Charmed season 2 premiere review: The Charmed Ones fight a war in “Safe Space”
The second season of The CW’s Charmed reboot is expected to take a harder, darker turn. What did we think of the premiere?
Last season of The CW’s Charmed reboot saw sisters Mel, Macy, and Maggie conquer the Source of evil and take over as the new elders of magic. With new showrunners in tow, season two is expected to take a harder, darker turn. Make sure you’re caught up on everything that happened in season one. Spoilers below…
We open with a house party, complete with plastic cups and party hats. Macy soon confesses to Maggie that she’s accepted her dream job at a lab in Ann Arbor, a whole two hours away from Hilltowne. She then asks Maggie to keep her secret until she can tell Mel.
(Sidebar: I guess there really are people in this country who think that living two hours away from someone means you’ll never see them again.)
Mel, after attending to some witch business, arrives at the party, noting that they all have jobs as Elders they should be doing instead. But Macy and Maggie persuade her to take a break and have just one drink…
We all know how that ends. As they’re cleaning up the next morning, an annoyed and hungover Maggie accidentally lets it slip that Macy is leaving. Mel is, of course, upset and accuses Macy of bailing. Macy insists she’s simply living her life.
And demons always have perfect timing right in the middle of family disputes, don’t they? A masked, trench-coat-wearing guy throws some sort of boomerang knife into the living room, immediately causing chaos.
Mel tries to freeze him, but it barely holds. The Charmed Ones summon Harry just in time for him to port them to the attic. The sisters spell the attic door shut, but it won’t hold the demon. Harry yells at them to grab the Book of Shadows, but just as they do, the demon bursts through and incinerates the Book. A quick fight ensues and a portal appears.
Harry tells them to jump through as he holds the demon off. Macy tries to stay behind with Harry, but he won’t let her. At the last second, she jumps through the portal and the demon fires a dart into her leg. After the portal closes, the demon stabs Harry and says, “Nice knowing you, Harry.”
On the other side of the portal, a voice comes over the loudspeaker saying that an extraction protocol has been placed per the Elders. It appears the Charmed Ones are in the Elders Headquarters. Macy pulls the dart from her leg and, with Maggie, insists they further explore their surroundings so she can get help with the dart.
On the other side of the door is a throughly modern brick-and-mortar open workspace. The Charmed Ones can’t figure out where they are at first, whether it’s Heaven or some sort of Hell dimension. A security guard finally notices them and asks them if they’re looking for the tour.
The guard takes them to a group tour led by Swan whose pronouns are she/her/hers and who notifies the group they are at SafeSpace Seattle. It’s unclear what kind of grand joke or statement the writers are trying to make here, but SafeSpace appears to be somewhere we’ll see again.
Mel tries to freeze time, but her powers don’t work, and Macy and Maggie find theirs don’t either. Mel and Maggie leave Macy to go find Harry and first aid, respectively. While the cats are away, Macy will hear weird voices. A mysterious voice that sounds like Harry’s keeps whispering, “Macy, come home,” until she’s finally led outside into traffic. Maggie and Mel find her just in time and see that her leg is turning green.
With a stolen keycard, the sisters sneak Macy into a control room where she can barely stay conscious. As she fades out, she hallucinates Harry there rather than her sisters, but he’s a different, darker Harry. More leather jackets for Harry 2020!
Maggie and Mel manage to wake her up and get her back to Elders HQ. Still not understanding what to do or where to go, Maggie takes a gamble and presses a red button on a table, opening a portal, and dispensing a small black marble, to where else, but Vermont.
The Charmed Ones arrive at a house on the other side of the portal and walk inside, but soon find a disturbing scene: two hanging corpses with the words “DIE WITCHES” on the wall.
The sisters hear a noise as a woman comes down the stairs. Hiding in the kitchen, they see a rat transmogrify into a scuzzy looking dude who spits on the woman, turning her into dust. Another demon appears behind him and the sisters look for a weapon to defend themselves.
Macy begs her sisters to leave her behind and save themselves, but they refuse. And then she hears that voice again and gets up to find Harry and knocks a knife off the counter. Rookie mistake!
The demons find them in the kitchen. Mel launches herself at one to fight them off but quickly gets overwhelmed. Maggie tries to help but is thrown aside.
Weakly, Macy stands up and manages to summon powers, despite Maggie and Mel not having any, her eyes flashing red and flames shooting out of her fingers, and burns the demons to ash.
Harry appears, having been able to locate the Charmed Ones since Macy used her power and heals her, but the poison is so severe it weakens his ability to teleport, just in time for a new, bigger demon to appear.
Like normals, the four simply run out of the back of the house, and the demon soon finds them. Maggie, Harry, and Mel look for the portal while Macy tries to distract the demon, but her powers still aren’t working completely yet.
The demon tells Macy there’s a war and the demons are coming to destroy all the witches. It’s always convenient when the villains let us know their plan, isn’t it?
Maggie remembers the little black marble in her pocket, which she throws on the ground, creating a portal back to Elder HQ.
As they assess all that’s happened, Macy asks Harry to tell them what happened when they left him behind at the portal. “I died,” Harry says.
We learn that when Whitelighters die they go back to their grave. Harry soon realized he was the last Whitelighter left, and he couldn’t die because his connection with the Charmed Ones kept him alive.
As the last Elders and the last Whitelighter, the Charmed Ones now have a duty to protect the witches who are being attacked all over the world. The sisters debate taking the opportunity to give it all up and lead new lives. But we know our sisters don’t take the easy way out.
There’s one more surprise from Harry: The house came through the portal with him. It’s bound to the sisters forever.
In the last scene of the episode, Harry flashes back one more time to his stabbing, where he takes off the mask of the demon–and sees himself. Whoever that demon is, the Charmed ones are coming for him, so Harry better watch out…
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