- In the premiere episode of season 4, Charmed Again Part 1 we learn that Prue was killed as a result of the attack on Shax and Leo and Phoebe not being their to repel him or heal the sisters. My issue is with this statement that Piper told Leo as they were going to Prue's funeral. She said Leo healed her first. In the timeline where they were exposed after Shax's attack Leo was able to heal both of them at the same time so my question is in the second timeline when Leo and Phoebe get out of the Underworld with Cole's help why did he heal Piper first and not heal them both again? Presumably it would have been easy since the two were right next to each other. It would have made more sense if Prue was the more seriously injured one and by the time they came back later Prue was already gone. Instead Piper explicitly says that Leo healed her first because she was his wife. Why not just heal them both again?
- In the original timeline, Phoebe was able to call Leo in instantly and heal their wounds mere seconds afterwards. Even in what we see of the episode's ending, Prue and Piper are in that condition for much longer than they were in the first attack. In the new timeline, Leo has to first help Cole and Phoebe escape, and then orb back to the Manor, leaving even more time for Prue to succumb to her injuries. And if you watch the attack, Prue goes through the wall head and back first, her head clearly hitting off the floor as she lands. We see her bleeding from her ears, implying severe head trauma. Piper goes through the remainder of the wall sideways, and the blood is coming from her face. Prue not only went through the wall first but also took a killing blow meant for Dr Griffiths. Piper may have been hit with a less strong attack, and there was less wall to go through, and what she went through she hit with the side of her body. By the time Leo got there, Prue had likely already died, while Piper was just hanging in there. Piper has no knowledge of the original timeline where they were both healed at the same time, and just has an attack of survivor's guilt, thinking that Leo could only save one of them. Piper's actual quote is "why didn't you save her?" and Leo says "I tried", so he may have tried to heal both of them as before, but Prue had just taken a worse hit and passed on by the time he got there.
- Throughout the series, Grams and Patty are summoned with the ever changing “To Summon the Dead” spell. And it is mentioned by Piper that it doesn’t work sometimes. But maybe I missed it, how did Grams wind up in full body form for some episodes like Pipers wedding, or the fairy tale episode? Seems like that would need a lot of power behind it, and why not just continuously do that whenever they are summoned??
- For Piper's wedding, Grams says that she's allowed by the Elders to act as the High Priestess to perform the ceremony (and she disappears when they think it's off). In the fairy tale episode, Wyatt willed her into being there with his power (and she voluntarily goes back at the end, presumably because the Elders wouldn't allow her to stay full time). Any other times they're summoned it's with the spell.
- And Season 5 and 6 is when they start to take corporeal forms, able to use their magic. At that point, the sisters' powers had grown enough to allow such a thing to happen.
- The first time a spirit summoned with the spell becomes corporeal is "Charmed Again - Part 2"...after which Paige has allowed the Power of Three to be reconstituted. Paige as a whitelighter witch is more powerful than Prue, so her becoming a Charmed One made the Power of Three even stronger. So with their magic now being even more powerful, they could summon spirits who could take corporeal forms.
- The existence of past lives seems to contradict the show's concept of the afterlife. If reincarnation exists, how are the girls able to summon Patty and Grams at all? Leo also gives an odd explanation about "souls recognizing souls," which, while obviously a handwave to explain why the girls' ancestors look exactly like them, doesn't really make any sense. Wouldn't the girls wonder at all where Prue's next life would be, especially if they supposedly gravitate towards the same people?
- Well although it's the same soul, Phoebe and P. Russell are very different people. So even if the soul is reborn into a new body, there's still the remnant of the previous person in the afterlife.
- Or more simply Penny and Patty haven't been reincarnated yet. P. Russell was alive in the 20s but wasn't reborn until the 70s. It's magic, it doesn't have to be logical.
- Spending time in the afterlife before being reincarnated is logical.
- Wild Mass Guessing here, but since Patty and Penny are the mother and grandmother of the Charmed Ones - they're kept intact in that form because they're more valuable as spirit guides to the sisters so that's why they haven't been reincarnated.
- We've seen other witches summoned from the afterlife as well — the evil familiar's owner. She wasn't particularly special considering she just told them information anyone with knowledge of familiars could have known. Maybe not every witch reincarnates, and the Charmed Ones' were only reincarnating until they could fulfill their destiny? More likely it's a plothole they never considered (much like the family tree timelines), but it's fun to think of reasons to justify.
- According to the continuation comics, Prue isn't available as a spirit adviser because she made the choice to leave the afterlife and move on to her next life (which wound up being body-hopping into a brain-dead witch, meaning she retained all her memories and had an adult body). If you take that into consideration, it means that the reincarnation cycle is entirely voluntary, so whether a witch stays in the afterlife or moves on to begin again has nothing to do with how powerful or "important" they are. It also explains the time gap, because Prue did pass on to the afterlife and spend time with Penny and Patty there, leaving at a later date. Penny and Patty themselves could simply be waiting to move onto their next lives until Piper, Phoebe, and Paige no longer need them as spirit advisers.
- In the second episode, why did they give Phoebe a hard time for not trying to control her visions? The second one yes using a vision of the winning numbers of a lottery ticket is wrong but when she had a vision of a cute guy walking up to her? What’s wrong with that? Unlike Time freezing or telekinesis, visions aren’t usually something you can practice control over.
- Prue is established to be a smothering busybody in the first season - who acts more like a bossy mother than an older sister. She doesn't want any of their powers to be exposed to the public. And they know very little about them at this stage. Prue can control her powers yes, and so can Piper to an extent. They haven't done enough trial and error to figure out that Phoebe's power is passive - and so assume she can control it too.
- And Phoebe has only just arrived back home after years of being an out of control teen delinquent. She did a lot of growing up in New York, but Prue and Piper don't know the extent yet. They're used to Phoebe being reckless and misbehaving - so they're both afraid that Phoebe is going to do something that'll make things worse for them.
- In season eight, how did Phoebe get a positive on a pregnancy test and then not? Pregnancy tests do not give false positives.
- Actually, sometimes they do. They are very rare but they can happen.
- And who knows, maybe the fact that magic is literally in the blood (judging by Dr. Williamson's story at least) could also screw with tests at times?
- The blood Dr. Williamson took from the girls only had magic in it because it was drawn during the Awakening spell. Leo emphasizes this in Astral Monkey when he says "THAT blood."
- When Paige told Phoebe and Piper about her suspicions about Cole, why didn't they use the magic glasses shown earlier to show that Paige was wrong? They had just used the glasses before to see the source. Paige could have remembered it and suggested it.
- Their memories aren't perfect? I think they wanted to avoid a row by at least talking to Phoebe about their suspicions. They only knew that Cole was in contact with demons - they had no reason to believe he had powers again. And they have more pressing concerns in that episode - the wizard and the new Source being crowned. That's the episode they find out about him anyway so they just didn't have time to explore all their options.
- Paige also wouldn't remember that spell, because it was only Piper and Phoebe who cast it. Piper at that point is on the fence, humouring Paige about her suspicions, and she's just pushing for them to talk things out with Phoebe before they jump the gun on casting spells against her brother in law.
- Why do the Charmed Ones give so much weight to the specificity of the prophecy of the Charmed Ones? They even assume Paige has telekinesis because the "third sister" is supposed to have that power...But we SEE why the prophecy came to being (I assumed this was coming from them summoning Melinda from the past). Of course the prophecy doesn't acknowledge Paige - she wasn't in the picture yet!
- Not sure where you're getting the prophecy being made in Season 3. The sisters only go back in time to witness Melinda Warren's birth; the start of the Charmed line. It was Melinda herself who made the prophecy, since she was the one who could see the future.
- And the powers in the line are always the same. Each witch in the family gets one of Melinda's powers. The Charmed Ones are special because there are three of them, and the first time a generation has had all the powers activated at once. Why wouldn't Paige have telekinesis? If she's a replacement for Prue, why wouldn't she inherit Prue's powers?
- Paige does get Prue's powers they just combine with her whitelighter powers.
- I thought the prophecy came about once the three sisters visited Melinda, not from a specific premonition. Even if that's false (sounds like I need to rewatch that episode), she obviously didn't account for the existence of four sisters. And not all the witches in the line had those three powers, since we see past Warren witches who have different powers like firestarting and cryokinesis. This is a nitpicky detail, but it always bothered me that they took the fact that the "third sister" had telekinesis so literally — Paige was not the third, she was the fourth!
- When Piper said that the third sister would have the power to move things with her mind, she meant as far as she and Phoebe, who had the other two powers, were concerned, since Prue was already out of the picture by then. One sister could freeze, the other have premonitions, and the third could move things with her mind.
- Yes but the Charmed Ones were specifically three sisters, each one getting one of Melinda’s powers. That isn’t to say they wouldn’t get powers of their own: Prue’s astral projection, Piper’s blowing things up, Phoebe’s levitation and empathy, Paige’s whitelighter powers. Paige’s Wiccan gene was said to be dormant until after Prue’s death meaning they needed another sister for the Power of Three to work. If it had been Piper who died, Paige would have been able to freeze, if it had been Phoebe she would have gotten Premonitions.
- Paige's Wiccan gene being dormant makes sense, but some would argue that by virtue of being Patty's daughter and a descendant of Melinda Warren and other witches , Paige should have been one in her own right and possessed telekinesis as her birth power, not because it used to be Prue's power.
- Paige was born when the other girls' powers were already bound, and the Charmed powers were only released when Phoebe read the incantation from the Book of Shadows. Penny was extra careful that no warlocks could ever get access to the Charmed powers, especially with Nicholas hovering around the Manor, so she may have accounted for that when Paige was born. Her death undid the binding spell, but the powers still weren't activated until Phoebe read from the book and then all three were together with it. Everyone treats it as 100% important that Paige has to be around the book with her two sisters before she can become a Charmed One. That's why the Source sends Shax after her - he wants her dead before she can activate the powers. But because whitelighter children are unheard of, no one would have thought she had powers from that half as well.
- It's also highly likely that "destiny" as it's so often spoken about in Charmed has something to do with the assignment of powers. P. Baxter (Grams's mom/Piper's past life) was destined to be the Warren witch whose line would lead to the Charmed ones, so she could a version of Melinda Warren's freezing power while her cousins (P. Bowen and P. Russell were born with other powers. Likewise, while the Elders and the Charmed Ones weren't aware of Paige's existence, the Angel of Destiny would've known not only that she existed but that Prue would die, so she would've been born with the power of telekinesis with the understanding that it was her destiny to eventually take over for Prue in the Charmed prophecy.
- Alright, I probably speak for a lot of fans, but why is it that in the later seasons, Piper and Paige don't allow whatever do-badder they're facing to injure Phoebe?
- Probably because, no matter what the fans think, she's their sister and they love her. Besides, if it goes too far and she's dead they really are screwed.
- Don't forget that from late season 6 onwards, Phoebe has no active powers. She only regains her premonitions but never levitation or empathy. Piper has both freezing and exploding while Paige can orb. So Phoebe is the most vulnerable whenever demons attack. She has to rely on potions or her martial arts skills.
- Forget the damn glasses, what about the Elders? They're so omnipresent that in season 3 the sisters and Leo had to avoid saying the word "marriage" because they'd be overheard, yet the Elders never noticed Cole doing any of the aboveground stuff he did when possessed by the Source? In the Underworld, they're blind, but he wasn't always there, was he now?
- The Seer cast a spell that protected Cole from Phoebe's premonitions so perhaps it protected him from being seen by the Elders too.
- Remember the half-demon baby a couple of seasons later? The Elders said he was a demon and could not be raised to anything else. They probably saw what was happening and chose to let it continue so that the sisters would vanquish Cole, thus ensuring that children he would presumably have had with Phoebe would never exist and "pollute" the Halliwell line.
- It's also never confirmed how omnipresent they actually are. In "Magic Hour" they genuinely don't know and just aren't taking any chances because of the huge risk. Also they're watching them heavily just for that specific reason. They've got more important things to worry about - hence why they only give Leo and Piper one day to think it over. As for the Cole thing, they had no reason to believe it was him. When they find out about the new Source, they assume it's a demon and therefore underground. They just didn't think that maybe it was a possessed human.
- If you think about how big the world is - or even America in general - the Elders have a lot to watch over. There's bound to be more than just the Halliwells to keep an eye on.
- Why didn't Leo mention the Magic School before Season six? He knew how much the sisters were struggling with magic.
- The damn Magic School was only created to mooch off the popularity of Harry Potter.
- Well yes, but also because Magic School seems to be geared mostly to teens and a younger generation of magic users. There probably wasn't a program for teaching older witches how to use their powers.
- There is the possibility that it could create a sticky situation regarding the demons. If word got out that the Charmed Ones were inexperienced and having to take classes, demons might become more aggressive and try to take advantage. It's not widely known how trained the sisters are - they're known as powerful and thus demons are wary of them. But if their enemies knew they were needing help with their powers....
- They're going to be fighting demons either way; sending inexperienced witches out into the field seems much more dangerous than maybe risking some demons learning that they need training. And besides, as stated below, if demons were that smart and really wanted them dead, they could just kill them in their sleep.
- The out of universe reason is that the network kept lowering the budget, so the showrunners built one set that they could continually shoot on - rather than going out on location as much. In-universe - did the sisters ever really struggle? They always vanquished the enemies and got control of their powers very quickly. When their powers were first awakened, they used the Power of Three to kill a warlock with very little time. By the time Leo shows up as a whitelighter, they've already got a decent handle on their powers.
- Magic School also seems to be a boarding school designed for children. Both Prue and Piper had careers and a house to maintain so they couldn't just drop all that to go back to school. Zachary complains about having to leave his home and family, implying it's a boarding school. It's easy for children and teens to do so, but adults have jobs, homes and social lives.
- This is addressed in Season 7 when the Elders are trying to shut the school down. They ask why it's so necessary if Paige was able to learn from her sisters and these traditions were passed down via family, and she says that some people aren't lucky enough to have that. So Magic School is not just for all witch children; it's for those without families who can teach them. It seems Gideon was the odd one out, setting up a school, while the rest of the Elders just felt it was fine leaving them up to families.
- Season 4, 'Saving Private Leo'. The brothers Mandylor kill a potential Whitelighter who goes on to be an actual Whitelighter, according to prior show mythology, but the show treats it as if she'd been vanquished. WTF?
- The woman probably didn't go on to fulfill the good she was meant to in order to become a whitelighter. And Leo takes it hard because she was his charge, remember whitelighters have specical connections with their charges.
- Because seeing an innocent woman be murdered by your former friends doing so just to hurt you would be horrible for anyone, even if you know there's a chance she might come back as a whitelighter.
- Why in the first three season, 99% of the male characters using magic are evil? Even the
Distaff CounterpartSpear Counterpart of the Charmed Ones is evil! FGS...- This is more of a complaint than Fridge Logic but whateves. Most of the magical men are evil is because the show was trying to go for the 'empowered women' schtick but delved too far to "women are good men are evil" sexist cliche. There is a difference between the two.
- Although, ironically enough their most Anvilicious episodes in that regard were the ones that went against saying all men are evil. Take note of Grams and Billie learning their lesson about sexism.
- The first two seasons also had Constance M. Burge in charge and she protested against the introduction of the show's first alpha male figure - and Cole did help level off some of the sexism against men.
- I would argue that most of the CHARACTERS in the first few seasons who aren't the sisters are evil, regardless of gender.
- Even then, there's Andy, Darryl, Dan, Leo, Victor (who is an absentee dad but not evil), Jack Sheridan, John Cho's character in ep 3, the guy in the Wendigo episode, the witch kid Max, the construction guy Piper dates when Leo disappears in Season 1, Bane Jessup (who is portrayed as morally grey, being a "forgiving mob boss"), Dr. Williamson (who wasn't evil despite becoming a villain), Billy from Chick Flick, and even Cole (who starts evil and flips). I could go on but the list would be even longer.
- That's not even listing all of the female villains of the week that showed up, including but not limited to Aunt Gail and her coven, Jade and her demons, Ms. Hellfire, the Succubus, Helena Statler, and Kali.
- This is more of a complaint than Fridge Logic but whateves. Most of the magical men are evil is because the show was trying to go for the 'empowered women' schtick but delved too far to "women are good men are evil" sexist cliche. There is a difference between the two.
- Andy's death in season 1. The Charmed Ones had plenty of time to avoid his death, yet they grabbed the Idiot Ball HARD and let it happen. The result? Prue ended up having the worst storylines from that time on.
- I'm guessing you're a fan of Andy/Prue (Prandy?) The mistake was Andy's not the girls'. He was warned of his possible death and risked his life anyway. Sure the girls could've let time rewind and do it all over again, but why take the risk? There would've been a higher chance of all three of the girls being killed on the next reset. It was better for them to end it then then risk another life.
- Except Phoebe kept remembering things that happened from the previous time loops. On the third loop she remembered nearly everything so what would have stopped her from warning them about exactly what would happen and how to avoid Rodriguez's attack.
- She kept having Deja Vus, reacting to the attacks, not remember everything the instant they woke up. And it seemed to be an side-effect of diying in the previous loop, as Piper also had a couple reactions on the last loop.
- Those dèja-vus are indistinguishable from her premonition, maybe because they are premonitions.
- And what's the number one thing the sisters always have to remember when using their powers? Personal Gain. In the third timeline, they had Rodriguez subdued and all three Charmed Ones still alive, specifically thanks to Andy's sacrifice. Prue knew by now that trying to have things both ways and resetting the day to try and save Andy could come with all sorts of backfires - especially since none of them remembered the events of the previous days, except for Phoebe's deja vus, and Rodriguez remembers everything every time. Prue prioritised stopping the demon over saving her man, who was happy to sacrifice humself anyway. And by Season 2, when she's had time to think, she is indeed blaming herself and reconsidering everything.
- How did Phoebe get away with riding naked on a horse in the middle of San Francisco? I know that San Francisco is liberal but there is such a thing as public indecency laws. Also, why didn't she have Piper sue the cafe or some other legal action?
- She was a local celebrity. Maybe she got away with saying it was a publicity stunt. Perhaps the city council didn't want bad press from reprimanding a woman making an accusation of sexism, especially a well-known one who is a journalist herself. She didn't get Piper to sue the cafe because she wanted a big spectacle instead. Of course she should have shamed the customers who complained about Piper's breast feeding as opposed to the waiter who tried to keep his customers happy.
- Because everything illegal was covered up by hair, just like the actual Lady Godiva. Plus, I'm not sure if this is the case in SF, but in some cities/states, it's legal for women to go bare-chested in public (New York City, for instance).
- Yes try and sue the local celebrity making a public accusation of sexism, who also happens to be a journalist herself and likely has plenty of friends and colleagues who could get their claws out to defend her, and see how well that one goes down.
- A legal battle would be long and expensive. Also, the cafe manager wasn't doing anything illegal. It would require generating enough interest to get a law passed allowing breast feeding in public. Or Phoebe can use fanservice to shame the manager into getting what she wants.
- The Black-and-White Morality in general. I'm a shades of gray fan, personally...
- More like if you are born evil, you will stay evil. If you are good, you will stay good unless you are turned evil and you cannot go back to being good.
- That's even worse. That's like saying only certain people have free will to choose what side (if any; what about the neutrals?) they're on, and if they don't choose to walk the straight and narrow - as decided by, who, the Elders? - they lose it. WTF? I mean, that doesn't even make sense.
- This was particularly annoying when Cole tried to subvert this, but ended up getting told, "You're evil and you always will be evil no matter how you feel or what you do!" repeatedly.
- Exactly! Between that and having powers that weren't his - which we already knew was very bad - no wonder he went batshit. This is why I wrote a fanfic in which he wises up and gets out of town after Sympathy for the Demon.
- Uhhh... link to fic?
- It's an OC-heavy crossover, but here
. - The Black-and-White Morality of the show bothered me too which is why I propose a sister series with more shades of gray.
- Actually, I think it's more like a Black, White & Pink morality, but because the lead sister is also the Moral Guardian it leads to jarring double standards. Compare and contrast: Phoebe's Demon ex-boyfriend, her half-demon baby & Billie? OMG, so totally Evil. Prue's ex-boyfriend, Piper's (potential) infant terrible and the Chimaera family Piper found? Redeemable.
- The issue with the morality of the show isn't so much its color as its Halliwell-centeredness.
- Precisely. The show didn't shy away from acknowledging the gray zone - but only if it was acknowledged by the sisters themselves.
- Er...the show has plenty of morally grey characters. The Book of Shadows repels evil, but Kyle was still able to touch it even when he'd tried to kill Leo twice, and Kyra wasn't able to when she was actively helping the Charmed Ones. Evil in this universe is defined as using powers to hurt innocents with nothing but malicious intentions, or for personal gain. Chris likewise could touch the book even when he'd sent Leo to Valhalla and murdered a Valkyrie. And in the evil mirror universe, the Halliwells' evil counterparts are still able to love their family members. The Source wanting Paige to choose evil when her powers were awakened was largely because, if she used the powers for her own desires, the Book of Shadows would register her as 'evil' and she likely wouldn't be able to use the Power of Three (or would at least have a lot more difficulty than if she chose good). And if you recall Piper's attitude towards Billie, literally everyone except her acknowledges that her wanting to get Leo back is clouding her judgment (Phoebe wants to talk to her, Piper is the one who messes it up by just assuming she's evil because she wants to get Leo back by any means necessary). Wyatt, Tyler and the half-manticore baby were also children - while Cole was 117 years old.
- And likewise the Season 6 finale has Leo's murder of Gideon counted as "a great evil" that's enough to reset the balance between the two worlds. Even though Gideon was attempting to murder a baby, and the act helped reset the worlds to their proper place. So the show is always aware of that morally grey zone, while the rules of magic are rigid. Elsewhere, there are other characters who were evil that turned good.
- Why did the elders give Phoebe Coop as an apology? Shouldn't they had given something to Piper instead since they had bothered her the most? It felt like kinda wrong to give a perfect lover as a gift.
- Considering the above with Phoebe and Cole, it's actually quite fitting. Phoebe has a history of falling for guys both good and bad and simply not being cut out for whatever relationship she's in when it came down to it, so once everything wears on her to the point she just wants to write columns and find a baby daddy, she gets a mail-ordered man from the sky. Really she's got the most superficial happy ending of the sisters, if you think about it. And Piper? There's nothing the Elders could give her that Denise Dowse as the Angel of Destiny didn't conditionally curb-stomp when she agreed to freeze Leo instead of having him killed off.
- I think that's a bit unfair towards Phoebe's [completely valid] career choice. After all, column writing was good to her - in fame & fortune if nothing else - and acted as her humanity chain during her Queen of the Underworld arc, not to mention putting her Psych degree to good use. Aside form that its also implied she was pre-destined for something like it anyways with her Empathy power. As for the baby thing, well she has always been good with babies & she was getting to "that point" in her life....
- It wasn't necessarily her career choice itself that I was attempting to bring attention to, in fact I could've left it out entirely. It was part of the fact, though, of what she became in good time due to her string of failed relationships and, yes, getting to "that point" in her life. She basically wanted to be a mother so badly she occasionally jeopardized her magical duties to have more time to do so, and finding love with a cupid who was explicitly sent for the purpose…kind of underwhelming compared to Piper and Leo, and even Paige and Henry (as he had to actually earn his way, being a Muggle and all).
- How about the fact that Phoebe and Coop decided they were in love and got married just because Future!Wyatt called him Uncle Coop? 'Here's your We're Sorry guy, don't spend time getting to know him before marrying him?'
- Who's to say they didn't? A season 9 fanfic did explore a lot of relationship issues between the two, Coop never having experienced one from the inside before. Phoebe knows perfectly well that the future can change and she learned her lesson with Dex.
- And a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the wedding scene. You can see that Piper is pregnant, which obviously is just them not having to hide Holly Marie Combs's. But that indicates they're getting married at least a few months later after figuring things out.
- After the business with Piper and Leo, it's possible the Elders realised just how much shit they'd put the sisters through in trying to separate them for so long. Paige and Kyle were likewise separated when he became a whitelighter. So maybe that was their way of trying to make it up for all the heartbreak they'd caused the sisters over the years. At the time Coop is sent down, Paige is already with Henry, so Phoebe is the only sister still single and she's the one who's had the most trouble juggling romance with her Charmed duties (her and Cole were forbidden and the rest of her boyfriends were mortals she had to keep magic secret from).
- And another possible reason is that the sisters have to reproduce in order for there to be a next generation of demon hunters. So the Elders noticed how the process seemed to be taking forever for Phoebe and enlisted a literal love expert to help it along.
- Considering the above with Phoebe and Cole, it's actually quite fitting. Phoebe has a history of falling for guys both good and bad and simply not being cut out for whatever relationship she's in when it came down to it, so once everything wears on her to the point she just wants to write columns and find a baby daddy, she gets a mail-ordered man from the sky. Really she's got the most superficial happy ending of the sisters, if you think about it. And Piper? There's nothing the Elders could give her that Denise Dowse as the Angel of Destiny didn't conditionally curb-stomp when she agreed to freeze Leo instead of having him killed off.
- It's pretty well known that the Elders really don't like it when their Whitelighters date their charges. Paige had to be hidden after she was born. However, in the last season there's a a half-Whitelighter witch from Britain, trying to woo Paige. Why does he get a free pass? Also, why does he get to use magic against mortals without the law of three affecting him?
- Had Simon actually done real damage to Henry or managed to steal Paige from him, we maybe could've seen problems with the Powers That Be. Besides, they've mellowed out since Piper and Leo proved a point.
- Maybe the British Elders are a bit more relaxed...
- Well, the Elder who convinced the others to allow Piper and Leo to marry was Gideon, so it being a British thing is looking fairly plausible.
- Well Paige can't have been the first one. It had to have happened before. Maybe the Elders reacted so badly to Sam and Patty because Patty was the mother of the Charmed Ones. Alternately once word got out that one of the Charmed Ones was half-whitelighter, other halfbreeds might have stepped forward.
- Paige says as much herself one time. It's only her theory, but she thinks that the Elders eased up on their views once she became necessary to fulfill the Power of Three. Clearly, if Paige was conceived in the first place, the Elders aren't foolproof at preventing the conception. It's entirely possible that his parents kept him hidden (maybe gave him up for adoption like Paige's parents did, or bound his powers so that the Elders wouldn't see or sense him), and he didn't "come out," as it were, as half-whitelighter until after Paige became a Charmed One and Wyatt became the Chosen One. Once two of their heaviest hitters were half-whitelighter, the Elders couldn't exactly keep saying it was forbidden anymore. (I mean, they could, and probably would, but it would be a lot harder to take them seriously.) If you want to really read between the lines, that could have also sparked his interest in Paige as a romantic option in the first place (with all the oracles he mentioned being his way of confirming it was a possibility or just an outright lie): thanks to her example, he was finally free to be himself.
- The reason the Elders disapproved of Patty's affair was because she was supposed to be training her daughters to save the world from demons - and an affair with the man who was not the father of those daughters would be considered a conflict of interest. They probably couldn't give a rat's ass about what the whitelighters of witches who didn't have powerful destinies.
- And Chris sleeping with a potential charge in Season 6 doesn't get much more than a stern look from Leo - so it seems more like it was Patty and Sam that was taboo.
- My memory is a little foggy since, specially about secondary characters but, Paige's Avatar-hating boyfriend becoming a whitelighter/angel or whatever they made him. I mean why? don't his intentions matter? He didn't do anything because he wanted to do something good, he was 110% just out to get revenge on his parents and just out of luck he did a good thing. What about when he tried to kill Leo just because he was an Avatar? he doesn't want to kill the Avatar that killed his parents, he want's to kill AN Avatar, period, in fact not even that, he wants them all dead. What kind of message is that? it's like an orphan going on a killing spree on white/black/Asian/etc. because their killer was of that race. So you're a racist douche, but you did manage to do one good thing even if it was by accident and for the wrong reasons and intentions, so we're gonna reward you.
- The Elders didn't like The Avatars and were against their plan. Brody tried to stop their plan and killed an Avatar, greatly weakening their collective power. He effectively put off the Avatars' plot for another few years. The Elders rewarded him for that.
- By that point it's been made obvious that the elders are morally reprehensible at times. Doing things that fit their agenda rather than what is actually good.
- Agreed. Also, he became a whitelighter. Piper and Leo dated, why couldn't Paige and Brody do the same?
- I guess the reason for Paige an Brody not being together is that the Elders didn't want a second pairing of Piper and Leo on their hands. Leo and Piper have a large set of Berserk Buttons relating to each other. Including Leo going on rampages and killing Elders in the name of love. As for Brody being a Whitelighter, he was a very decent man, so I Handwave it to being that.
- I think on some level, Paige knew it wasn't going to work out too. Kyle's obsession with stopping the Avatars led to Beta being killed, and him infecting her and her sisters with a curse. Any time it was a choice between his revenge or his girl, Kyle chose the former. By this point, Paige had learned her lesson with Richard.
- Paige can be sad about his death and them not being together, while also recognising that he's not the healthiest person for her to be dating.
- The casting choices for loads of male characters in the show: an ordinate amount of them are lantern-jawed white guys with a suspiciously similar set of features. This (white!) troper has a hard time keeping male characters straight because they all look so similar. I wasn't even sure who was Andy and who was Jeremy in the pilot episode sometimes. What's up with that, casting directors? Did you think the people watching the show had really limited tastes in what they considered attractive?
- Now that you mention it, this troper can't remember a single love interest of the sisters that was ethnic in any discernible way apart from the Character Of the Day Mark Chang for Piper (S1) and even he ended up passing on by the end of the episode...
- There was Mason, Paige's boss's son who was black in S4 though only in one episode.
- This is a meta question, so I'll provide a meta-answer: The target demographic of this show is white young adults, who are likely to either be attracted to other white men, or identify with them more easily than if they were some minority. They already had their Token Minority in Daryl, so there was no need to fix what wasn't broken in regards to this show being the vierwer's fantasy.
- Racism. The answer is Racism. Plain and simple.
- To elaborate on the above, interracial couplings are still a sensitive issue in the media. Generally it depends on the race of the woman. Notice how rare it is for an incidental mixed race couple to appear where the woman is white. Token Minority Couple and Like Goes with Like exist for a reason (a kiss between Will Smith and Charlize Theron was cut from Hancock because of this, and a white actress couldn't be Will's love interest in Hitch either). So either out of a desire to avoid any headaches from Moral Guardians complaining about their white women being 'stolen' or sheer obliviousness (since they had Darryl filling the Token Minority quota) they had the majority of love interests be white.
- It's casting generally attractive young men for the time period of the show, likely to appeal to the teen/young adult audience the show was mostly aimed at.
- Season 4, a de-powered Cole buys a gun for protection, which in the Halliwell Manor makes perfect sense because demons really like to show up and take potshots at the residents. Yet everyone acts like it's this terrible thing. He bought it to shoot at demons, and the sisters kill demons (oh, sorry, "vanquish", but it's really killing) regularly. Shooting one probably won't kill it, but doing so would give Cole a chance to get out of the line of fire, not to mention the sound of a gunshot would bring the rest of the house running. So, what the hell?
- Knowing the sisters, they'd try to rationalize it in some way such as, "Making demons/warlocks/blacklighters spontaneously combust is different than shooting them". Or it's possible they just didn't like the idea of Cole having anything dangerous at his disposal.
- Maybe it was a warning that guns are bad?
- Andy tried using a gun against a demon, and got an energy ball to the face for his trouble while accomplishing absolutely nothing other than to annoy said demon a little. Maybe Phoebe didn't want her boyfriend risking his life trying to attack a demon with a weapon that was completely useless against them.
- Well, Cole may have been reformed at the time, but he'd still killed before and had been evil for a long time. It's not unreasonable that the idea of him having a gun was worrying. Furthermore, it's not as if it would have done anything against demons. It was established that mortal weapons don't exactly kill them, such as with the Siren. It also got Andy killed in the end. Basically, there were pretty much no good reason for Cole to have a gun, but a lot of reasons why he shouldn't.
- The characters aren't supposed to be rolling in cash - they often talk about the problem of having enough money to maintain and keep the manor, among other things. Yet in every episode, they're shown wearing spanking-new clothing and jewelry. They apparently even have enough money to replace Piper's shoes every time they get a stain. Sorry, but if you can afford to be a fashion plate 24/7, I seriously doubt you're in very dire financial straits.
- I you think about it, that's probably why they're in such financial straits, and that Grandfather Clock won't just fix itself every time they vanquish a demon with it...
- It's also not incredibly difficult to be a fashion plate, especially in a place like San Francisco. Between outlet malls, vintage clothing shops, and the internet, it's pretty easy to find clothes on the cheap (The same question was asked about Kurt Hummel on Glee.)
- Apparently, you've never been so poor you had to choose between new clothes and paying the bills. If the sisters still have enough money to buy new clothes or jewelry (even "on the cheap") whenever they get a stain in something or just feel the urge to buy something new, they really have no room to complain about not having enough money to pay the bills.
- Let's face it, the Halliwells are a little more vain than you'd think in some ways given that they're the main characters in a relatively successful show. The amount of times they get turned evil or end up holding the Idiot Ball should show that a bit.
- The sisters also end up with reasonably high paying jobs. Piper runs a night club, Phoebe is an incredibly successful columnist - someone who gets billboards and ads on the street is bound to be getting a high salary - and Paige had a job as a social worker for the fourth season. Maybe Victor sends the sisters some money as a way of being more involved in their lives too? Plus notice how the clothes don't become that fashionable and unlimited until the third and fourth seasons where the sisters have been working for some amount of time. And maybe Prue had life insurance?
- This troper found it harder to believe that a retiree and a waitress could hold on to such property, so I always guessed the house was grandmothered in as it stayed with them for generations.
- It could add another layer onto Penny's numerous failed marriages and engagements; perhaps she was motivated to marry someone with enough money to keep the house in the family.
- The house belonged to the family so they didn't have to pay the rent, but property taxes would still be counted. On the other hand, the sisters' great-grandparents (P. Baxter and husband) seemed decently wealthy, what with the speakeasy and all; both of Baxter's cousins seemed to be doing well themselves and died unmarried and childless, so their money must have returned to the main line at some point. One of such moments being shortly before Prue's birth, as P. Bowen reincarnated into her – that would account for Grams and Patty affording the house and three children's upbringing (besides, Victor was employed and still part of the picture at the time). So, in short, probably the sisters had some inheritance that helped them out with the property taxes and all; the rest they could spend for themselves: except for very short time spans, at least two of them were always employed at the same time.
- And before she changed careers to become a chef, Piper worked in a bank. Bank jobs pay very well, so presumably Piper was smart and saved up enough money to live on while she transitioned into becoming a chef. Beforehand she seemed confident that she could keep the house when Prue was planning to move in with Roger.
- In Season 2's "The Devil's Music", they are in financial trouble because P3 is struggling and Prue has to borrow money from a millionaire. But that episode's plot involving Dishwalla playing at the club and drawing a large crowd helps put the club on the map and ensure the money is regularly coming in. Prue is also very prominent in Bucklands, and she is bound to be getting a decent salary. The only time it was just one resident of the Manor employed was that early window in Season 4 before Paige moves in, and it's implied that they sell off a lot of Prue's things, including her car. And when Paige moves in, she's working full time until Season 5, by which point Phoebe is a local celebrity and therefore getting a higher salary. And Phoebe being famous probably also helped P3, since she goes there regularly. So between P3 and Ask Phoebe, there was always a significant stream of money flowing in. Notice that Phoebe doesn't get a car of her own until Season 5, as she can now afford one thanks to her advice column. Having Leo and/or Paige available to orb across town is likewise going to cut down on travel costs.
- I you think about it, that's probably why they're in such financial straits, and that Grandfather Clock won't just fix itself every time they vanquish a demon with it...
- I never understood all the hype over Wyatt. Supposedly, it was because he was "thrice blessed" as a whitelighter/witch/charmed. But Chris was conceived when Leo was an Elder, so shouldn't he be more powerful and important than Wyatt?
- It's mentioned in the first season that the first born is always the strongest, which is why Prue is superwitch (and why Billie has stronger powers than Christie). Also, Wyatt - like Phoebe - was born in the house, on top of the Nexus, which gives him a boost too, I believe. So all in all, Wyatt still has more going for him than Chris does. Besides, we don't even know if the Elder thing is taken into account.
- Wyatt is powerful because he has a prophecy about his birth, the same reason why the Charmed Ones are charmed. Chris is weaker because the universe itself views him as The Unfavorite and gives him no respect, so Wyatt gets extra powers for being the subject of a meaningless prophecy and Chris's Elder heritage is made to not count.
- Wyatt is the first child ever born from a union between a whitelighter and a Charmed One, meaning he's more special from a mythological point of view if not a genetic one. But it's not as though Chris isn't powerful - since he's the first time travelling witch that's still able to use their powers in the past. Perhaps his Elder heritage allowed that to happen, and that's why he was chosen to go back?
- The showrunners answered this: Elder is a position, not a species. Being an Elder didn't make Leo's genetics more powerful than before.
- Whitelighters are, by definition, dead. So how can anyone be half-whitelighter? Doesn't that imply that they're half-dead?
- No - Whitelighters are created by Elders giving the souls of the deceased a new body with whitelightery powers to do their bidding, so they are, in fact, alive (again).
- Which leads to something that's bugged me: why don't the Elders restore whitelighters who have been killed, like Natalie? Is there some kind of rule about it?
- Hmmm, that gives me an idea...(to WMG!)
- It's possible that the Elders respect death to some extent and continuously saving fallen Whitelighters would be cheating it...even though they were already dead, in a sense.
- Maybe after they've been whitelighters for a certain amount of time, they're allowed to 'retire' and go into the afterlife. If they fall in battle then the Elders allow them to move on.
- Or more simply there's no known cure for Darklighter poison. It kills Whitelighters pretty much instantly, and there's very little opportunity they have to study it. The only way to save a poisoned Whitelighter would be to have another one heal them. So part of the poison is that it removes the Whitelighter's chance of coming back to life.
- No - Whitelighters are created by Elders giving the souls of the deceased a new body with whitelightery powers to do their bidding, so they are, in fact, alive (again).
- Sometimes the Book of Shadows frustrated me. Occasionally they went for Rule of Funny/Drama/Cool over basic common logic. For example, the spell to Track a Banshee. Could none of the previous witches that wrote in the book have written a little note in the margin that said, "Warning: This spell will turn you into a dog?"
- Perhaps none of the previous witches had any experience with the spell. It's possible they just plucked it from another witch friend of theirs and knew that it could track banshees but didn't know how.
- The spell might be different depending on who uses it, or the witch who made it had a dog who she enchanted, and since the sisters didn't had one, it did the next best thing.
- That doesn't make any sense. If the witch had a dog she wouldn't need to cast the spell, the dog would be able to hear the banshe's call and be able to track it down.
- It would be able to hear the Banshee, no doubt, but the spell could have been to enchant the dog to seek it to stop the havoc
- Perhaps back when the spell was written, it was common knowledge that dogs could track banshees. The witch writing it assumed her descendants would know. Or perhaps it was written as a Power of Three spell so the witch couldn't cast it and know what it would do. Just like when Paige wrote a spell to track the Sea Hag - the only way to track her was with a mermaid so the spell turned Phoebe into one.
- And the spell for the succubus in Season 2 turned Prue into a man so she could attract it.
- Or a sadder possibility - the witch who added the spell to the book cast it...and ended up stuck as a dog for eternity because she didn't have any siblings to turn her back. So she could never warn people of the consequences.
- Okay, in the episodes involving Valhalla and the Valkyries, where the heck are the Muggle female warriors of the past or modern times? Is the show saying women cannot be brave enough to earn the honor of helping fight in the final battle? Or do the brave Muggle women just become Valkyries who have extreme dominatrix tendencies running through them?
- I assumed they became Valkyries, or they were just not shown (it was probably a big island).
- Valhalla appears to be quite sexist. One of the Valkyries asks how they control men in the real world. Presumably any female warriors become Valkyries. They don't seem surprised when the sisters show up pretending to be them so there must be a lot more than the ones we see. None of them questions the whereabouts of the one Chris killed so there's probably hundreds. If there are hundreds of warriors then there must be more Valkyries to train them.
- After rewatching All Hell Breaks Loose I've just wondered about this one thing. How the hell did Alice, the woman who shot Piper, managed to sneak a rifle in broad daylight right through police notice? It wasn't like she was in the crowd. She got pass the blockade the police made and climbed onto a van. How could none of them have noticed a woman with a rifle running pass them and climbing onto a van until it was too late? And if say she happened to have kept that rifle in the van the whole time and got it from there instead, why didn't the police think to check out what was in the van in the first instance? I know it is difficult to deal with a whole crowd of people, but these were just a group of fans and haters. There wasn't an indication that they were rioters so they shouldn't have been so distracted to not have notice a woman running pass them with a rifle.
- Alice claimed she was a witch. She was nuts but perhaps she did have powers. Maybe she cast a spell to distract everyone while she stole the rifle and quickly got onto the van to shoot Piper. A Wizard Did It.
- Actually, a scene before that has the Source warning Cole that one of the two sisters remaining above ground will die. While the next episode does reveal that he has an Oracle who can predict things, there's nothing to say he couldn't have arranged for a demon to teleport to Alice, get her a weapon from one of the cops and distract everyone else so she could shoot Piper. Possibly he had a human do it to make the sisters more reluctant to fight back.
- And if you take a look at that scene, the van appears to be Alice's. Both it and the rifle have these flower stickers on it, and she's given a hippie-ish wardrobe. So in that event, she could assemble the gun inside the van, use the scope to get a good sense of where in the house the sisters were without anyone paying too much attention, climb onto the roof and shoot all within a good ten seconds before the police noticed. Perhaps there were other people trying to get past the barricades that were being held back and taking up everyone's attention that no one noticed Alice until it was too late. They might not have thought to keep an eye on her since, after she's thrown out of the house, she just walks back out looking sad and not showing any signs that she wants to force her way in again.
- Yes the van is Alice's. It's parked outside the house with the news van when they're first exposed, and Alice is trying to get Darryl to let her in, so she was already there before the police blockade. There's a shot of the van before Piper gets shot, implying Alice assembled the gun inside beforehand.
- In the episode Wedding from Hell. There is a male stripper who gets devoured alive by four demons. Why didn't the Charmed ones try to rescue him? Doesn't strippers count as innocents? Instead they watched in horror through a window.
- They probably came to the sad realization that barging in on a half-dozen demons in the middle of a feeding frenzy would likely result in their deaths, especially since they were still inexperienced with their powers.
- Season 7, "Ordinary Witches": How come is it Ronnie, the husband, which is expelled out of their home when it was his wife who was cheating on him (and basically admitting it)?
- I got it: she wasn't cheating on him; he used Phoebe's power of premonition by accident, which is used for seeing things in the future. Her "affairs" were actually men she'd sleep with after she dumped her husband (and one of these men is Phil, who is either Ronnie's brother or a - former - best friend).
- "Premonition" according to Wiktionary (my italics):
1. A clairvoyant or clairaudient experience, such as a dream, which resonates with some event in the future.
2. A strong intuition that something is about to happen (usually something negative, but not exclusively).
2. A strong intuition that something is about to happen (usually something negative, but not exclusively).
- No, Ronnie's wife was indeed cheating on him. Phoebe's power allows her to also see the past, when he picked up his bowling trophy he had a vision of his wife sleeping with his bowling buddy. The wife was upset because she thought he was spying on her. She's clearly in the wrong but she's faking outrage at Ronnie so as to deflect from her own guilt.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: How did Ronnie and his wife solve their argument if he forgot about it? (I mean, whether his wife cheated on him or not.)
- So, other than a "c" or if you're lucky an "o", how do you expect to get a different letter with peeling an apple and putting the resulting skin on water?
- A "u" of course! Joking aside, it did seem like a pretty rigged reading. Maybe if the first piece didn't form a letter, they just kept putting more in? Two more pieces and they could probably form any letter.
- You could also get an S, an L if the peel bent right, probably a D, an easily seen G if you had a suiter named George, maybe a J, etc. The human mind looks for patterns in things - it's why we see shapes in clouds.
- The sisters adjust the disguises so that only family will be able to see through them, but when Phoebe & Dex get married in "Rewitched," he doesn't see through it. Does the spell only apply to people who were around when they cast it?
- Marriage doesn't automatically make people family and they got married under a spell anyway.
- Presumably the spell wasn't as general as "only family". What about distant relatives that thought they were dead? It's more likely that they cast it for just themselves, the boys and Victor.
- And presumably after Billie was welcomed into the fold, they adjusted the spell to include her as well. Think of it like on Facebook you can turn off Chat for all friends - and then make individual exceptions.
- Having gained Phoebe's power of premonition, shouldn't Zankou have known about the sisters' plan to vanquish Nexus in him? It was really anti-climactic to see him concoct and brilliantly execute crafty plans only then to witness his fall to this rather obvious trap in the end...
- Perhaps the fact that it is a Charmed power means that it was rigging things slightly in the sisters' favor. Perhaps the magic could sense that Zankou wasn't its true owner, and resisted giving him premonitions that might prevent them from stopping him.
- The premonition power is passive, while telekinesis and freezing are active, supporting the above theory.
- In "The Witch Is Back" the girls are able to resurrect Melinda Warren because they're related to her. Why don't they try to revive Patty? Penny I can understand not working because she died of natural causes, but Patty was killed.
- It's a temporary spell. The sisters already know the personal gain consequences and not to mess with the natural order of things. Bringing Melinda into the future was specifically to stop Mathew Tate, and it wasn't a permanent resurrection; only temporary help. Phoebe does briefly consider trying to stop Patty's death when they travel to the past, but she soon realises it could change the future in ways that might be disastrous. Phoebe even knows it's wrong as she does it, so it's a sort of reinforced value that such deaths should be respected.
Comparison to Buffy
- What bothers this troper is that yeah, Charmed wasn't the best show, but it was at least entertaining. Why are people always calling this like the badder cousin of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, why are they compared at all as if Charmed was copying Buffy?
- Same era, basically. Same network. Supernatural show with female leads. It's only natural for people to see a resemblance. Heck, this troper sees Supernatural in a similar realm to Charmed, because it deals with various supernatural/occult topics with the leads being siblings carrying on a family line, and also, same line of networks.
- Which is disappointing, as beyond a few superficial similarities, Charmed and Buffy are two very different shows.
- According to Wikipedia, Charmed was created because the network saw how popular Buffy was and decided to create a supernatural-themed show of their own.
- Same goes for either show and Supernatural, but that's never stopped imaginative viewers from seeing crossovers.
- Well Wikipedia isn't entirely reliable, because that contradicts what Constance M Burge says in some of the DVD special features; she says she was inspired by The Craft, as well as her own personal experiences. And the networks apparently didn't think the witchcraft concept was a good sell until she made the characters sisters.
- What's more is that Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the other witch show Sabrina the Teenage Witch didn't have much faith from their networks. Buffy wasn't expected to be much more than an underground cult thing (hence the short first season), while Sabrina was not considered a safe bet (the network was favouring the Clueless series as the headline programming). In the late 90s, Urban Fantasy was just not mainstream, which is why these shows were such Sleeper Hits.
- Same era, basically. Same network. Supernatural show with female leads. It's only natural for people to see a resemblance. Heck, this troper sees Supernatural in a similar realm to Charmed, because it deals with various supernatural/occult topics with the leads being siblings carrying on a family line, and also, same line of networks.
Prue, the Hypocrite
- Seriously, season three had Prue being a major hypocrite.
- Examples, please. Aside from the "Brendan and Cole" and "Idiot Ball over Cole's love" examples.
- Specifically the episode when her former high school bf Tom turns out to be a demon and is going around killing people. Phoebe even calls her out on the fact that they're saving a human turned demon even though a few episodes earlier Prue refused to listen to Phoebe about Cole being half-human and half-demon.
- Ah, yes. Tom. That was the episode Prue found out Phoebe faked Cole's death too, right? I think he was the example of the same hypocrisy I was referring to with Brendan and Cole that Phoebe actually called him out on. In fact, like you said, it's even worse. Cause he's actually going around killing people. And she doesn't even love him anymore, so why is she even doing this? Really, compared to Tom, Brendan is just background when it comes to Prue's hypocrisy over Cole.
- I don't think it's hypocrisy. Brendan had never done anything evil. Prue specifically said he hadn't killed anyone so he could be saved. He was also just days away from no longer being a warlock. Tom had been human once and then was forced into becoming a demon and could also be turned back. The Cole becoming human thing wasn't really broached much in season three since the episode he brings it up he has to go back under cover but I think that Prue would have been very welcoming of a completely human Cole seeing as how she was willing to say she trusted him towards the end of the season.
- A minor one but in "Chick Flick" it really bugged me when Prue says to Phoebe she's not supposed to see her favourite movie. Seriously piss off Prue she can see whatever film she wants. And then again when Prue says "we so have to monitor your viewing habits". That just really bugged me.
- Character Development. Prue had to come to grips and accept that Phoebe wasn't the irresponsible "Freebie" anymore that had to be scoffed at or ordered around all the time to avoid wrecking things up. Annoying bossy comments like this were actually stock and trade at one time. Not sure what's exactly hypocritical about this one, though.
The Cleaners
- I fuckin' hated the CLEANERS!!!
- And how could there be a future where magic was exposed to humans if there were Cleaners already existing?
- Oh, that's just the tip of the iceberg. If the Cleaners already existed, how could Andy, Daryl, Victor or any other mortal know about magic? Their job is to prevent exposure period. They felt the need to intervene when Sheridan stumbled onto something magical. Why? Cause she's law enforcement? So are Andy and Daryl. Plus, one Cleaner specifically stated he had been watching over the sisters when they first got their powers. ...Uh-huh. And then there's "All Hell Breaks Loose" - an episode where the sisters are exposed and neither good nor evil know how to "get out of this mess."
- Andy, Darryl, and Victor weren't setting out to expose or harm magic in anyway. Sheridan was dead set that the Charmed Ones were evil people worth busting and never took a second to think of any other possibilities even after she stalked them as they were breaking a curse. It's somewhat implied she thought making such a bust would get her promoted and this expedited her gung-ho one-track mind state. Also, Tempus still lived during "All Hell Breaks Loose", so they may not have felt the need to interfere.
- Maybe the Cleaners had never done a job that big before. Since this is the early 2000s, suddenly with more live television and the internet allowing for information to be shared quicker, they were at a loss for what to do. In "All Hell Breaks Loose", Prue and Piper are caught vanquishing Shax on live television, meaning millions of people had seen it within minutes. And possibly others all over the world before long. So the situation might have been incredibly unusual, and the Cleaners might not have known if they had the power to do something on that scale - memory wipe the whole world? The Elders came up with Tempus as a solution that would conveniently solve everything - reset time for everyone on earth with minimal headaches. Possibly after that incident, the Cleaners were given more power and authority to account for the new ways magic could be exposed.
- There are actually a couple of possible explanations provided in the Cleaners' debut episode:
- They say the Charmed Ones have a good track record of cleaning up their own exposure risks in the past. So any time magic risked being exposed, the sisters did a good enough job of covering it up that the Cleaners didn't have to intervene. Something like a dragon being orbed out of the TV was completely unprecedented.
- The Cleaners couldn't have intervened in "All Hell Breaks Loose" because, as Piper said, if they erase the Charmed Ones then they give evil the upper hand - which they can't do if they're neutral. The only way to solve the exposure risk there would be to erase Prue and Piper. So the Elders considered that eventuality and went with using Tempus instead.
- And as for the future in "Morality Bites", the Elders knew that the sisters would be going. So maybe it wasn't a literal Bad Future but a big warning designed to make them aware of what could happen if they continue to use magic selfishly. It would be better to teach them to use magic reliably on their own, without the safety net of the Cleaners.
- And how could there be a future where magic was exposed to humans if there were Cleaners already existing?
- Y'know having the Charmed world lose the Masquerade might have made it better.
- The drawback is that without fear of exposure, both sides can just use magic willy-nilly. Without having to bother and hide themselves, all manner of demons and whatnot would be free to constantly attack anyone and everyone. There are only so many witches to defend humanity.
- And considering the number of demons that have required Power of Three vanquishes in the past...
- Have to agree there. Superhero comic book worlds don't exactly last very long when there are too many more competent heels than faces. This would be the gothic equivalent.
- They tried that one time and Piper died. And then to fix it Prue died. I don't blame them for not wanting to try again.
- One of Paige's desires in "My Three Witches" is for magic to be out in the open. And as demons don't need to hide anymore, they become even more aggressive and regular with their attacks.
- The abovementioned reasons settle it for the good guys, but what's in it for the evil? Are humans Not So Harmless to them after all?
- The Masquerade gives them a couple of advantages: a) good witches trying to stop them are also trying to preserve their cover, meaning they have to hold back somewhat. If they don't have to worry about innocents seeing magic, they can go full force with it. b) A lot of demons and evil beings rely on messing with mortals or other similar things to enhance their power, so if they don't know about the threats, they can't protect against them or hunt them down to pre-empt them. If magic were completely exposed, the world would likely turn into an all out war zone between good and evil, and there's likely plenty of demons that don't want to have to be fighting for their lives every day.
- The drawback is that without fear of exposure, both sides can just use magic willy-nilly. Without having to bother and hide themselves, all manner of demons and whatnot would be free to constantly attack anyone and everyone. There are only so many witches to defend humanity.
Witches, what are they good for?
- Since witches can't use their power for personal gain, about the only thing they can do with it is do good and fight evil. Yet the vast majority of witches who aren't the Charmed Ones are so weak they tend to drop like flies whenever evil actually shows up. What, then, are witches actually good for if they're so useless?
- We only see the ones that are so weak they become demonic cannon fodder. The ones that are strong enough to vanquish demons on their own are self-reliant enough they don't need the Charmed Ones (who the show focuses on). The witches we see remind me a little of the Paranet from The Dresden Files, a large group of people with very little power, but powerful enough to be visible to evil and for that they need some form of protection.
- To be fair, not all the witches are useless, some of them were just unlucky enough to come up against threats even the Charmed Ones had difficulty with.
- And not to mention, sometimes personal gain can be cheated, if the witch is specific enough in what they want.
- They can do good things with the craft - and isn't the idea of Whitelighters being assigned to make sure the witches use their powers right?
- We only see the ones that are so weak they become demonic cannon fodder. The ones that are strong enough to vanquish demons on their own are self-reliant enough they don't need the Charmed Ones (who the show focuses on). The witches we see remind me a little of the Paranet from The Dresden Files, a large group of people with very little power, but powerful enough to be visible to evil and for that they need some form of protection.
Self-defense skills, why doesn't anyone have them?
Demon society is pretty dog-eat-dog, so you'd think some of them would have learned to dodge those lethal fireballs of flaming death they're so fond of throwing at each other, not to mention phials of liquid thrown by young women. Also, good beings tend to get preyed on by evil a lot, so you'd think they'd have learned a few self-defense skills themselves, especially the ones who are supposed to be protecting something important from evil. (See: Nymphs Just Want To Have Fun.)- A very good questions considering projectile powers such as fireballs and energy balls don't seem to fly at any super amazing speed. What makes it even more idiotic is that so many demons prefer to get in close, when they could simply snipe their targets from a distance, since pretty much anything coming out of the Underworld has some form of teleportation.
- Well with regards to the nymphs, they don't fear death or mind it - since they know they'll be reborn in nature at some point in the future. The nymphs also have the handy ability to immediately disappear into plants and reappear somewhere else. And only the nymphs themselves can reveal the Eternal Spring - their magic can summon it. So if a demon shows up wanting it, they can flee or refuse. If they get killed, no harm done because they'll be reborn and other nymphs will take their place.
- This might be some Wild Mass Guessing here, but it's possible that demon society has only just become that much more chaotic after the Source was killed. Perhaps things were a little more ordered, but once they had no evil overlord to answer to, loads more demons were jockeying for power. So these good beings like nymphs and leprechauns weren't used to being hunted down by lesser demons needing more power.
- That would be a pretty dangerous training in itself though. One failed dodge - and oops, you're vanquished... Which, in turn, requires a tremendous amount of mutual trust - something which might be in rather short supply among the demons.
- You could just use baseballs to practice.
- Cole could throw "low-voltage" energy balls on occasion, such as when he needed to non-lethally stop Fury!Piper from killing a guy, or when he was training Paige (in Phoebe's body) in "Enter the Demon." Those inflicted no damage beyond very minor pain, so the demons don't really have any excuse not to train themselves like that.
Why doesn't anybody seem to care that the Halliwells are always blowing things up?
While a neighbor brushed off the loud bangs and whatnots at the Halliwell house as wild parties, surely somebody (such as a window repair person) would start getting suspicious after having to repair ballistic damages for the gazillionth time. Seriously, why hasn't anyone sicced the bomb squad on them?- Because the guy fixing the damage is Leo. Dan Gordon even asked him if he didn't have any other house to fix, and Leo just sharply answered no. And it says itself that Leo ain't ratting them out.
- And for the one thing Leo doesn't fix, the window repair man gets a healthy set of jobs, so why should he complain or report it if there's nothing overtly evil going on? It would be a bad business choice.
- There's a season 5 episode where Paige uses magic to repair the glass on the front door. Presumably they use magic to repair the more severe damages and that scoots around the personal gain clause since they're doing it to stop the neighbours asking questions. And if Leo can use his powers to mend the broken P3 sign then maybe he can also fix some of the damages around the house.
- In a big city there's always noise around. Some of the neighbours might not notice. And isn't Phoebe trained in martial arts? If the neighbours know that, maybe they assume that some of the sounds are just her practising?
- And who's to say they didn't cast a spell on the house to sound-proof it for everyone except themselves and their allies? It's not for personal gain if they're preserving The Masquerade.
- Their neighbour Denise in Season 7 says she assumed the noises were just a bunch of wild parties.
Why didn't the sisters' disguises in season 8 fall under personal gain?
While the sisters have been able to dodge the personal gain clause bullet now and again with clever wording, the forces that govern magic have proven themselves time and again to be nothing if not Lawful Stupid (Paige suffered consequences for repairing a shirt damaged in a fight with a demon!), and well... there's just no way to look at the spell they used in season eight as anything but personal gain. They gained way more out of it personally than Paige would have gained fixing that shirt, that's for sure.- Remember that part of their duties as Charmed Ones was to prevent exposure, and the feds came about (*snap*) that close to exposing them. The glamour spell (which was actually at the end of Season 7) was necessary, as was sticking with it into Season 8.
- Maybe it did but the comeback came from Billie seeing this act as big reason for her to side with her sister and take down the sisters.
- Depends on what you mean by Personal Gain. The sisters normally associate it with using magic to say get money for themselves or do chores. The glamouring spell just changed their appearances. What they intended to do was all up in the air. All the spell did was create the new identities. The spell didn't affect other people, just themselves.
- Going by the Wiccan Rule of Three - which is what this seems to come from - whatever energy a witch puts out into the world she gets back times three. So the new disguises did come with backfires - Piper getting mistaken for a wanted woman, Homeland Security busting them, and their faces all over the newspapers.
Gargoyles on Break
It was said Gargoyles awaken when the Source is above ground and keep him out of holy places like Churches. Except when Cole is the Source, he was able to enter the church for Phoebe and his wedding, before it was stopped for other reasons. But the fact still stands he entered.- Well, Cole was half-human, so maybe his disguise was just more effective than the old Source possessing someone. Maybe the gargoyles were all like, "Oh, it's just Cole, he's cool and totally not a demon anymore, let's let 'em pass without checking for evil magic?"
- Magic A Is Magic A? The Gargoyles come alive because the Source takes possession of a human's body, so he doesn't do a good job of hiding himself. Maybe Cole's human half helped conceal him from that kind of magic. Or the Seer might have come up with a spell that could protect him from that - since she was able to come up with a potion that prevented Phoebe from getting premonitions about him.
- And the first time, the Source didn't have the Seer helping him. He was getting visions from the Oracle, and when the Seer first appears, she is said to be more powerful. So with the Seer being an upper level demon, she's bound to have thought of anything and everything that would give the Source away.
Goodness=Order?
I saw a two-part episode where the sisters find themselves in an evil parallel universe where the sisters there were the villains and the villains (demons) are heroes. Somehow they cause a disturbance somewhere because when they return to their own universe it becomes TOO good, to the point that every little infraction results in severe punishment. For example, a police officer happily shot Phoebe in the stomach because her car was parked in the wrong space, while a doctor neglecting to save a pregnant Piper while she was hemorrhaging because he was too cheerful in trying to prevent the bleeding and even calling on the guards walking around the hospital [which, as you know, will willingly amputate the limbs of people simply for calling on their cell phones at a bad time] when Phoebe and Paige angrily demand they go back to the operating room to save their dying sister and baby. In addition, the sun is always out and its never night. What truly bothers me about this episode is that it equates excessive cheerfulness and willingness to murder for minor infractions with everything being too good, when it would have made much more sense with everything being TOO ORDERLY. This was supported when the trio finds out that their evil counterparts' universe was becoming too evil due to becoming extremely chaotic. So apparently it wasn't so much a moralistic battle of good vs. evil as it was a cosmic battle of order vs. chaos, which are two completely different concepts. Also, what did overwhelming goodness have to do with manipulating the sun's movements so that is stays up all day. Was the idea, Dark Is Evil meant to be taken literally?!- Of course it is: it's even overtly stated that black (and slutty) is practically the demonic dress code. I agree about the lawful vs. chaotic dichotomy, though. I would argue that Charmed see lawful as allied with good, and the same for evil and chaotic, but given how the Charmed Ones react to authority, and how well organized the underworld is (well, before the source was destroyed, anyway) ...
- You're over-thinking this. We generally associate following rules, not liking blood and using your indoor voice with "good," so the show showed what an excess of that would be like, instead of an excess of actual goodness (which would be kind of hard, considering this show's strict enforcement of Black-and-White Morality)
Paige is the problem?
It's perfectly understandable that Cole wanted to get a do-over and fix one point in his life where everything went wrong. What I don't really get is why he thinks meeting Paige is where it all went wrong. Yes, Paige was the most gung-ho about vanquishing him that episode and also the one who first suspected him but that was because he was possessed by the Source. Why not go back to when Phoebe was manipulated into stopping the Wizard from freeing him? Why not go back to when Phoebe asked him if he was hiding anything in Three Faces of Phoebe in case she could free him? Why not go back to the time that his demon half was vanquished and avoid getting hit then so there's no void to fill? Why not even go back to stop himself getting possessed in the first place? Why not go back to that time he was tricked into killing a witch and Phoebe gave up on him to explain what really happened and also to stick around so Prue didn't get killed and he didn't have to deal with Paige in the first place if she was that much of a problem? I'd ask why he went back to evil but I think I can guess in that without the power of three Cole was desperate to keep Phoebe alive and that always mattered more to him than his alignment.- It was yet another contrived circumstance to keep Cole on the "evil" side. Notice that whenever he has a chance to be good, either someone gets handed the Idiot Ball and his hopes are dashed, or some strange new magical disaster turns him evil.
- Perhaps Cole was just reeling from the fact that Paige had just ambushed him and tried to murder him in a particularly nasty way? He comes up with this plan in only a day, so he obviously wasn't thinking clearly.
- Cole wasn't exactly good at accepting blame either. He preferred to blame everything on Paige, because he couldn't accept that maybe his actions, past and present, had an impact on why the relationship failed, or that maybe Phoebe just didn't love him anymore. He wasn't really the pinnacle of sanity at that point either.
Why did a demon never attack the Charmed Ones in their sleep?
Virtually every demon has some sort of teleportation and projectile attack. They teleported into the manor all the time. One episode even showed them doing it at night. So why did none of them get the idea to wait till about 2 in the morning when they were asleep to sneak in and kill one of them. Kill one and you weaken the rest. Why?- Because they would die and the show would end?
- Well any demons that get that far don't live to tell the tale. The sisters are known by reputation. For example, they never consider just orbing into the Underworld with Leo and attacking the Source? He's known to be the most evil of all beings with unknown amounts of protection. The demons don't have access to a Book of Shadows or infinite resources of magic like the sisters so the most they have to go on is hearsay. They know that demons have tried and failed to kill the sisters for years. So any demon that just jumps into the manor without some kind of elaborate plan is just asking for a gruesome vanquish.
- Plenty of episodes did have demons just show up and attack them. Demons frequently teleported in to the house, many of them without any real plan to speak of other than attacking. They were almost immediately killed but demons kept coming. Even if you figure no one bothered to tell anyone else their attack plan, so no one knew that the consistent attack plan had been "show up, throw fire balls, hope they don't duck", eventually just by chance someone should have tried something different. Going against a greatly superior opponent (unless you had a great sense of honour, which doesn't seem to be a big demon thing), it would have made perfect sense to try attacking them when they're sleeping (the Charmed Ones didn't regularly stay up in shifts and, while the demons didn't know that for sure, they still had a greater chance of not running into them if they timed their attack at night especially if they did some surveillance). They wouldn't even have needed to throw a fireball at a sleeping Charmed One, they could just have planted a bomb in the house with a two second timer and teleported out. Obviously, from a Doylist position, it makes sense that they couldn't do it because you can't kill off the Charmed Ones. From a Watsonian position, I can't see a clear reason why evil didn't triumph over good years ago.
- Maybe the underworld is on a completely different time zone, and the demons just don't know when exactly they'll appear in the human world. And if you look at the history of the Charmed Ones, demons have either come at them in a melee or tried plotting from afar. The sisters have triumphed almost every time. And maybe some demons just want to live. They decide not to go after the sisters, and figure they'll be left alone.
- And the sisters aren't particularly aggressive when it comes to going after demons. It's normally in self defence - with demons coming after them first (except when Chris has them hunting demons in Season 6). There are millions of demons, and probably plenty who don't want anything to do with the Charmed Ones. We just see the ones that try coming after them. Note how in Season 8 the demons join forces to go after Billie because she's ruthlessly going around attacking them. The line is pretty clear - the Charmed Ones only kill the demons that are antagonising them or innocents.
- Demons also lack the same awareness of the situations as the audience does. We see demons coming close to kill the sisters. The others just hear about many enemies trying and failing spectacularly. The Power of Three is a guaranteed death sentence, and for the times the sisters have been killed, they've usually found a way to cheat death and come back.
- And note that in the Season 1 finale, Inspector Rodriguez gets caught off guard by not knowing which sister has what power. Even when he kills one or two of the sisters, the remaining one gets him because he doesn't know which to prepare for.
- Paige in Season 8 mentions casting a spell that cloaked the Manor, meaning darklighters couldn't just orb in (and even then, once the girl is outside the front door, they're able to get her). So maybe the house is protected by some kind of spell that keeps evil beings out, but because there are so many different ones it's hard to protect against them all. And protection spells can be tricky, as stated in "Styx Feet Under", with unforeseen personal gain consequences.
- Also, in "Baby's First Demon", The Crone instates a law that no demon should ever go after Wyatt again; because Piper's Roaring Rampage of Revenge was that scary for them. So most demons after Season 5 won't go near the Manor or the Halliwells directly because they fear what Piper will do to them. Most of the evil beings they encounter they just happen across while they're attacking other innocents.
- Well any demons that get that far don't live to tell the tale. The sisters are known by reputation. For example, they never consider just orbing into the Underworld with Leo and attacking the Source? He's known to be the most evil of all beings with unknown amounts of protection. The demons don't have access to a Book of Shadows or infinite resources of magic like the sisters so the most they have to go on is hearsay. They know that demons have tried and failed to kill the sisters for years. So any demon that just jumps into the manor without some kind of elaborate plan is just asking for a gruesome vanquish.
The Cleaners and Prue's death
- There are two episodes in Season 6 where The Cleaners are brought up as neutral agents whose sole purpose is to keep magic from being outed to the mortal world. A common criticism of the show is that Prue's death in the Season 3 finale could have been easily avoided had the Cleaners done their job correctly. This does seem to be valid reasoning, however what a lot of people forget is that time on Earth was reversed to the point where the fight between Prue, Piper and Shax in broad daylight was never captured on live television. So technically, the only people who remember the real reason behind Prue's death (not just Shax' attack but the whole time-reversal, sensationalised media-ordeal) is Phoebe, Cole and Leo. All Piper can recall is Shax' first attack in the house. It is only Leo, Phoebe and Cole who actually have the knowledge that Prue and Piper were once caught on tape doing vanquishing a demon in broad daylight. The only thing we know is that the time-reversal did not affect the underworld - as stated in the Season 3 finale. However, the Cleaners do not live in the underworld, so they never "sensed" that magic was exposed because time was ultimately reversed - meaning they cannot be blamed for not doing their job, because of something that never happened.
- The issue comes when you realize they only turned back time so they could undo the original exposure to magic. Why didn't the Cleaners step in to clean up the exposure at any time between Prue and Piper being caught on tape vanquishing Shax and Piper being shot? If they existed and had done their jobs properly, neither Piper nor Prue would've been killed. It would've been a minor adjustment for the writers (but made a huge difference in-universe) if they had just explained that the Cleaners were created after exposure resulted in the death of a Charmed One.
- The Cleaners do explain this in the episode, saying that the sisters had a good track record of covering up their own exposure risks by themselves - and it's just Wyatt summoning a dragon out of the TV was completely unprecedented. The reason they didn't intervene was because they had to stay neutral, and the only way to remove the exposure risk in "All Hell Breaks Loose" was erase Prue and Piper...which would shift the balance of power to evil. Using Tempus to just reset time was a solution that benefitted everyone, without them having to cover anything up.
Where did those Lord of the Rings-style Elves in Seasons 7 and 8 come from?
- Now I know coherent world building was never Charmed's strong suit but...in Season 5 Elves are introduced as an all-female race of diminutive ladies with bright green eyes who resemble female Leprechauns or Slavic household spirits. Yet, starting with the battle against Zankou in season 7 the magical community suddenly gains a tribe of beings (male and female) that resemble standard fantasy Wood Elves (tall, skinny, youthful, armed with bows) Since they only ever appear in the background, and so late in the series, it's never explained who or what they are supposed to be. Are they a different type of Elf from the little ones? Or are they supposed to be some other type of magical creature alltogether(if so, what?)
Chris's artfully styled hair
- Chris's hair changes constantly between episodes throughout Season 6. If he's so hyper-focused on saving Wyatt, how is he finding the time?
- Here's an idea: Evil Wyatt has a wild mane of hair, whereas Good Wyatt keeps his hair neat and short. Chris is probably a stylish man because it's a small rebellion against Evil Wyatt's fashion choices and a way of reminding himself of better days between them. However, he also has an inferiority complex towards Good Wyatt, which leads to him worrying about looking too much like a smaller and weaker version of Wyatt when his hair is short, so he constantly makes little changes, trying to find his own style and look.
