’Charmed’s Most Enchanting Spell Was The Halliwell Sisters

Charmed premiered in 1998 with a sequence of events that would repeat incessantly over its eight-season run: a fight between sisters. As Prue (Shannen Doherty) and Piper (Holly Marie Combs) bicker about their youngest sister’s (Alyssa Milano as Phoebe) capriciousness, magic is brewing in their attic, waiting to change their lives forever. What could be more important than bubbling toil and trouble? Just a bit of good old-fashioned family drama, of course.

It’s moments like these that make Charmed what it is. The pilot episode perfectly establishes the realm of magic we’re going to enter with the Halliwell Sisters, if they could just stop arguing. But it was never the lore that got people to tune into this WB series every week; people tuned in for the Charmed Ones, for their undeniable chemistry and strong characterization.

In Charmed, sisters Piper, Prue, and Phoebe Halliwell receive the power of three after their grandmother passes away, and must find a way to juggle their careers and personal lives with their new responsibility of vanquishing demons. But in a city like San Francisco, a girl can only do so much.

Their powers may be impressive but showrunner Brad Kern knew the true magic of the show lay in the Halliwell Sisters’ chemistry.

“It’s a timeless show about family, sisters and magic,” he told TVLine in 2016. “Our daily mantra was: ‘This is a show about three sisters who happen to be witches, not three witches who happen to be sisters.'”

As Charmed marked its 25th anniversary this Fall (on October 7), it’s time to remember how the series tapped into something magical when it focused on the idea Kern elaborated on above. It struck the perfect balance between low and high-stakes drama without sacrificing one or the other, making for refreshing television. Viewers cared just as much, if not more, about the Halliwell Sisters and their personal issues as they did about vanquishing the forces of evil.

According to Kern, it took a few episodes for the show to really find its footing. The writers finally found that magical middle ground in the Season 1 episode, “Dead Man Dating,” where Piper falls for a ghost (played by a young, handsome John Cho) who is trying to evade an evil spirit coming to claim his soul. “It was romantic, supernatural, emotional, funny, quirky — it was really an eye-opener,” Kern said. “From that point, we tried to figure out how to replicate that vibe going forward.”

“Dead Man Dating” is peppered with key elements that illustrate why the show was so compelling when it aired. The eldest, Prue, is going through her own romantic drama while trying to avoid the emotions stirred up by another birthday. Phoebe, the restless younger sister, takes a job telling fortunes in a local hotel. Piper, the often overlooked middle child, finally finds a connection with someone despite knowing it’ll never work out.

It’s these deeply human moments that grounded the fantasy series and made it what it was. Viewers were willing to ignore the cheesy special effects because the stakes were already set by the show’s strong cast of characters, not by gimmicks and lore. Each episode deftly swung between a crime procedural and an episode of Sex and the City in the blink of an eye. Even as core characters came and went, the series continued without missing a step because of the focus it put on their sisterhood, and on their womanhood. In fact, some of the most memorable moments – which ranged from abusive relationships, pregnancies, and heartbreak, to death – were not its most supernatural, but rather its most human.

That’s not to say their magic played no role. Charmed has remained in the supernatural zeitgeist for many of the same reasons Practical Magic, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and The Craft have. Are people still watching Practical Magic for the plot, or to watch Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman act as sisters in a refreshingly stylish and original production? Viewers can put up with a campy episode or two when they’re here for the vibes and the characters.

That’s possibly why the Charmed reboot failed to stack up to its source material. The new series took a stab at recreating the original show’s premise with a heightened fantasy experience and a younger, more diverse cast that the producers thought would relate more to contemporary viewers. The cast – Melonie Diaz, Sarah Jeffery, and Madeleine Mantock – was refreshing and promising, but bringing back the Charmed Ones without the original actresses was a risk in itself. The series also had the stylings of a CW project rather than the dark edge that the WB once allowed, making the reboot feel pared down and juvenile compared to the original. And in an age where the original series is always available for streaming, not many tuned into the revival, especially when it starred a whole new cast.

But most importantly, it lacked the sisterly chemistry that Doherty, Combs, and Milano shared in the original series. This is partially because the sisters were meeting for the very first time in the reboot and needed multiple episodes to build their relationships and trust; while the original Charmed Ones already shared a layered and complicated relationship with each other – as sisters often do. There is something biting and realistic in how Piper, Prue, and Phoebe point their fingers at each other in a way that only sisters can, something that the Charmed reboot couldn’t entirely capture with the Vera sisters.

Something gets sacrificed when trying to emulate a well-established intellectual property and the star power its actors brought. As the fantasy genre suffers from a glut of reboots and adaptations, there’s no telling if we’ll get another low-stakes supernatural family drama like this one.

So as you settle in for your Halloween night viewing, don’t forget about the original Halliwell Sisters. It’s a series that was and always will be… Charmed.