Charmed review: Charmed sisters juggle demons and their love life

Charmed’s reboot has primarily focused on the romantic storylines of the show. This week is no exception as all three sisters must balance love and magic.

The new reboot of Charmed has made it clear in the first five episodes that the show might not be for you if you prefer sci-fi, fantasy elements over the more realistic elements. Although there have been plenty of action-packed sequences involving a lot of different types of spirits and spells in the show, the focus of the majority of the episodes thus far has been the sisters’ love lives. This week the sisters’ personal issues, and whatever problems they are dealing with in their romantic relationships, are becoming more intense as a new shapeshifting demon shows up to jumble the sisters personal life with their magical one.

Middle-sister Mel and her relationship with her girlfriend, Niko, has the main spotlight in this episode, entitled “Other Women”, when Niko discovers evidence for the cause of Mel’s mom’s death. In meddling in the case, Niko becomes the target of a powerful demon who can change his appearance. Mel has always been a resilient and tough character, being courageous and brave when it comes to fighting evil spirits, and she inspires braveness in her sisters.

We witness Mel face her toughest challenge yet when she makes the heartbreaking decision to cast a potent time-altering spell which means her and Niko never met. Mel sacrifices her relationship in order to keep Niko safe. It’s a heartbreaking scene to watch as the Charmed Ones successfully perform the spell and Niko fades away.

I hope that this isn’t the last we see of Niko because her dynamic with Mel was so interesting and the impact of her loss will clearly trouble Mel for some time to come. It may even affect her ability to perform magic and vanquish evil if Mel is healing a broken heart. On top of this, there seems to be even more consequences of the sisters’ time-altering spell because when Mel goes to teach her class, she finds that she doesn’t have a job at the university. Mel realizes that she used to sleep through her alarm and that Niko woke her up on the day of her interview. As she never met Niko, she never got the teaching job.

I don’t feel like the show clarified enough that Mel worked at the university; I assumed Mel was a student like her sister, Maggie. However, that plot point isn’t really important for the story so it’s understandable why the show decided to put Mel’s job on the backseat and focus on exploring other aspects of the story which are more influential. What will happen now that Mel isn’t a teacher anymore? She could potentially seize this opportunity to pour herself into investigating her mother’s death further, developing her powers and becoming a better witch.

Elsewhere, Maggie, in wanting to run and hide from her own problems, helps Macy with her rocky relationship with Galvin. After Galvin gets close with a mysterious girl, the sisters initially suspect that he is under her spell and that she is actually a demon sucking the life force out of him. It’s really nice to see Maggie continuing to be a helping hand for her sisters, being the most social and friendly out of the three, as well as being sensitive and caring which she utilizes her empathetic powers to enhance.

However, the sisters make a huge mistake when Galvin’s girlfriend turns out to be just a normal human after they attempt to perform an exorcism on her and it fails. With all this weird stuff surrounding Macy, it might not be long before Galvin starts to suspect something supernatural might be going on.

When Maggie can no longer be distracted from her problems, she decides to open up to Lucy, her sorority leader, about kissing her boyfriend. Predictably, Lucy gets upset and kicks Maggie out of Kappa. You may have felt relief for Maggie at this moment because the youngest sister will no longer have to juggle her sorority responsibilities with her magical destiny. However this is still a traumatic disaster for Maggie because she was so passionate about Kappa.

Maggie might find it difficult to sustain her social life now that she has been kicked out, becoming even more agitated and under pressure. However, on the other hand, will Maggie finally be able to get closer to Parker now that he has broken up with Lucy? Maggie and Parker clearly have chemistry and their scenes together are always sweet and powerful, so maybe there will finally be some real romance on the horizon for Maggie.

Additionally, another relationship the show is exploring so well is that of the sisters and Harry, their Whitelighter. In this episode, Harry is seen living with the girls, taking a bath and pressing his trousers as well as making them breakfast. In the first couple of episodes of the season, Harry only appeared when the sisters summoned him. However, the fact that the characters are comfortable living together now, even when they are not working on vanquishing evil is really cute and shows that the relationship between the four of them is getting stronger.

At the end of the episode, the sisters even invite Harry into their family, having realized that he doesn’t have one of his own having no memories of his previous life as a human. The bond between the sisters and Harry is something that I really enjoy watching and I hope they continue exploring the family dynamic.

What was your favorite part of “Other Women”? Let us know in the comments