Fans Think This 'Riverdale' Season 2 Episode Was Low-Key A 'Sabrina' Crossover

Now that Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has premiered, Riverdale fans are trying to uncover every connection between the CW's dark teen drama and Netflix's witchy new horror series. Both shows come from the same creative team and find their roots within the long-running Archie Comics, where the characters have interacted several times. While Sabrina references Riverdale multiple times, some fans have actually gone back to Riverdale's last season and think the show was making an explicit reference to Sabrina as well, ahead of its premiere. So, was Riverdale Season 2 Episode 7 a Chilling Adventures of Sabrina crossover? The episode aired nearly a year before Sabrina premiered, but looking back at it now, there definitely seems to be a big nod to a major event from Sabrina.

Towards the end of the debut season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Harvey Kinkle's family forces him to go hunting with them. When a nearby Sabrina hears a gunshot in the woods, she enlists the help of Miss Wardwell and the Weird Sisters to hide the corpse of a dead deer, who is actually a witch's familiar, from the hunters. Now, this scene might have stood out to hardcore Riverdale fans, because the show's second season may have actually featured this very same deer.

In the seventh episode of Riverdale Season 2, entitled "Tales from the Darkside," Archie and Jughead's car breaks down on the road to Greendale while Jughead is on a mission to deliver a mysterious crate forced on him by Penny Peabody. A mysterious old man then shows up and offers to drive Jughead the rest of the way. As Archie waits by the car, he spies a bloodied deer running out of the woods. Jughead also later discovers that the old man had the corpse of a deer in the bed of his truck.

Could one of these two deer be the same deer familiar that Sabrina helped hide in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. That's the theory one Reddit user put forth, and it actually seems to make sense. It is telling that Archie spotted the living deer while near the Greendale woods, which Miss Wardwell had explained to Sabrina was the home to a number of familiars. Since the deer Archie saw definitely seemed to be on a mission, or have some sort of supernatural bent to it, it could very well have been another familiar. That could also mean the dead deer in the old man's truck may be the same deer that the Kinkles killed and Sabrina hid.

If this theory proves true, then it also clears up some very confusing questions about the timeline that both Riverdale and Sabrina share. The only true crossover we have seen so far is when Riverdale character Ben Button made a surprise cameo in Sabrina as a pizza delivery boy. This caused a bunch of confusion for Riverdale fans, though, since we just saw Ben die in the episode right before Sabrina premiered. But, this deer theory would mean that Chilling Adventures of Sabrina's first season would have actually been set at the same time as Riverdale's second season, not its currently airing third.

We will just have to keep our eyes peeled for any more strange animals in the woods as this season of Riverdale continues.