Sabrina On "Riverdale": When Will She Appear On The Show?

11 January 2018, 17:13

By Katie Louise Smith

Everything we know about the potential Riverdale/Sabrina crossover.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that a brand new, super spooky and dark reboot of Sabrina is coming back to Netflix. The sort-of-but-not-quite Riverdale spin-off(ish) show will be dropping at some point in 2018 and will be written by the same team who blessed us with Riverdale.

But there's one big ol' question that everyone wants the answer to: will Sabrina ever actually show her witchy face in Riverdale or not? Let's investigate. Here's everything we know about the potential Riverdale/Sabrina crossover:

Who is playing Sabrina in the Netflix show?

Kiernan Shipka will be playing the role of Sabrina in the Netflix series. Kiernan previously played Sally Draper, Don and Betty's daughter, on Mad Men and made an appearance in Netflix's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Has Sabrina been in Riverdale yet?

Technically, no... but easter eggs and references to Archie Comics' supernatural universe have been scattered throughout the show's two seasons.

Back in season one, it was heavily rumoured that Sabrina would appear in the season finale. She did, kind of, but not in the way we had all imagined. As a cheeky nod to the MASSIVE fan theory that had swept social media, FP Jones was spotted reading "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" while he was locked in his cell.

The mysterious goings on in the town of Greendale (where Sabrina lives) are constantly alluded to and mentioned in Riverdale too. Characters have frequently visited the town on the other side of the river too.

There was one scene in episode seven of the second season where Jughead and Archie run into Farmer McGinty, who had a dead deer in the back of his truck, on the border between Riverdale and Greendale. As McGinty drove off into Greendale, a bloody, half-dead deer walked out into the road in front of Archie, but it conveniently stayed on the Greendale side of the border. Magic, anyone?

Will Sabrina be in Riverdale season two?

So far, there are no confirmed plans to introduce Sabrina into Riverdale but that doesn't mean it won't happen.

It doesn't sound like there will be a backdoor pilot for Sabrina on Riverdale either, which is what usually happens when a character from the same world "spins off" in an episode of a show that already exists. (It's happened in shows like Grey's Anatomy, Pretty Little Liars and Supernatural.) Instead of a backdoor pilot within the show, Sabrina will be getting her OWN pilot episode on Netflix.

She will exist in the same universe as everyone in Riverdale but whether the characters will ever explicitly interact onscreen remains to be seen. It's not yet known if the two shows will even co-exist in the same time period either.

Show-runner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has mentioned his hesitancy to introduce supernatural elements into Riverdale at this stage but that doesn't mean that Sabrina HAS to do magic if she interacts with the mere mortals from Riverdale... so it's possible. He's also mentioned that they have "talked about" it... A LOT.

There is another potential hurdle now, though. Riverdale and Sabrina will now be distributed on different networks. Riverdale is a show on The CW and Sabrina is a Netflix exclusive. A crossover isn't impossible considering the shows will be produced by Warner Bros. but it is unlikely.