Charmed has closed the door on its first season, and the show as it started is not the one we ended up with. Nearly every plot point and Easter egg from the original Charmed is no more, and we’re left with the promise of a different and better series—one that’s less about rehashing things we loved (or loved to hate) from the original series, and more focused on forging its own path.
The season finale “The Source Awakens” exists more as the second half of a two-parter, rather than its own episode. It follows the events of last week’s “Red Rain,” where the long-awaited apocalypse finally came to pass.
All the Elders were killed and the Source of All Evil was awakened. Only instead of going into Parker’s body—like how Cole became the Source in the original Charmed—Macy took it into herself, insisting that she could control it.
Most of the episode centres around the idea that no, Macy cannot control the Source of All Evil. Because, duh, it’s the Source of All Evil (as well as the Sacred Flame of Magic, but don’t worry about that, it won’t matter in the end). Feeling depressed and isolated from her sisters, Macy resolves to use her Source powers to “fix” every horrible death that’s happened in her life.
First, she brings Galvin back, which pisses him off, and then creates a series of alternate realities so she can bring their mum back from the dead. It was a cool sequence, and I was impressed with Madeleine Mantock’s performance as Macy.
Her version of Keep Calm and Source On was both terrifying and vulnerable. Macy has suffered from abandonment issues for years, and this episode was where it culminated. The Source knows how to exploit someone’s pain and insecurity, and this was Macy’s.
Eventually, Maggie and Mel are able to convince Macy that they’re not going anywhere, because they all love each other, and together they manage to trap the Source of All Evil in a tiny necklace that shatters into three pieces.
Each of them takes a section and (somewhere offscreen) buries it at a secret location at the edge of the world, before having Harry wipe their memories so no one can learn where the pieces are. Unless someone manages to find the pieces and reforge the Source of All Evil’s hiding place, it’s safe to assume that this storyline is over.
Now that the Source itself has been defeated, every single storyline tied to the original series is gone. The prophecy was fulfilled. Maggie’s half-demon boyfriend Parker has skipped town. The Elders are dead, leaving the sisters in charge of protecting the magical community…which means the traditional power structure that ran through the original series has been toppled.
Given how the Elders were in charge of whitelighters and their abilities, we can also assume most of their watches have ended too. In fact, Harry may be the only person left with those abilities (he’d previously been excommunicated by the Elders, but got his powers restored by Fiona).
It was nice having the ties to the original Charmed as the new show was getting started. They provided a bit of a comfort blanket, and got us acclimated to the new Charmed Ones. But those plot points, like having the Elders calling the shots or continually droning on about prophecies, started holding the show back. Eventually, it was time to move on.
It’s almost poetic that the first season ended on a shot of Macy telepathically shutting the door of their family home. That’s because Prue Halliwell, Macy’s spiritual predecessor, did the same thing at the end of the first episode of original Charmed.
Prue was shutting the door on the sisters’ old lives and paving the way for something new. This Charmed is doing it too—closing one door, and opening a window into a new and exciting world.