Selena Gomez has shared most of her recent headlines with her on-again boyfriend Justin Bieber. This post is not about Justin Bieber. I am defying direct orders from the boss herself to “gush” about Selena and Justin. They’re back together. They’re kissing in public again. They spent Thanksgiving apart but kept in touch. Like Selena’s family, I am wary about Jelena 3.0 so I’m just going to attempt to ignore it until JB effs it up like we all know he’s going to. How was that for gushing? 

More importantly, there have been rumours that Selena Gomez will be joining the Riverdale universe. Oh, you didn’t know there was a Riverdale universe? Somewhere in the part of my brain I reserve for useless information about teen TV shows, I think I knew that there were plans to adapt the Riverdale comics’ “sister series” The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Yes, Sabrina as in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I did not know that Selena Gomez was the person rumoured to take on the part of Sabrina, a teenager who has full conversations with a magical cat (I doubt a snarky talking cat will make for good TV in 2017 but I’m optimistic). In my youth, Sabrina was played by Melissa Joan Hart and the show was my whole sh-t. I’ve seen every episode, multiple times. I even hung on through the college years. So, as a Sabrina scholar, I love the idea of Selena in this role in theory, I just don’t think there’s enough to go on to get excited… yet. The source of these rumours is this tweet:

Not exactly an announcement in Variety, is it? There’s also the fact that Selena dyed her hair blonde. Her fans have decided that this is confirmation that Selena will be playing Sabrina. The last piece of insubstantial at best evidence is that Selena Gomez spent her formative years playing a wizard or something resembling a witch on Wizards of Waverly Place. None of these add up to a proverbial smoking gun but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. I just don’t buy that starring in a CW TV show is the next best career move for Selena Gomez, or the one she wants to make. Selena just released Wolves and gave a big comeback performance on the AMAs. A new album could be in the works. As for her acting, she’s got A Rainy Day in New York coming up and she’s returning as the voice of Mavis in Transylvania 2. She’s still a producer on 13 Reasons Why and she’s executive producing a new drama series called Rising which Deadline called the “Latina Empire” for Freeform. Right now, it doesn’t look like Selena is looking for TV roles she’s not developing herself and plus, Freeform and the CW are direct competitors. Would she EP a show on one network and star in a series on the other? Doubtful. Also, can Selena Gomez still play high school? Is that jig up? 

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina could be great (as long as they don’t do a crossover episode with Riverdale where Sabrina experiments with Jingle Jangle) and I think Selena Gomez is an exciting choice for the role but so far, there’s not a lot here to hang our hopes on. The best thing about this rumour though is that it may inspire the show’s producers to think about casting someone who doesn’t fit the blue-eyed, blonde-haired depiction of Sabrina we’re used to.