Characters Tropes

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations.

If used correctly, they help move the narrative along, because the author has less to explain. Badly used and it can become a "Cliché".

For example, if you want to show your character is smart, show him playing chess. Everybody knows smart people play chess ! If you want to show that the next character that just entered is smarter than the one before, have her just glace over his shouder and solve the game he has been struggling with. This way you can show instead of tell , which always enhance the narrative.

Badly used it becomes a Cliché , an element that has been overused to the point of loosing it's original meaning or it's effect. In colloquial use, it refers to something that is expected or easily predicted. They are often used for comic effect.

Main Characters

Spellman Family

Sabrina Spellman

Anti-Antichrist: She was born from Satan and was destined to create perversions of Jesus' miracles. Though she did them with the best of intentions, like healing or saving her friends, she still ends up causing the apocalypse by following through with it. She however actively rebels against her father and heritage and tries to defeat him, even siding with Lilith to trap him back in Hell.
The Chosen One: It is mentioned repeatedly that The Dark Lord believes Sabrina will become one of the greatest witches in history. This seems to be one of the main reasons why he's so determined to make her sign the Book of the Beast. One of the first signs that he could be right is when Sabrina becomes the fourth witch in history able to summon Hellfire.
Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Throughout the first part, Sabrina refused to sign her name in the Dark Lord's book during the full witch ceremony and openly defies the evil god, refusing to give up her soul. Subverted in the end, when Madam Satan manipulates Sabrina into signing the book.
Human Mom, Non-Human Dad: Her father was a powerful warlock and High Priest of the Church of Night. Her mother was a mortal woman.
Thou Shalt Not Kill: While she's not above threatening people with death, she believes that life is precious and refrains from killing. Even when she needs to sacrifice someone for a ritual, she brings them back to life once the ritual is done. This ends badly.

Zelda Spellman

Brainwashed and Crazy: After marrying Father Blackwood, she's brainwashed using a spell to become a perfect House Wife, Stepford Wives style, and follows his orders without question, even harming Sabrina's plans. She's healed when Sabrina destroys her picture within a music box.
Cain and Abel: The Cain to Hilda's Abel, but played with. Unlike most examples, Zelda does go on to kill her sister often because she is easily resurrected and cares deeply for Hilda. In a nightmare where it seems Hilda genuinely died due to Zelda's actions, her reaction is to break down sobbing.
Child Eater: In Batibat's nightmare, she cooks a fat kid to serve to the Dark Lord and is heartbroken when he sounds it for Hilda's vegetable pie.
The Fundamentalist: She is incredibly devoted to the Church of Night and the traditions, but even then she seems to not be fully on board with completely everything, hating the idea of Sabrina being sacrificed during the Feast of Feasts and disliking Father Blackwood's clear misogyny.
I Am A Humanitarian: She makes numerous references to enjoying human flesh.
Like a Daughter to Me: Sabrina might be Zelda's niece, but Zelda loves her as fiercely as if she were her own child. This is especially clear in "The Returned" when Sabrina telling her You're Not My Mother cuts Zelda to her core, and she self-flagellates to cope with the emotional pain of Sabrina's words.

Hilda Spellman

Beware the Nice Ones: Despite appearing to be the meekest member of the family, she can be seriously nasty when pushed, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of balms and potions to help her. This is why, according to the official description, if you want to get a potion to do with manipulating love, you go to Hilda and from Zelda you can just spite someone - spite is all well and good, but breaking someone by breaking their love is a much more dangerous way to do things.
Sibling Yin-Yang: The more light-hearted of Sabrina's two aunts, and the one more willing to go against standard protocol for the Church of Night.
Telepathy: Hilda is shown to be able to read minds, or at least is an extremely good judge of character that would make Sherlock Holmes yell "Witchcraft!!!". She's reads two of Susie's bullies and by their reactions correctly deducts that one had something terrible happen to him when he was eleven, and the other is "in lust" with his jock friend.
White Mage: Hilda is a specialist in healing potions and balms to a plethora of illnesses and curses. She is often called by witches who need some kind of treatment.

Ambrose Spellman

All Gays Are Promiscuous: Luke and Ambrose jumping straight into bed (including the requisite ripping of each other's clothes off) seems to be this. However, in a latter episode Nick explains that witches and warlocks don't really fall in love, so sex and lust are the next best thing. Also, Ambrose has been under house arrest for 70 years, so there's that.
The Necromancer: Offers to resurrect a dead bird in the first episode but Hilda tells him there will be none of his necromancy. This is later played with in that he may do necromancy on animals, but abhors necromancy with people, saying that it's the darkest kind of magic.
Mr. Fanservice: He spends most of his time lounging around the house in a bathrobe and occasionally doesn't bother to put a shirt on underneath. Additionally after sleeping with Luke he wakes up the next day and wanders around in nothing but his underwear.
Not Helping Your Case: While Sabrina, Hilda and Nick are trying to come up with a way to keep him safe after being framed by the Antipope's death, Ambrose comes back entirely to try to murder Blackwood in public before the entire Coven and is captured.

Edward Spellman

The Ace: Edward was ridiculously good at everything he did: brilliant scholar and warlock, High Priest, you name it.
Ambigousoly Evil: He secretly had Sabrina's name written down in the Book of the Beast as a baby without anyone but Zelda knowing, nearly damning Sabrina to service to Satan. And yet, at her baptism, Sabrina has a vision of both Edward and Diane telling her to not go through with it. Whether he had a change of heart later or what is currently unknown.

Diana Spellman

Crazy Prepared: She had Sabrina baptized in the Catholic Church a couple of days after she was born as a precaution against the Dark Lord staking any claim to her soul without her say so.
Properly Paranoid: Her decision to have her newborn Sabrina baptized is treated as this by the coven, but considering Edward tried to sign her soul over to Satan not two days after (and how desperate the Devil and Church of Night are to get her in their clutches), she had every right to be afraid.
Understanding Boyfriend: Downplayed. Diana tells Sabrina that she has followed Edward through the Path of Night as far as she could, just so the two could be together, but that it was an extremely hard path, and that she would not wish it upon any other human when Sabrina asks her for advice about her situation with Harvey.

Other Main Characters

Harvey Kinkle

Big Brother Worship: Absolutely adores his older brother Tommy, which is part of why it's so heart-wrenching when Tommy dies. Then comes back wrong, then dies again.
Does Not Like Magic: After everything that happened with Tommy, Harvey is quickly coming to despise magic. Notably, he seems uncomfortable accepting magical pencils that never dull or run out of lead from Sabrina as a Christmas gift. And when she gives his alcoholic father magical eggnog that makes him never want to drink another drop of alcohol, though Harvey is grudgingly thankful, he asks her never to do anything like that again and returns the pencils. It seems he may yet come to be like his witch hunter ancestors.
Mercy Kill: Is forced to do this to the resurrected body of his brother, Tommy. He's not able to
The Unfavorite: It's pretty clear his father and grandfather are not fond of him and clearly prefer Tommy over him.

Rosalind Walker

Black And Nerdy: Sabrina's black friend and an intense nerd for literature.
Blind Seer: The fate that awaits Roz due to the curse placed on the Walker family by a witch many generations ago. It's unknown if the blindness curse is what caused their ability to see visions or if they already possessed this untapped power and the curse merely jump-started it, but both seem to appear together on every generation. She finally lost her sight in part 2.
Determinator: Once faced with a challenge she will not back down from it.
Unwitting Muggle Friend: She is Sabrina's closest friend but has no connection whatsoever with her supernatural world. At first that is.

Theo Putnam

Badass Normal: Theo is surprisingly brave and makes up for his lack of physical power with courage and by keeping his head in the right place. He has been a key part of the success of Sabrina's group's success.
Challenging The Bully: Gets sick and tired of the football players’ bullying and tries to fight back, but ends up on the receiving end of a beating because of it.
Teens Are Short: The shortest character in the show, almost a head shorter than Sabrina herself.
What The Hell, Hero?: He gives one to Roz and Harvey after they say that they can't trust Sabrina despite the good (though misguided) things she has done.

Mary Wardwell/Madame Satan

Back From The Dead: As a gift of penance to Sabrina, Lillth revives the real Mary Wardwell, with no memory of what happened.
Kill and Replace: She suffered this fate at the hands of Madame Satan.
We Hardly Knew Ye: She was murdered very early in the very first episode. The last few minutes of Part 2 reveal that Lilith has brought her Back from the Dead, so it's likely this trope will be subverted in Part 3.
Cool Teacher: She likes to see vintage horror movies and sings Bad Moon Rising along with the radio. Sabrina is also very fond of her. Madam Satan uses this to manipulate Sabrina after replacing her.

Prudence Blackwood

Alpha Bitch: She is a complete bitch who rules the Academy with the girl of her Girl Posse.
Dark-Skinned Blonde: Her hair is platinum white, despite being dark skinned.
Politically Incorrect Villain: She has a habit of calling Sabrina "half-breed" because of her half-human ancestry.
The Unfavorite: Once her younger brother is born, although she's still the favorite student, though that doesn't mean much to him.

Father Blackwood

Co-Dragons:As far as he is concerned, since he answers directly to the Dark Lord, he is on equal footing with Madam Satan. She seems to disagree.
Evil Sorcerer: With a Deal with the Devil in place and being head of a Satanist church, it doesn't get more evil than that.
Gentleman Wizard: He's got the look and in public tries to present himself as such.
Heir Club for Men: Longs for a healthy male heir to continue his legacy. It's why he passes over female bastards like Prudence and is completely unbothered by his wife's death as long as a healthy son is born.

Recurring Characters

Nicholas Scratch

Heroic Sacrifice: As a last resort, he seals Lucifer within his own body and is placed under a sleeping spell to stop the Apocalypse. Lilith takes him with her back to Hell, with Sabrina ultimately declaring that they'll go to Hell to rescue him.
Hero Worshipper: To Edward Spellman, whose magic and accomplishments he greatly admired. It's implied his attraction to Sabrina stemmed mostly from the fact that she's Edward Spellman's daughter.
In Love with the Mark: The Dark Lord ordered Nick to seduce Sabrina. He pleads with Sabrina to believe that he fell in love with her for real after getting to know her.
Meaningful Name: "Old Nick" and "Mr. Scratch" are old-fashioned nicknames for the Devil.

Luke Chalfant

Ambiguously Evil: He summons Ambrose to the Academy despite knowing that he was busy protecting the mortals of Greendale and Zelda had also been summoned to help with Lady Blackwood's birth leaving Sabrina and Hilda to fend for themselves. Connor's familiar also shows up dead the morning right after he spent the night with Ambrose (to be fair, Zelda had already mentioned a familiar can't live long after is master dies, however the timing seems odd).
Ambiguous Situation: The show drops serious hints that he might be the one behind the death of Connor Kemper, his familiar, and eventually his whole family, but it hasn't been confirmed yet.
Anguished Declaration of Love: In the part one finale during the attack by the 13 witches of Greendale, he summons Ambrose to the Academy to protect him despite the latter's complaints that his family needs him. Luke blurts out that he summoned him because he loves him and can't bear losing him. However, Nick's explanation that warlocks can't feel love makes the matter more complex: is Luke really in love with Ambrose? Is he confused and really just in lust with him? Is he still under the effects of Hilda's potion?.
Dropped a Bridge on Him: He is killed off midway through part Two - originally without any explanation and then shown in a Flashback - by some angels called "The Church Of The Innocents". There's no indication any of this is going to happen before it does and it comes entirely out of the blue.

Lucifer Morningstar

Luke, I Am Your Father: He turns out to be Sabrina's father. He possessed Edwards body to impregnate Diana and cause Sabrina to be born by the union of a demon, a witch and a human.
Wound That Will Not Heal: In his true form, he has two large wounds in his back where his wings were ripped out. These wounds are permanently open.
Incest Subtext: It's never made completely clear whether he intends to make Sabrina to rule as his bride or his daughter. Zelda raises the possibility that he wants her as his child bride and he is creepy about it all the time.
I Have Many Names: Although he is most commonly referred as “the Dark Lord” by the witches, he also goes by Satan, Lucifer Morningstar, The Devil and the Son of Dawn at various points.
Deal with the Devil: Do not enter into one of these with him or you will regret it.