Remember When Candace Cameron Bure Played a Lusty Witch on ‘Boy Meets World’?

Candace Cameron Bure’s image is squeaky clean, and that’s the way she wants it. While other ex-child stars either went off the rails or tried to become Serious Actors, Bure’s accomplished something rarer: she’s gone from wholesome pre-teen to wholesome adult. Those two phases are, of course, highlighted by Full House and Fuller House, two sugary sweet shows. And between those two generations of G-rated hijinks, Bure starred in a whole bunch of Hallmark Christmas and mystery movies, the kind your mom definitely watches while she crafts, and she was one of The View’s conservative co-hosts for a stint. Image cultivation is not just the job of avant-garde pop stars and Serious Thespians; Bure’s career is as coordinated and calculated as a Lady Gaga or a Jennifer Lawrence.

Candace Cameron Bure: The Lady Gaga of the Wine and Bible Study Generation.

So imagine my surprise when I came across an episode of Boy Meets World that not only featured a 21-year-old Bure in a role I would describe as “urgently sexual” but also a straight-up villain role–oh, and a Satan-worshipping witch, to boot!

Written by Steve Hibbert and directed by Alan Myerson, “The Witches of Pennbrook” aired during a spooky TGIF lineup on October 31, 1997. I firmly believe that this episode is more than just a run-of-the-mill sitcom Halloween episode. I believe that after a childhood spent playing the all-American good girl DJ Tanner and before an adulthood spent playing the all-American mom DJ Tanner, “The Witches of Pennbrook” is the sole documentation of Candace Cameron Bure’s one week of rebellion.

Bure plays Millie, a girl that lives on the same dorm floor as Eric (Will Friedle), Shawn (Rider Strong), and new cast addition Jack (Matthew Lawrence). We first meet Millie in the hallway where she throws herself at Jack. It’s funny because Eric and Jack were just talking about how bad he is with women! But remember when I said Millie was “urgently sexual”? Millie’s on a mission and it involves making out with Jack aggressively in order to get access to his balcony. And no, “balcony” is not a euphemism.

Eric tries to pump the brakes on the relationship, calling Millie an evil witch well before discovering that she is literally an evil witch. How evil is she? Well, she has Satan on spiritual speed dial, slips into a scratchy Exorcist voice when a trick-or-treater shows up dressed as a witch (“You don’t get any because you mock us!“), and has friends that look like 1997 Hot Topic models (or 2018, because fashion is cyclical). Bure herself wears so much black velvet and lace, she’d make Stevie Nicks go “Hey, maybe try just a pop of color?”

And then comes the human sacrifice scene! What, you thought Boy Meets World lasted seven seasons and never once tried to offer up some of its main cast members to the dark lord himself? As if!  The prophecy foretold of a hunter being sacrificed, and Jack and Shawn’s last name is hunter. They are destined for the devil!

Up until this point, I was waiting for Boy Meets World to do what shows usually do in their Halloween episodes, like reveal all of this as a dream or a practical joke. I even thought maybe Millie was really a witch, but surely she’d be a good witch! Was I right?

Nope, Candace Cameron Bure is Ushkar, queen of malevolence and daughter of evil–and also Aurora Teagarden in a series of Hallmark movies as well as a Season 18 contestant on Dancing with the Stars! I gotta say, it is a trip watching Bure, just two years removed from Full House, try to sink her teeth into a dastardly devilish role. There’s a real reason why Bure’s late career resurgence came in Fuller House and not, say, a season of American Horror Story.

Back to BMW–it turns out that our boys live near the spot of the alignment of Valaris and the appearance of Satan’s Tail, which will send a light beam through the Crystal of Death and… y’know, it’s so convoluted that you gotta read one of those “For Dummies” books to make it all make sense. Fortunately for Eric…

Eric swoops in at the last minute, saving Shawn and Jack with a quick incantation he literally picked up off a shelf. The light beam bounces off Eric, no harm no foul, and the ritual is donezo for the next thousand years. Totally foiled, Millie/Ushkar and her squad of Craft extras sulk away. Note that the only punishment Millie gets after seducing and nearly sacrificing Jack is that she has to give back the keys to their apartment. Shouldn’t campus security be alerted, at least?

That’s how Bure’s storyline ends, by the way. There’s no reversal at all. This episode establishes that legit witchcraft and Death Crystal-powered light beams exist in the same fictional universe as Minkus. How?! Fortunately the episode’s stinger gives a little bit of an explanation. Boy Meets World shares reality with Sabrina the Teenage Witch!

And that’s it, Bure’s one week of rebellion captured in a sitcom episode about devil worship and one well-placed balcony. Just think: there could be an alternate reality where this week lasted way longer and now Bure’s starring in Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House remake as opposed to Netflix’s Full House revival. But the stars weren’t aligned that way and Bure continued on her precisely curated career path, leaving this Boy Meets World episode a totally terrifying outlier.

Stream Boy Meets World Season 5 Episode 5 "The Witches of Pennbrook"