Charmed Season 2 Episode 13 Review: Breaking the Cycle

This Charmed review contains spoilers.

Charmed Season 2 Episode 13

This week’s Charmed answers questions nobody asked while still failing to reveal anything new. After relinquishing her demon powers, Macy searches the command center for black amber to regain her witch powers. While digging, the sisters accidentally trigger a lockdown protocol, and a magical Siri called The Guardian is activated. When they ask too many questions, security measures are activated, and they become trapped in a laser cage. A. Laser. Cage. The Elders were on one.

To deactivate the cage, the conveniently English Book of Elders says “speak the unspoken,” which the sisters interpret as, “tell secrets,” which they do. In reality, the sisters need to speak unspoken truths about themselves. Maggie confesses to feeling relief at Parker’s death. Mel admits she’s sick and tired of being the responsible one. Macy reveals that she sometimes feels like a third wheel, and that she doesn’t want to be one of three, she just wants to be one. This breaks the lock and reveals a door that takes them to the tree, which appears to be the source of not only life-giving black amber, but the other (dangerous) magic substances they’ve encountered this season.

I would’ve liked the show to spend a little more time unpacking what the women revealed. Macy’s admission is particularly important, as it pertains to both her relationship with her sisters, and her relationship with her magic. Instead it just… continues, leaving perfectly good character development on the floor.

What the sisters learn — though it seemed a given and is perhaps residual knowledge from the original series — is, they are not the first Charmed Ones but the latest in a long line. They’re also told by The Guardian (the magical Siri who is actually a Charmed One of days past?) The Power of Three destroys the sisterhood, and one of them will die. Macy has to decide whether she wants to drink the amber to regain her powers and they all have to decide together if they want the Power of Three and the fate that comes with it. The Guardian expresses hope that they can break the cycle and ultimately they decide to try.

The Guardian tells the sisters, “the power of three can set you free…” Which is what the Halliwells chanted to cast Power of Three spells in the original series. It’d be interesting to discover that this Charmed and the original take place in the same universe, and that the Halliwells were one of the past iterations of the Charmed Ones. I tried to see if their names were visible in the Book of Elders, but I didn’t spot them. I doubt they’d do it, but it would be fun to directly link the two series. What better way to pay homage to the original than to make that entire series canon in this universe and to allow those characters and their stories to have some influence, however indirect, on the current series. I digress.

read more: Charmed Season 3 Confirmed

Dark Harry contacts Harry in his dreams and convinces him to meet. Harry refuses to let the Charmed Ones come, assuming it’s a trap, and instead goes to Abigael for help… Again. She agrees, again, with the condition that he spend one unencumbered night with her. I don’t know if Abbie is really just that thirsty or if she’s playing a very long game to get Harry on a slab to sacrifice or something, but… it’s getting uncomfortable.

Harry and Abbie wind up in a town where everybody is suspended in time, and they find the young witch who made it happen accidentally when The Bad Guys tried to kidnap her. (Since all we have to go on is people in this group have a particular tattoo, I am forced to call them The Bad Guys because they’ve yet to be given a name.) When more Bad Guys show up to take the young witch, Abbie unleashes her newly acquired fire powers and obliterates them all. Afterwards, and back at home, Harry induces a dream state where he connects to his dark half.

Dark Harry proceeds to show Harry what the Bad Guys have been up to, like we haven’t seen the previous episodes, and reveals the Bad Guys aren’t collecting magic they’re stealing it. This is semantics, first of all. They’re still collecting magical creatures and items to steal the magic. Secondly, we been knew! This was established in episode four, and reiterated in episode eleven. I am truly baffled as to why it’s treated like brand new information.

Dark Harry says whoever controls his talisman controls him (which we know) and asks for Harry’s help to get free, offering to give up the Bad Guys’ plans in return. So Harry’s and Abbie’s romp through a random new England town was all leading up to that moment and it was Dark Harry saying, “I could use an assist.” They really wasted approximately 22 of my precious minutes to rehash some old shit, just so Dark Harry could make an underwhelming resurgence smh. But at least Abbie got to show off her fire-bending, I guess.

This season of Charmed is… very long. This show does not have enough plot to span 22 episodes and this episode makes that abundantly clear. Most episodes have filler, but this episode is almost all filler. Anything that can be described as plot takes up maybe six minutes of the episode and the rest is…  great gowns, beautiful gowns. If this episode had happened earlier in the season, it might have had an impact. Instead it just reiterates what we already know. Not every episode has to do something, but if it isn’t going to move the plot forward, it could at least be fun.

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