Loveday Writing

Kaela finds her slingshot and uses it to distract the security guard at the impound lot so they can start the bus and leave. However the bus won’t start and the security guard returns, pointing a gun at them. Kaela struggles to take a next step, until she hears the guard yelling, she looks up and sees butterflies swarming him and he runs away. When the camera pans away, it’s revealed that a butterfly is painted on the side of Kaela’s bus. An older woman is also seen sniffing, sensing witchcraft and talks to a creature in her purse who goes by the name of Seymour.

We then cut to Maggie’s alarm going off, she gets up and leaves, and Jordan puts a tracker bracelet on her, as they’ve made an agreement to wear them, to keep track of each other. After Maggie leaves, Chloe calls Jordan.

Mel is at SafeSpace, reading the letter Kaela left for them at the Manor in the previous episode, asking that they don’t contact her again. Maggie arrives at SafeSpace just as Mel is about to call Kaela, yet again. She stops her, telling her to give Kaela space until she’s ready to come back to them. Meanwhile Harry is in the Command Centre adding Mel’s, Maggie’s and Macy’s names in the Book of Elders as the current Charmed Ones. The Book automatically turns Macy’s name red, signifying her passing, and makes room for Kaela’s name to be added, which angers Harry.

Harry goes upstairs to get a drink at SafeSpace and Jordan comes to see him, telling him about Annie’s death and the Tallyman. Harry tells Jordan that he’s heard of the Tallyman via a magical nursery rhyme and because of this, dismisses Jordan’s belief that the Tallyman is a danger. In turn, Jordan calls him out on his attitude and tells him that he didn’t get new powers so he could sit back do nothing.

Meanwhile, Brynn comes to see Kaela on her bus. Kaela tells Brynn she’s a witch and tries to prove it to her, however she can’t, and Brynn instead believes that her cancer has returned. The mysterious lady seen earlier also watches the impound lot security guard pick up a butterfly off his shoulder.

Back at the Command Centre, Mel is about to leave and hook up with an elf when the Board alerts her to a magical threat in Philadelphia. Believing that Kaela is in danger, she immediately leaves. When Mel gets there and tells Kaela this, she doesn’t believe her, and Maggie shows up moments later, apologising to Kaela and getting Mel to go back to Seattle with her. Mel tells her that the Board brought them here for a reason and she wants to stick around to protect Kaela, Maggie reluctantly agrees to do a search of the area.

Meanwhile, Harry and Jordan are going through Annie’s stuff to try and find some answers on the Tallyman. Chloe asks Harry how he has kept going since Macy’s passing. He tells her he’ll let her know when it he figures it out. Jordan finds a packet of Blue Camelia matches, Chloe says Annie wouldn’t go there, but Jordan says she may have gone there looking for something.

Back in Philadelphia, Mel keeps an eye on Kaela via binocu-lotion, and Maggie walks back to Kaela’s bus to find the mysterious lady there. Maggie immediately knows she’s magical and the woman admits she’s looking for Kaela. When Maggie refuses to give Kaela up, the woman has Seymour lunge at Maggie. When Maggie moves out of the away, the woman and Seymour vanish.

Meanwhile, Harry and Jordan go to the Blue Camelia and ask the bartender for information. The bartender refuses to co-operate until Harry gets aggressive with her and Roxie orders her to, the bartender points them in the direction of a leprechaun who deals with coins. Harry and Jordan approach the leprechaun with a bottle of whiskey. The leprechaun, Frank, tells them that he’s just the middleman and a man came to him looking for cursed gold. When Frank refuses to give them more information, Harry tells him he poisoned the bottle, and he and Jordan heal each other, this scares him enough to tell them that he picked up the coins from a cabin in the woods outside of Newport.

When Harry and Jordan go to the cabin, they find a carving which states “if you’re good then he pays, if you’re not, then he slays”. When they hear floorboards creaking, they look down and realise that they’ve tripped pressure switches rigged to explosives, but they’re stuck as if they move, it will lead to the cabin exploding and Jordan’s “bootleg whitelighter powers” (for some untold reason) don’t include orbing.

Meanwhile, during the party Kaela notices a butterfly trying to fly off her jacket. She sneaks away to another room to get all the other butterflies coming off her jacket to fly out the window. Maggie goes back to Mel and tells her about the woman she saw, Mel identifies the woman as the Vittra, creatures that are part of an ancient order who protect the secret of magic by killing anyone who shows it to humans.  When Brynn finds Kaela, she sees another butterfly leaving her jacket. Brynn tries to talk to Kaela about it, asking if it has anything to do with her biological parents, only for the fire alarm in the building to go off and distract them. When they go downstairs, everyone has left but the Vittra is waiting for them. Mel and Maggie arrive just in time to stop the Vittra from using Seymour to attack Kaela.

Maggie fights the Vittra in arm-to-arm combat, and the Vittra launches Seymour at them, only to attack Brynn. Mel points out that her magic harmed a human, the Vittra tries to defend herself by saying it was an accident but Seymour devours her. Maggie quickly picks up the bag Seymour is being kept in. Mel says that Brynn needs a healer. Maggie and Kaela make their way to the cabin, thanks to Maggie’s tracker bracelet telling her where Jordan is.

When Harry and Jordan tell them about the pressure switches, Kaela tells them that there would be an off switch, and finds one on the wall. Harry guides Kaela into visualising something that can reach the off switch, draw it, open her heart to magic, and then manifest it. Kaela manifests a slingshot and uses it to disable the switches. They go back to the Command Centre, and Harry and Jordan heal Brynn in the nick of time. They send Brynn back to Philadelphia, but Kaela tells her she’s not going as she needs to become a Charmed One to help protect her and the other people she loves. Brynn accepts this and they say goodbye.

Afterwards, Mel shows Kaela around the Manor, which includes the backyard where her bus is parked, so she can have her own space. Meanwhile, Jordan tells Maggie that they need to take the Tallyman threat seriously, Maggie agrees. Jordan encourages Maggie to stay in with Mel and Kaela, but Maggie wants to hunt demons as she’s not ready to bond with Kaela yet. Jordan reluctantly goes with her to hunt demons. Harry writes Kaela’s name as a Charmed One in the Book of Elders.

The episode ends with the Tallyman going to the cabin, collecting a spider from a web, and leaving, reciting the nursery rhyme.

Overall I felt this was one of the weakest episodes of the series. This episode is purely set up for Kaela to accept her destiny as a Charmed One, which was always going to happen, otherwise there wouldn’t be a show. The threat of the week wasn’t much of a threat because, as Mel pointed out, the Vittra are close to extinction and this particular Vittra was ultimately killed by her own weapon for breaking her order’s own rules. We also found out nothing more about the big threat of the season, the Tallyman, other than the fact that he has a cabin in the woods and there is a nursery rhyme about him.

One interesting note, Mel quickly bonds with and welcomes Kaela, whilst Maggie is reluctant to bond with her due to her fear of history repeating itself, which is similar to the predecessor series where Piper was reluctant to bond with Paige. I’m sure this will eventually become a problem down the line, but how much of a problem this will be remains to be seen.

Stray Observations:

-Kaela is bisexual.

-Kaela has a slingshot from when she was 10, she calls it Slingy.

-Kaela is 26 years old, Mel is 28 years old, this means that if Kaela is their sister, she is the third-born.

-Jordan and Mel store the phone numbers of their magical contacts in their phones in a similar manner – Jordan has Chloe’s phone number stored as ‘Chloe the Pixie’ and Mel has a magical hook-up’s phone number stored as ‘Hot Elf Girl’.

-The Blue Camelia bartender refers to Mel as “Kiss ‘n Tell Mel”.   

-It’s quite fitting that the series also went through a cast change in its fourth season, and is airing twenty years after the airing of their predecessor’s fourth season.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “I can’t believe I have to explain ‘no means no’ to a gender studies professor!” (Maggie to Mel on Mel constantly contacting Kaela)
• “Murder-y Poppins is in the building.” (Maggie on the Vittra in the building where Kaela is)
• “I expect daily texts, weekly FaceTimes and regular visits, seeing as I’m just a big, freaky, glowy circle away.” (Brynn to Kaela on Kaela’s decision to stay in Seattle)