Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: 1.05 ‘Dreams in a Witch House’

It’s all a dream! Well, a nightmare actually for the Spellman family as a sleep demon is making them face their fears. While it’s a bit of an average episode, some may still enjoy it with it reminiscent of older series such as Charmed and Buffy.

During the previous episode, Sabrina began her schooling at the Academy of the Unseen Arts and found herself harrowed by the Weird Sisters, which ultimately led to Sabrina threatening them with the help of some disgruntled ghosts. At the end of the episode, Sabrina solved an arcane puzzle which opened and let something out. As for our other characters, Roz, Susie, and Harvey met a possessed Uncle Jesse; and Ambrose went on a date.

A Demon On The Loose

Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) rushes into Hilda (Lucy Davis) and Zelda’s (Miranda Otto) room as the demon chases behind, but they remain calm. They gather Ambrose (Chance Perdomo) and begin chanting an imprisonment spell, which causes the demon to appear and recognises them as the family of Edward, Sabrina’s father. According to Hilda, it’s a sleep demon, but Zelda quickly traps the demon in an urn. However, as Sabrina heads back to sleep, it seems she’s actually under the spell of the demon, along with the others. Next thing we know, Wardwell (Michelle Gomez) is looking through Sabrina’s mirror and recognises the demon as Batibat, who then recognises Wardwell as the mother of demons. Wardwell tells her not to harm Sabrina, but Batibat isn’t interested and smashes the mirror.

In her nightmare, Sabrina’s lives intermingle with the Weird Sisters and Nick (Gavin Leatherwood) attending Baxter High, who Harvey (Ross Lynch) doesn’t like very much. Then, Harvey is down on one knee proposing to Sabrina, who accepts and receives a stern lecture from Zelda. Sabrina dons her mother’s wedding dress for the big day, but talks to Harvey beforehand to tell him she’s a witch and he’s incredibly accepting of it. Before she walks down the aisle, Nick tries, and fails, to get her to run away. During the vows, Harvey starts choking her and tortures her for being a witch.

Then, it’s Ambrose’s nightmare who is told a body has arrived, one of a tragic shut-in who has nobody to mourn him, and it turns out to be Ambrose and he is forced to cut himself up. Wardwell pops up as she is projecting herself, but it appears she’s in the wrong nightmare. Ambrose is freed from his imprisonment in his nightmare, except Batibat kills him, and then he is trapped on the autopsy table.

Aunties In Trouble

Hilda is called in to see Principal Hawthorne (Bronson Pinchot), which turns steamy when he emphasises ‘well-rounded’ in reference to Hilda and invites her to dinner. While Hilda is freaking out about what to wear and putting out, Zelda watches on and says “you can’t polish a turd”. She enjoys a dinner with Hawthorne and ends up just a tad drunk and wakes up to a creepy Hawthorne and finds she’s been surgically attached to Zelda.

As for Zelda, she’s been honoured with a special dinner with the Dark Lord himself and ends up roasting a small child for the occasion. The Dark Lord takes on the appearance of a man, who is Blackwood (Richard Coyle) with facial hair and horns and he isn’t satisfied with the roast and becomes more interested in Hilda and so Zelda kills her. However, then the Dark Lord informs Zelda that Hilda won’t rise again and she’s devastated.

Time To Face Off

Wardwell finds Sabrina and tries to tell her about the sleep demon and that Sabrina must escape without the others. Sabrina then wonders how Wardwell is there and wakes when Wardwell pricks Sabrina’s finger on the Sabrina voodoo doll.

Now armed with the arcane device, Sabrina reads through Ambrose’s books to banish Batibat. Upon confronting Batibat, Sabrina is overpowered and the device is destroyed with Sabrina quickly escaping. However, Sabrina believes she can lucid dream to get to her aunts, and puts a glamour on Salem to look like her so he can distract Batibat while she goes back to sleep. Unfortunately Zelda is no help, but thankfully Sabrina gets through to Hilda who helps her, and Ambrose understands more quickly and then distracts Batibat.

Sabrina uses Hilda’s spider familiars to help her trap Batibat into her own version of a dreamcatcher, and with that, the Spellman’s wake up. Afterwards, they’re all embarrassed Sabrina walked through her dreams, but she claims she can’t remember them much to their relief. Sabrina then calls Harvey to check he’d never hurt her, and then she remembers about Wardwell, which causes Sabrina to go and confront her.

Overall Thoughts?

While this was clearly meant to be a different episode to what we’ve seen so far, it excelled in cheesiness, if that’s what they were aiming for. From the appearance of Batibat, which was subpar and low value, to just the overall story of the episode causing it to act as simply a filler episode with not much new information given or the story progressing.

What did you think of the episode? Tell us in the comments below!