying, Harvey’s dead, and Sabrina, Lucifer, and Lilith
have all been frozen in carbonite. Even Mambo Marie gets taken out!
Which can only mean one thing. It’s time for Ambrose to save
the day, along with his new comrades in arms, the hedge witches. At last count,
he’s the sole surviving Spellman, the final girl* (*boy) of the episode.
But we’ll leave prognosticating for another day. In the
meantime, “The Judas Kiss” lives up to its name, offering a variety of
betrayals. Sabrina chooses helping Lucifer over helping her aunts, Caliban
(obviously) betrays her, Faustus betrays Lucifer, Agatha betrays her sisters,
Robin betrays his family, and on, and on. It’s a lot of betrayals! The only
betrayal that doesn’t happen is that Sabrina thinks twice about kissing Harvey
and hurting him and Roz. The show hasn’t really had the chance to dive into the
repercussions of her candle wick cutting ritual, but either way, Roz is still
her best friend, so regardless of the current status of her feelings for
Harvey, that’s still a person she loves whose life she’s considering flipping
over.
All told, the deaths that follow are knit together very well.
The gang is facing terrible odds, so the show walks through exactly what could happen
with those odds. Robin can save the mortals once, but not a second time. And
once Sabrina is removed from the equation, Ambrose and Prudence are left to
defend the Spellman household on their own, which is a lot for just two people,
particularly when facing off against Faustus, who’s had a lot more life to come
up with tricks to take them out. If there is a worst death here, it might be
Prudence, who has to hear Agatha say she’s killed Dorcas before killing Agatha herself,
and who is then killed by the man she’s been trying to kill for a long time.
Zelda goes on a journey of spiritual discovery only to die again instantly,
because no one is around to stop Faustus.
Really, the only part that doesn’t track is that Sabrina
goes back to Judas instead of straight to Pandemonium to hand in her prize. She
already lost a previous challenge doing this exact thing. Why would she go back
to wave Judas’ money in front of his face? And beyond that, why would she hand
over the money for even a second? The concept that Caliban would resort to
trickery to ensure he emerges victorious in this competition isn’t strange at
all—we’ve already seen him do this, so of course he was going to try something
this time through. But it seems like there could have been other ways to get
him and Sabrina to the same place that didn’t involve her being oddly reckless
with the spoils of her victory. Everything is at stake here! She ignored her
family to get here. Why wouldn’t she go straight to court?
One
of the crueler betrayals may be Lilith opting to create an heir to unseat
Sabrina. It’s not like Lilith has much choice at that point—she’s desperate to
come up with a way to survive, and she’s a consummate survivor. Plus, she’s at
least forthcoming with Sabrina about what she did, and the terms of her alliance
with Lucifer. By the end of the episode, when all three of them are encased in
carbonite (yes obviously the show is calling this something different, but you
can’t make me), they look an awful lot like a family, with Lilith as Sabrina’s
new stepmother.
All told, things are looking pretty grim for the group here.
Almost like someone would need to use a significant amount of magic to undo
what’s been done here, don’t you think?
Stray observations
- Unholy regalia? More like unholy mess, if you ask me! Sorry
sorry. - I’m assuming a lot of this will get undone in the finale? I
was on the fence about parts of it holding up until the pagans just went ahead
and won. That said, as she’s a non-Spellman the death I am most concerned about seeing overturned is Prudence, who also went out in such a tragic way. #justiceforPrudence - Time is obviously not infinite, even on Netflix, but I do
wish the show hadn’t prioritized Zelda’s journey quite so much in Limbo. They
even sort of lampshade it by having Hilda nudge Zelda into talking about why
“we’re” here instead of just herself. - That said, I’m pretty sure “Hilda, it’s the Nether Realm.”
“Didn’t know I’d have to walk. Thought there’d be perks” might be my favorite joke of the season. Would love if Hilda could continue commentary
on the proceedings going forward.