The Good, the Bad and the Reformed?: The Evil Twin!

It’s always the evil twin! Evil twins are everywhere in television — from Indian soaps and telenovelas, to supernatural and sci-fi shows. In fact, evil twins are such a regular trope of telenovelas, that it was picked up on by Jane the Virgin, a show which highlighted and played with the various dramatic tropes that are usually seen in the genre. The trope is most definitely more popular in the soap realm, and that is a whole topic of interest in itself. What made me think about the trope in more recent times is seeing it used in shows that involve a supernatural dynamic in order to showcase how good and bad isn’t always straightforward. These shows often come from classic mythology in which morality is a core concept. Witches, Devils and Angels all fall into classic ideas of good and bad, and in these shows, the Evil Twin trope is used to explore this further.

When the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina introduced the evil twin, to me it was an instant call back to Sabrina the Teenage Witch. In the late 90s/early 00s sitcom, the family secret Sabrina uncovers in order to use her Witch’s License is revealed as: Every member of the Spellman family is born with a twin. Sabrina meets her twin Katrina shortly after discovering the secret, and the two are put on trial to see who is the good twin and who is the evil twin. Although it seems like Katrina is winning the trial, Katrina is told to throw Sabrina into a volcano and does so without hesitating, an action that proves that Katrina is actually the evil twin. Katrina tries to underhandedly sabotage Sabrina and it doesn’t work because Sabrina’s inherent good nature prevails. Katrina is sent away to a prison in the Other Realm. This isn’t the only time Sabrina encounters Katrina, as of course there had not yet been a case of stolen identity, the most ruinous form of evil twin sabotage. This happens two seasons later, and is ultimately resolved when Sabrina manages to get a message to her aunts. The show is a sitcom that is supernatural, and so can embrace the unnatural and create fun out of it. Here, the evil twin trope plays with the ridiculousness of the magic world in the life of an ordinary teenage girl — the twins of Sabrina even have funny rhyming names: Sabrina/Katrina and Zelda/Jezebelda.

Upon reading about the twins of this show I learnt that this was in fact an homage to the magical 1960s shows Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Therefore, magical female identical twins are a sitcom television trope of their own. Perhaps by having an evil twin, the audience could be fully convinced of the protagonist’s goodness, as history has not been so kind to magical women. This era of sitcom magic in the 1960s contributed to the rebranding of the witch, and the evil twin trope was just one tool they used to accomplished this within their shows. The 1960s witch era was connected with Second Wave Feminism, and the 90s/00s witch era was connected with Third Wave Feminism. In Sabrina, the evil twin is used to both prove the main character’s goodness, and to create temporary chaos in her life in an entertaining way. Witches aren’t the evil hags they used to be, but are now ordinary teenage girls, and can be good at heart.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is adapted directly from the comics rather than a reboot of the sitcom, and so takes a dark coming-of-age angle on Sabrina Spellman. The twins we see here are Sabrina Spellman and Sabrina Morningstar, and although at first it may seem like the same good/evil twin situation, it isn’t so straight cut. These Sabrinas are not two different people, but two versions of the same person. Sabrina is both Spellman and Morningstar, as they are simply her from two different times. Her refusal to choose between being the Queen of Hell and living on Earth leads her to use this time loop to her advantage and have the two versions lead the two lives she wants. Both are integral characters to the final batch of episodes, and work together to defeat the various threats they face. There is no good or bad, but still in the end there could only be one Sabrina - and this is a combination of them both in the afterlife. So although the audience thinks at first that this is going to be an evil twin situation, as the magical 1960s shows and the original Sabrina had, this expectation is subverted. Instead we get a Queen of Hell that isn’t wholly evil, and a high school witch who isn’t wholly good. It adds a new dimension to this tradition of magic female identical twins in TV shows that we haven’t seen before - the twins living in harmony, and helping each other.

In Lucifer, the devil himself is the good twin and Michael, the archangel, is the bad twin. This goes against the usual lore attached to these biblical characters, and shows us that everything is not always as it seems. The devil is the protagonist and the show repeatedly reminds us how he has changed or has tried to change — in fact, he asks himself questions such as if he is worthy enough of love and if he is worthy of being God. Although he never ends up with that particular job, he never goes back to being the devil either, showing that he is reformed. The show even gives Lucifer a British accent, a common trait of stock villains, and Michael an American accent, which only emphasises their point of subverting our expectations.

With Sabrina, we see a use of the Classic Evil Twin, in order to prove witches aren’t the bad guys; the witch reformed. In Chilling Adventures, you think it’s going to be the Classic Evil Twin, but there is no Evil Twin — there is good and bad in everyone, and the protagonist doesn’t have to choose one way of life in this instance. Lucifer reverses the Classic Evil Twin so that the Devil is the good guy, and the Angel is the bad guy; the devil reformed. All of these uses of the trope encourage us to keep clear of moral absolutism, which can be a very dangerous way of thinking. They invite to re-examine what we think we know about good and bad, and add to the supernatural genre and the various uses of the trope at the same time.