ATTENTION: this article contains SPOILER are Witches.
The power of three coincides with mine. For years fans of Witches have repeated these words like a mantra, thus trying to exorcise the lack of one of the most innovative and popular fantasy series of the 1990s and 2000s. Aaron Spelling made a cult product and gave generations of viewers the magic that everyone dreamed of having in their own homes, the family relationships that anyone would like to be able to establish with their sisters or brothers. When the first season of this fantasy made its debut on the small screen, no one could have imagined that it would eventually be placed in the top ten of the greatest television series of all time for the fantasy genre.
At the exact moment Prue, Piper and Phoebe Halliwell reunited in their old house at 1329 Prescott Street (amongst the dream houses of the TV series in which we all wanted to live), something awakened in us too. No magical power, unfortunately, just the desire to know that world that could have been ours too and stay and observe it for as long as possible. And somehow, we were accommodated. Eight seasons aired on The WB in America and, in Italy, on Rai2, although from a certain point on something in the series has changedhas transformed making little noise, but leaving the fans with the strange fear that Witches had lost its initial character.
Over time this feeling took shape and it was easier for viewers to discern the exact moment Charmed stopped being Charmed.
And no, let’s not talk about the premature death of Prue with the end of the third season, unfortunately due (as everyone knows by now) to irreconcilable differences between Shannen Doherty and part of the cast and the production sector of the series, although with her departure many things have changed in The WB fantasy. Between the third and fourth seasons, with her leaving as creator and executive producer of Constance M. Burge and with her entering Brad Kern in her place, also the internal structure Of Witches inevitably undergoes transformations. The personal life of the Halliwell sisters, to which Paige is added from that moment on, assumes a leading role in the main storyline and the backbone until then based on the alternation of a new demon for each episode, is alternated more often In presence of villain more demanding ones that the trio have to deal with more or less every mid-season.
And let’s not even talk about another of the problems associated with the abandonment of the original creator of the series. With the farewell of Constance Burge, the part too mythological of the series takes another direction. Figures invented specifically for the series and other lesser-known ones (and therefore more fascinating for viewers) are replaced by more common creatures from mythology, better known although still endowed with a particular charm.
So where is it that the series has definitely lost its way?
According to drop in audience received starting from the seventh season, it might seem that the precise moment can be identified with the beginning of the latter. But that’s not quite the case. The lower number of ratings, which remained almost unchanged from the seventh to the eighth, was actually due to the presence of a very popular reality show which took away visibility from Witchesbut that still didn’t stop the show from closing with a different last season than usual.
This is where the knots started to come home to roost. With a significant budget cut, Brian Krause (Leo Wyatt) and Dorian Gregory (Darryl Morris) were cut out of the last few episodes, thus robbing the series of much of its lifeblood. What in Witches was disguised as an unexpected narrative implication, in fact it concealed production problems that were also tried to stem with the regular entry of two completely new characters, Billie and Christy Jenkins, played respectively by Kaley Cuoco and Marnette Patterson. But it was precisely this that created one imbalance in the usual course of the series.
Initially, audiences were enthusiastic about this change, convinced it would bring a breath of fresh air to The WB product, but as the episodes went on, the entrance of Billie and Christy resulted in a more frequent shift from the lives of the sisters Halliwell to those of the Jenkins sisters, and this caused a break in the balance that was somehow disguised as a “passing of the baton”.
The fact that the season finale had a very high ratings compared to the seasonal average is indicative of the fact that viewers needed to know the fate of the three protagonists, of the women they had grown fond of over the years. And aside from the final two episodes, the rest of season eight left many with thebitter in the mouthand contributed to the US studio’s decision to cancel the series in 2006.
Criticism for a long time has struck down the choice of Kaley Cuoco as a regular character, questioned the quality of the dialogues and plot twists of the last season and established that the final 22 episodes are in no way able to match the beauty and uniqueness of the first seasons. To confirm this, just think that the need to find another epilogue to the series was so urgent that in 2010 the comic was published by Zenescope Entertainment Charmed: season 9with a satisfying and definitive conclusion to the life of the Charmed Ones and their (now larger) family.
Therefore we can say that, according to the opinion of experts Witches it has come to an end by forgetting its origins. She wanted to take to the extreme what had made her inimitable and avant-garde, i.e. her being the series with all female protagonists that had longest runningbut in doing so it has included female characters who have unfortunately partly forced the dynamics, ending up bringing everything towards a painful cancellation.
However, none of this prevented viewers from loving the series unconditionally even after its end and from continuing to watch the episodes even after years with a pleasant and melancholy nostalgia. And none of these, for fans, will be a reason to stop loving Witchesno matter how much time passes.