After being picked up by Netflix with a two season order and recently finding its lead in Mad Men's Kiernan Shipka, Sabrina The Teenage Witch's new live-action adventure is fully underway.

Unlike the fondly remembered '90s sitcom, this series promises to give the teenage witch a dark make-over, described as being "tonally in the vein of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist." While this horror-influenced direction could be an interesting one for the character, with "dark fantasy" genre shows arguably reaching saturation point on our screens now, does Sabrina risk getting lost in the eery mist?

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Originally, the show's home was set to be The CW, as The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a name borrowed directly from the Archie Comics horror series of the same name by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Robert Hack. The comic is a big departure from the lighter tone fans are used to, taking visual and thematic cues from '60s grindhouse cinema and the American gothic.

Rumors of a Sabrina cameo in The CW's Riverdale go back as early as 2016 and likely would have served as a kind of backdoor pilot. Netflix's witch-napping, then, could have robbed the network of an exciting opportunity to kickstart a TV "Archieverse" similar to the one it has successfully created with its DC superhero properties. However, it's been speculated that with a Charmed reboot and female-driven Supernatural spin-off in the works, The CW probably didn't want more of the same, anyway.

The darker tone of what would have been The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on The CW would have clearly made it a good fit with the similarly moodier feel that the network reinterpreted other Archie Comics characters with in Riverdale. But now that that connection seems to have been severed, and the project's name slashed down to just Sabrina, Netflix has the chance to take the show in a different direction... if it wants to. And, if the streaming service wants another Stranger Things phenomenon, there's a strong case to be made that it definitely should.

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While the ongoing Archie Horror series offers readers a refreshing shift from Sabrina's campy origins, a live-action dark and gritty reboot seems somewhat predictable in today's pop cultural landscape -- maybe even boringly so. For instance, when you read the phrase "dark and gritty" a moment ago, did you find yourself thinking, "Oh, that's new!" or "Oh, another one?"

Though it's a potential risk, something that incorporates all of Sabrina's history -- even the goofiness of her '90s TV exploits -- could be what this reboot needs to set it apart from the recent and/or ongoing spate of dark fantasy shows -- your Supernaturals, Grimms, True Bloods, Wynonna Earps, Penny Dreadfuls, The OriginalsAmerican Horror Storys... the list goes on.

There's a wealth of material that has been released in recent years -- and will likely continue to come out -- that will hammer home what we already know about witches: that they're generally bad news. A hot take on witchcraft these days would be that it's not something that corrupts young women into committing acts of selfishness and evil. This is also something inherent to Sabrina's history, too. Sabrina Spellman is a young witch whose goodness is in stark opposition to the badness of the rest of her kind, including her aunts, Zelda and Hilda. The moral crossroads her character is poised at is a big part of her appeal in the comics.

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For most, however, our view of her world is more informed by the cheesy sitcom adaptation than anything else, which audiences of a certain age will also have deep-seated nostalgia for. This version harkened back to the popular supernatural sitcoms of the era Sabrina was invented in, like Bewitched and I Dream Of Jeannie. Little known about that era is the influence it had on developing the sparkly-eyed, "magical girls" of shojo anime. These young Japanese spellcasters swapped green skin and black hair for pastel shades and frilly dresses, and used their magic for heroism. While magical girls are as popular as ever in anime, their American live-action equivalents have all but disappeared. This leaves us in a strange world in which the high-tempo, brightly-colored exploits of the Sailor Moon girls seem far more subversive than the idea of yet another washed-out, sinister take on female occultism.

As well as the spirit of magical girls and the '90s sitcom, Netflix could also draw inspiration from NBC's popular fantasy-comedy series The Good Place, which sugarcoats its dark subject matter to expertly subvert our expectations. This is a model that could really make Sabrina something truly, well, magical. After all, do we really want to see a rehashing of American Horror Story: Coven, or, would we rather see, say, The Exorcist by way of Kiki's Delivery Service?