Loveday Writing

As Maggie goes to pick up the pocket watch she has a premonition of Sunny stirring a cauldron and reciting an incantation, “when the pink moon reaches its zenith, you’ll be reborn, and the world will finally be made right again” with a mysterious creature coming out of it. Maggie then tells Mel and Harry that she thinks Sunny might be trying to finish something that the Tallyman started. Harry tells them that the pink moon is historically associated with rebirth magic and it reaches its apex tonight. This revelation starts the ticking clock of the sister’s battle in this episode to stop the rebirth of this mysterious creature. Moments later, the doorbell rings and Mel’s new security cameras show that a woman is there.

While Mel and Maggie make their way downstairs, Mel confides in Maggie that she feels she’s letting the real and magical worlds down, while Maggie tells her that she wants to help Harry deal with his grief, as she feels it would be good for her to help someone else for a change. When they answer the door, the woman is revealed to be Kaela’s mother, Evelyn.

We then cut to Kaela and Dev in bed on Kaela’s bus. Dev wants a relationship with Kaela but she only wants a one-night stand, Mel comes to tell her that Evelyn has arrived. Kaela freaks out and tells Mel and Maggie that Evelyn won’t understand witchcraft, they in turn tell her about the premonition Maggie had. Kaela asks them for help with her mother, but they tell her that they have to deal with Sunny. Kaela ends up convincing Dev to pretend to be her boyfriend, and he in return asks her to go on a real date with him.

When Mel makes her way to SafeSpace to do some research on the pink moon, she runs into Ruby. Ruby tells her that the city council kicked the homeless teens out of SafeSpace, as it’s not zoned for residential use, and she is going to run for council to change that. Ruby asks Mel for her help, but Mel has to turn her down due to being busy with magic, which makes things awkward between them.

When Mel gets to the Command Centre, she finds Jordan doing research on Ray’s curse. Because Ray asked Jordan to keep the curse a secret, he quickly (but badly) makes up a story about a magical creature needing his help and a stone bowl that is the key to figuring out how he can help. When Mel sees that he was researching rebirth rituals, she realises that the stone bowl and the pink moon are connected.

Meanwhile, Maggie and Harry follow a lead from the pocket watch by going to a farm in Nova Scotia, as the farm’s logo was engraved on the back of the watch. They walk through a shed and find various booby traps laying around. Maggie asks Harry why he thinks Macy is in the Veil as they all saw her go into the Tree, but Harry questions whether she stayed there. He also tells her that the Veil is for souls with unfinished business and he admits to needing a proper goodbye from her. Maggie tells him that at some point he has to move forward.  They then hear the Tallyman’s GemCast on a TV and find a mummified corpse sitting on a chair watching it.

Meanwhile, Dev manages to impress Evelyn with his knowledge of Ghanaian singers, even though he sneezes after kissing her hand. Even though the meeting went well, Kaela views this as a sign something is wrong as Evelyn’s not acting like herself. Kaela manages to confirm this by catching “Evelyn” in a few lies and reveals this to Dev, before he passes out from being given spiked orange juice. Kaela drags his semi-conscious body into a closet before locking herself in the attic to figure out her next move. “Evelyn” bursts in, Kaela throws a potion and casts a full disclosure spell and it’s revealed that Sunny was posing as Evelyn. They get into a fight, which abruptly ends when Sunny cuts off Kaela’s thumb, declaring she now has “the bone of the middle” and leaves.

Meanwhile, Harry uses the mummified corpse to go into the Veil, leaving golden footprints on the floor as he arrives. He finds the mummified corpse who is revealed to be the Tallyman’s brother, Nolan. Nolan tells him that Quentin (the Tallyman’s real name) was his brother and he stabbed him. He also tells Harry that Quentin was the weak link in a proud line of gremlins and he took on the name of the Tallyman to project strength. Nolan also tells him that a Charmed One came through the Veil asking similar questions.

Meanwhile, Jordan takes Mel to Ray’s storage unit. As predicted, Mel quickly figures out that the storage unit is Ray’s as she finds a mug she made him amongst all the magical artefacts that are stored in it. This forces Jordan to tell her about Ray’s curse and that he has to heal him every 24 hours to keep him alive. In her anger, she accidentally breaks the shelves in the storage unit, which was where the stone bowl was, breaking it as well. When they study the broken pieces of the bowl, Mel deduces that it’s a map to where the rebirth ritual will be taking place. They both figure out it will be taking place in Ancient Persia/Northern Iran, which leads to Jordan pointing out that Northern Iran is over 11 hours ahead of their current time zone, which means that they have less than an hour to stop the ritual.

Meanwhile, Maggie has been waiting for Harry to return to the Veil. When the short time limit that Harry is allowed to be in the Veil hits, Maggie uses her inception power to try and bring him back, only to end up in the Veil herself. When she finds Harry, the hooded figure he thought was Macy is revealed to be the Guardian. The Guardian tells Harry and Maggie that Macy is not in the Veil as she is at peace and she won’t be coming back. Harry then suggests going into the Tree to be with Macy, but the Guardian shakes her head and Maggie tells them that his place is with the living, and that she, Mel and Kaela need him. He accepts this and Maggie asks why the Guardian is in the Veil. She tells them that she is there as she figured out that there is an uprising of the Lost One, who put the curse on the first Charmed Ones, which destroyed the sisterhood. Moments later, Nolan and the other dead beings in the Veil surround them. The Guardian tells Harry and Maggie that they need to leave and she uses her powers to hold the dead beings off so they can. When Harry and Maggie come to, they find Mel, Jordan, Kaela and Dev waiting for them.

Mel, Maggie and Kaela deduce that Sunny took their blood, hair and thumb respectively to make a potion as part of the rebirth ritual. They go to Northern Iran, where Maggie fights off Sunny and manages to kill her by mimicking her powers, while Kaela and Mel tip over the cauldron and spill out the rebirth potion.

Back at the Manor, Maggie tells Harry about how she mimicked Sunny’s power and how she tried to incept him so he’d come back, only to tap into his emotions and understand his perspective, which led to her going into the Veil. Harry tells her that her powers are evolving, he also acknowledges that he needs to move forward and shaves off the beard that he’s had all season. Meanwhile, Jordan and Mel have a drink at SafeSpace before Mel helps Ruby out with her council campaign. Kaela and Dev briefly chat in the backyard, where it’s revealed that Jordan reattached her thumb, but it’s on her drawing hand, which will affect her manifesting power (which oddly wasn’t used in this episode). Dev opens the parcel that Evelyn (who is clueless to what happened earlier and is safe) and it has her baby blanket inside. Mel and Maggie offer to cast the provenance spell on it, but she isn’t ready yet.

The episode ends with Sunny coming back from the dead and apologising to the invisible creature she tried to resurrect for failing him. He tells her that she didn’t and that there are other ways, she declares that the Lost One will rise.

Overall, I felt that this was another subpar episode. While there was progression in the Sunny story arc with the reveal that she is trying to resurrect the Lost One, who destroyed the sisterhood and the first Charmed Ones, it’s still not clear whether the Tallyman and Sunny were working together and if they are threats themselves, or if they’re just pawns to the Lost One.

I also appreciated the development of Maggie’s powers, however this also highlighted the inconsistency of Mel’s powers which also seemed to progress a few episodes ago, only to be completely forgotten in this episode. The way Mel described her relationship with her powers towards the end of the episode, it seems that the writers forgot about her ability to travel back in time. I was also a little saddened by the fact that Kaela was put in the backseat and was almost useless in this episode, which was highlighted by the fact that she didn’t help Mel and Maggie until the end of the episode and her powers weren’t used at all.

I also appreciated the choice by the writers to have Harry finally move forward from Macy’s death. While I don’t begrudge Harry for grieving and it really hasn’t been all that long in the timeline since Macy’s death, as Maggie pointed out to him throughout the episode, as hard as it is, you have to move forward. I appreciated that his moving on was prompted by an outside party, the Guardian, as she was the only one who could tell him truthfully that Macy has moved on.

I appreciated the detail in Sunny’s cat-like demon nature through Dev sneezing around her due to his cat allergy, and the tally marks on her wrist representing how many lives she has left. By my count, she’s on her sixth or seventh, which I’m sure will come into play at some point when Mel, Maggie and Kaela inevitably have to face her and the Lost One again.

While I appreciated a lot of details in this episode, I felt it was subpar as the writing of Mel’s and Maggie’s powers are inconsistent. Also, Harry’s grief, and Kaela’s unknown origins and connections to Mel and Maggie have dragged on for long enough.

Stray Observations:

-Mel’s nickname for Harry’s new magical nature is “NecroHarry”.

-Maggie has bought herself a new Bo staff.

-Roxie didn’t appear in this episode.

-Apparently Ruby and Swan’s couple nickname is “Swanby”.

-The episode title is a reference to The Wizard of Oz quote, “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!”

Best one liners and interactions:

• “Kaela, are you in there?” “I’m in the middle of something.” “Something you’d want your mother to see?” (Mel-Kaela-Mel, when Mel stands outside Kaela’s bus to let her know that her mother has arrived)
• “Question: are we also pretending that this is how you usually dress?” (Dev to Kaela on her conservative outfit and him meeting her mother)
• “Look, I’m just gonna tell my mom that I moved across the country for a boy.” “No, no, no, no. A handsome, charming boyfriend with a voice like Harry Styles and the sexual draw of George Clooney.” (Kaela-Dev)