‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ Gets a Prequel Novel From Writer Sarah Rees Brennan

When Netflix’s Archie Comics adaptation Chilling Adventures of Sabrina begins, Sabrina Spellman’s (Kiernan Shipka) dark baptism is almost at hand. She has mere days to decide whether she’s going to sign her name in the Dark Lord’s book, accepting her life as a witch and giving up her human friends forever. But what happened right before the show started?

That’s the question posed by “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Season of the Witch,” a new prequel novel officially tying into the streaming series that hits bookstores today. Written by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Rees Brennan, “Season of the Witch” tells an all new dark magical adventure story for Sabrina, Harvey (Ross Lynch), Ambrose (Chance Perdomo), your fave Aunts Zelda (Miranda Otto) and Hilda (Lucy Davis), and all the rest of the residents of Greendale.

In fact, everyone is there other than Sabrina’s familiar Salem (sorry, cat lovers, you’ll just have to check out Riverdale tie-in novels for Salem appearances)… Including some folks that technically Sabrina didn’t meet until the series officially started. Oh, and perhaps a sneaky guest appearance from Riverdale, as well?

To find out more about the novel, which concerns a backfiring spell, a meddling wood spirit, and some strange disappearances, we talked to Sarah Rees Brennan over email.

Decider: Really enjoyed the book, but before we get into it I was curious what it was like tackling a prequel? When you already see the main thrust of the character arcs on screen – particularly Sabrina’s – how do you essentially work backwards from there?

Sarah Rees Brennan: Why, thank you! Writing books set in someone else’s universe is a different challenge to writing your own: instead of creating your vision, you’re portraying someone else’s, but giving your own angle. You want to give readers what they love, plus something extra!

When I first planned the book, the show hadn’t aired yet, though I’d read the scripts for Part 1. Then as soon as the show aired, I ran to watch it, see what I’d got right, and what the actors’ performances were telling me.

I feel writing in the past of a show has fewer pitfalls than writing the future. When we love a world and characters, we ask ourselves both “what will happen next?” and “how did we get here?” If the show says, here’s this person in this situation, I can say, how did Sabrina get to be this person?

Then there’s the format of the book, alternating between the Sabrina first person chapters, and the “night” chapters. How did you hit on this idea?

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa gave me the idea! Not only is he the genius developer behind Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, he is also a genius in the comic books arena. His “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” graphic novel from 2014 has one very atmospheric opening from the point of view of the haunted woods. I thought: “Exactly what I need.”

These chapters are called “What Happens In the Dark” because they move away from the spotlight on Sabrina into what is shadowed and hidden from her sight — an omniscient passing through the surroundings of Greendale, the town that always feels like Halloween, and the plots of the villains, and the minds of her friends and family.

I use a whole different technique in book two, “Daughter of Chaos,” and I’m planning on another for book three! Since the story of Sabrina is such a fluid one, it seems right to experiment with form and bring a different story to readers every time.

Getting inside Sabrina’s head is so interesting because — not in a bad way — she always seems to say exactly what she’s thinking and feeling out loud, all the time on the show. You even note that later in the book… Who is Sabrina at this point to you in “Season of the Witch,” and what was it like capturing her voice?

It was tricky at first, because Sabrina is so fearless, and I didn’t want to lose that about her, but being in someone’s head does mean seeing their insecurities. Everybody in the whole world has more doubt than they ever show. Sabrina’s no exception. She’s a fixer, and fixing things is what she does instead of admitting she has misgivings.

Someone who means so well, and who has so much power, could end up paralyzed by indecision, but Sabrina goes the opposite way hard. Whenever she feels doubt, she doubles down. It’s one of her great strengths and her great weaknesses, and it was fun to see her doing that from the inside out.

Sabrina has been able to compartmentalize her magical family life and her mortal life with her friends up until this point, but this is where it all falls apart. Asking myself “Who is Sabrina?” helped me write the book, because it is really the question of the story.

How much of the timeline was dictated for you, vs. your choice? Specifically curious about Harvey and Sabrina dating, since my impression from the show was that they were together forever; where here it’s relatively new.

We all agreed on time right from the start: the end of summer, on the cusp of change. Harvey and Sabrina have been together forever, but what does together mean? If you’ve been friends since you were little, even if you’ve always liked each other, that’s complicated! In the book Ambrose says, “I remember Harvey walking Sabrina home when they were eight.” But Sabrina’s fifteen in the book, and that was for me the time of possibility for relationships to be seen as real: when people start saying “boyfriend” and meaning it rather than teasing you.

We see one stage of the relationship in the pilot episode, Harvey and Sabrina’s first “I love you.” But before that comes many other stages. When do you have your first kiss, if you’re childhood sweethearts? How do you pull together an official date, and is everything set from there? When are you going steady? Does it go unsaid?

There’s also gender dynamics at play in dating—people think the boy should be the one to ask the girl out—yet Sabrina’s the one who is hellbent and determined, while Harvey is always worried he’s a coward. The dynamic’s flipped again because Sabrina has literal power over him: she can enchant him. In “Season of the Witch,” Sabrina’s trying to define herself with the specter of change looming. One locus for her worry is that she and Harvey haven’t “Determined the Relationship.” And Sabrina tries to solve her problems with magic.

Beyond Sabrina and Harvey, you spend a good chunk of time on the Ambrose/Sabrina relationship. Why was that important for the story you’re telling?

The Ambrose and Sabrina relationship is the heart of the book to me. It’s the emotional throughline readers can follow from beginning to end, the answer Sabrina finds to her questions. Harvey’s important to Sabrina, but Harvey doesn’t know about half her life. I could arc Sabrina and Ambrose’s relationship with honesty on both sides, so they end the book on firm ground in a genuinely different place to where they began.

I really enjoy Ambrose’s character, the hedonist with a heart of gold. I did reading the scripts, and even more when I watched Chance Perdomo play him with such verve. Plus I have three siblings I’m very close to, and I have many feelings about fictional families. Family stories are love stories.

Every character for me has a crystallization point, where I go “So that’s what you’re about.” Ambrose’s was when Sabrina is fleeing the coven after defying Satan. Ambrose wants her to join the coven and break away from mortals… But he instantly lies through his teeth to protect her. And Sabrina isn’t surprised. She ran through the wild woods for home, and for him.

It made me think about how Ambrose and Sabrina reached that point. Ambrose is functionally immortal: he’s always seemed around the same age, while Sabrina has been growing up at his side. As Sabrina moves into maturity, her relationship with Ambrose has to shift. Is he a brother figure? Was he almost like an uncle when she was little? Is he a mentor? Is he a dangerous one?

That’s the other locus for anxiety for Sabrina in “Season of the Witch”: Sabrina keeps being told—by Ambrose—that witches don’t love people as mortals do. But the Spellmans are heretics from the start, because they love each other. And the story of Sabrina is the effect of Sabrina, coming from this home, on the witches’ world.

There’s also a lot of time spent on Tommy, a character who doesn’t get a ton of screen-time on the show. What was it about him that was interesting to you?

Tommy and Harvey’s brotherly relationship is a parallel to the Ambrose and Sabrina almost-sibling relationship. Sabrina’s family is an untraditional shape while Harvey has a biological brother, who aged with him, whose mortal love he relies upon. Ambrose is a man of color, while Sabrina’s white, so others question their relationship. Sabrina has freedom to love and live in a way Ambrose doesn’t. But the grass is always greener on the other side of the woods: Sabrina and Ambrose have a lot Harvey and Tommy don’t.

To be honest—major spoilers for Part 1 of Sabrina—Tommy and Ms Wardwell appealed because they die. Writing in someone else’s universe, one’s eye roves toward minor characters, particularly dead ones. As the story is evolving, you want to explore open avenues, not create roadblocks for future story: for instance, Roz’s story is ongoing, so if I established a lot about her life, I’d be getting in the way of story. But a dead character’s story offers scope for exploration.

The moment Tommy crystallized for me was after his death, when we hear he turned down a football scholarship to stay with his brother. It was such a bad decision, but such a loving one. I wanted to examine why he’d made that call, in the shadow that is the readers’ knowledge of Tommy’s fate, so we see more clearly what Harvey lost, and Sabrina tried to get back for him.

The way I read it, it seems to be an attraction between Tommy and Ambrose, or at least something in that direction…

Like the elves, I say both no and yes. I personally assume everyone in Greendale has a crush on Ambrose, and obviously this belief came through…

Part of the fun of the book was seeing other characters’ insights on the Spellmans, seeing what Sabrina’s too close to see. Robert Burns wrote “Would some Power the gift give us/To see ourselves as others see us.” What does Tommy, our most conventional but still sympathetic mortal character, think of the Spellmans?

The jock culture in Greendale is prejudiced. Greendale is a small town, most obviously stifling for Theo, but that kind of atmosphere is also stifling for someone who can conform—former football star Tommy, to whom I gave several girlfriends!

Tommy’s the guy who can value his brother’s art, so I thought he could definitely admire the Spellmans. Hilda, who is such a kind warm woman, when Tommy and Harvey are motherless. And Ambrose, who in the heart of stifling Greendale says whatever he pleases and doesn’t care what mortals think of him. Whether it’s wanting to be with someone or wishing to be more like them—the two things can feel similar—it’s natural to be drawn to freedom and what symbolizes freedom.

There are also neat details that fill in some holes from the series, like the reason Hilda has an English accent… Was this something from the story bible, or original for the novel?

Before I write every book, I write a detailed outline and submit it to Scholastic, and they pass it on to Archie Comics and the Sabrina people. Then I have a conference with my lovely editor and Ross Maxwell, one of the writers on Sabrina. Ross is amazingly generous with his time and ideas, and we talked over Hilda, and Ambrose, and why the Spellmans were like a magic version of the Kennedys. He gave me an idea for substantially improving the climax of “Season of the Witch,” and stopped me making a hideous mistake in book 2, not that I will ever reveal what it was. In fact forget I said that. I never make mistakes…

The Zelda chapter does a fascinating job of capturing her contradictions. Was it difficult to break her down like this? Make the two halves of her work together?

You know, it wasn’t! The contradictions are so very much there onscreen. Miranda Otto flawlessly pulls off the stern martinet with pin-up style, someone with a loving heart who believes love is sin.

Zelda’s the question mark for the Spellman family, during Part 1. She professes such devotion to Satan and the witch way of life, we’re not sure if she’s more devoted to the Dark Lord or her family. Not until the crystallizing moment, when Zelda confesses she would never let Sabrina be sacrificed, even if it was the Dark Lord’s will. That’s when we understand she loves Sabrina, and will be there to catch her.

In “Season of the Witch,” it was great to write this guilty love she has for her family, and call back to the way she used to kill and resurrect Hilda—and how that gave Sabrina dangerous notions about magic and mortality! And to give Ambrose and Sabrina a story in the book that mirrors Zelda and Sabrina’s story in Part 1, the journey to acknowledged love. Sabrina is such a big-hearted story—that says, yes, Satan, yes, cannibalism, yes, weird wild happenings in the wood, but above all else, love—and Zelda’s character is a perfect encapsulation of that.

Of the characters, were there any you found easier (or harder) to capture the voices of?

Theo (in the book referred to as Susie) was really tough. It’s so great to have one of the—very few—trans characters on TV on Sabrina, and Lachlan Watson does such a fabulous job with Theo, who is both a firecracker and a faithful friend. But I almost chickened out on giving Theo an “In the Dark” chapter at all in a story set so early in Theo’s journey, when the audience already knows Theo is trans. But then I realized “No, this is too important, Theo must get a chapter.” I typed the name “Susie” so many times I feared the name might lose all meaning, but I really didn’t want to write the character thinking of himself with feminine pronouns in his own head. Yet obviously in the prequel he wasn’t there yet in terms of thinking of himself with masculine pronouns.

I’m working on book three now, where I can call Theo “him” and “Theo,” and it makes me really happy—for him, for me, and for the viewers and readers who get to see his journey.

Overall, the witches were easier than the mortals to write…. The characters who don’t know the secrets of the plot have a tough time. It’s the Superman’s Girlfriend problem. A superhero’s significant other is totally justified in going “Why are you never around, you missed my cousin’s bat mitzvah” but the audience will always respond “FabuLass was saving the city, you insensitive creature!!” Whenever a character who doesn’t know the secret arrives, the plot stops, and the audience is impatient with that character. So I tried to lean in on the oblivious mortals’ vulnerability. What if Harvey, already enchanted, runs into a strange witch? Being in the dark means being in danger.

On the other hand, since this is a prequel, you don’t get the chance to use Salem! How bummed out were you?

So much! I was a huge fan of Sabrina the Teenage Witch when I was a kid, and Salem was always everybody’s favorite character. He was so entertaining and had all the best lines. I watched the first episode of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with my baby brother, and he was like “Where is Salem?!” “He’s coming,” I promised. The people demand Salem!

But the book shows characters choosing each other. I liked foreshadowing Sabrina’s familiar by having Sabrina discuss familiars with Ambrose in “Season of the Witch,” and thinking about why Sabrina—whose beloved cousin is trapped in their home—might choose a wild familiar, and want to be chosen by one. There’s a scene in “Season of the Witch” where Sabrina is walking through the woods, and there’s an opportunity for a certain goblin to see her, and decide he wants to be connected to her. Like a goblin and witch version of The Bachelor Sabrina doesn’t know she’s participating in…

There are plenty of teases and ties to the first season of the show in here, but are there any Easter eggs in particular fans should be looking out for? I know there’s a Riverdale mention, but other than that?

I love that both series burn plot and premise, making every season a brand-new story, and Sabrina has the supernatural as a plot engine for these dramatic developments. There’s actually a tiny unnamed cameo for Jughead in Season of the Witch. Readers, tell me if you spot him!

There are a few references to the old TV show, and more to the comics, both the series from 2014 and from the 1950s. And Sabrina uses traditional magic, so I borrowed from folk tales, myths and legends. And “Macbeth.” The story of Sabrina is given resonance by its references to the Bible, to Shakespeare, and to fairytales, and I wanted to evoke the same resonance. Basically, I’m a magpie for magic in this book!

Anything else you’d like to tease about the book?

Oooh. Oh, yes, I must answer my most Frequently Asked Question About The Sabrina Prequel, which is “Will Nick Scratch be in it?” The answer is yes! Nick hasn’t met Sabrina in the book, but he’s in her orbit: he’s in the witches’ school she will attend, ready to be her first real peer among the witches. He’s dating the three witches who are already her mean-girl frenemies. We know from the show that Nick dated Prudence and the other two Weird Sisters at the same time (Nick lives such an exciting life) and broke up with them, which I thought would be fun to see in “Season of the Witch” as a moment between Nick and Prudence, who are both so lonely and compelling. I used that break-up as a reverse mirror to Harvey and Sabrina cementing their relationship, to cast the shadow of Nick’s coming: Nick, who’s drawn to mortal love. I think people may find Nick’s split with the Weird Sisters surprising for a variety of reasons!

Now all that’s left to say is thank you so much for the thought-provoking questions, and I hope everyone is ready for love and witchcraft.

“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Season of the Witch” is on sale now in book stores everywhere.

Stream Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix