Loveday Writing

Maggie, Jordan and Chloe – The episode kicks off with Jordan playing the piano and singing ‘What a Wonderful World’ at Dev’s memorial service. This scene is interweaved with hooded members of the Unseen in a lair of some kind recreating the Unity Bowl, using the pages that the Book of Shadows conjured a few episodes earlier when Jordan smashed the Bowl, so the Lost One can rise again.

After the memorial, Jordan walks through SafeSpace and runs into Chloe. Jordan asks her why she’s at SafeSpace and she tells him that her sister, Daphne, is missing and she left her an odd, ranting note about Annie coming back from the dead. Jordan reads the note, which says that the Lost One chose her. Jordan and Chloe go back to the Command Centre to show the note to Maggie.

Maggie decides to cast a Flip Side spell which will show her Daphne’s most powerful memories to get a lead on her and the Lost One. The spell has her go down a hole into Daphne’s most powerful memory via a rope that she needs to get out of it, and has her dressed like a pixie. She watches “Annie” come to Daphne, as Daphne is grieving by Annie’s shrine.

“Annie” tells Daphne that long ago, the nine original tribes of magic, which consisted of Lamias, trolls, leprechauns, pixies and many more, came together to forge the ultimate power. Now they are coming together to raise the Lost One and Daphne has been chosen to join them. When “Annie” tells Chloe that the other Unseen members have been digging, Maggie realises and says out loud that they’ve found the tomb. “Annie” hears her and realises she’s there because of the Flip Side spell. Maggie tries to leave, but “Annie” severs the rope and leaves. Maggie realises that “Annie” was in fact the Lost One using Annie’s body to communicate with Daphne.

Communicating via ear pieces, Maggie tells Jordan that he has to stop risking everything for her and she needs to stop running to him every time something goes wrong in her life, as it’s not a healthy foundation for a relationship. She then asks Chloe how she makes her wings come out as she thinks she can borrow Daphne’s power, similarly to how the Lost One hijacked Annie’s body. Chloe tells her that she has to close her eyes, think happy thoughts, and imagine she’s floating. Maggie, at first, thinks of her last memory of her, Mel and Macy together, then she thinks of her happy memories with Mel and Kaela. She manages to conjure wings and fly out of the memory.

When she returns to the Command Centre, Maggie breaks up with Jordan and Jordan accepts it with grace, telling her he’ll at least always be there for her as her whitelighter. Maggie then tells him and Chloe that the Tallyman’s attacks weren’t random, he was targeting members from the nine tribes to ruin their lives so they would turn against them.

Mel, Roxie and the Bee Bops – After Dev’s memorial service, Mel goes to see Roxie in her office. When Roxie seems distracted, Mel asks her if she’s okay. Roxie tells her that her house band, the Bee Bops, haven’t missed a show in a century and she’s checked their cage and they’re not there. Mel offers to help her find out what happened to them to Maggie’s chagrin, as Maggie wants her help with Daphne.

Roxie tells Mel that the Bee Bops came to her in 1917 when their village was destroyed during the war. When Roxie tells Mel that she took them in because they needed a home and she needed a house band, Mel questions her on whether that was her only reason, and Roxie admits that the Bee Bops are adorable and she’s a softie, but asks Mel not to tell anyone as she has a reputation to uphold.

Roxie pulls a painting off the wall to reveal a crevice holding the dollhouse that the Bee Bops live in. When Mel holds a magnifying glass up to one of the dollhouse windows, she finds the body of one of them dead on the floor. They then discover bloody footprints of a Bee Bop who escaped the murder scene, leading to a crack in the wall.

Mel and Roxie use a ‘drink me’ potion to shrink to fit in the wall crack. They find the surviving Bee Bop member, Lloyd, who clearly isn’t happy to see Mel. He revealed that he killed the Bee Bop, Pip, in the dollhouse as he is part of the Unseen. Lloyd takes some of the Drink Me potion and grows, where he runs into Harry. Harry questions him, only for Roxie and Mel to return as Mel caught the remaining potion. Lloyd tells them that the Lost One will rise and he had to make sure he split the Power of Three apart for the Unseen’s plan to work. Roxie knocks him out and Mel goes to find Maggie and Kaela.

At the end of the episode, Roxie goes into her resting state, leaving a voicemail for Mel saying goodbye to her.

Kaela – Deep in her grief, Kaela asks Mel and Maggie for space after Dev’s memorial service. Mel tells her that they can’t give her space as they have to deal with the Unseen. Kaela tells them that she’s not their sister, but Mel says she is their biological and chosen Charmed sister, but Kaela blows out her candle at the Blue Camelia and leaves. Later, when Maggie goes to Kaela for help with Chloe, she finds her bus is gone.

As Kaela is driving away, she leaves Brynn a voicemail asking for her help. Her phone dies and she sees a woman in front of her bus and hits the brakes, but when she gets off the bus, the woman isn’t there. Her bus also has steam coming out of it and she needs to fix it. Kaela opens her toolbox to find it empty, but still manages to check her bus although she is unable to figure out what’s wrong with it. A truck shows up and a mechanic, Ishani, approaches her. When Kaela sees her name tag on her uniform, she immediately figures out that Ishani is one of the original Charmed Ones.

Ishani gives her a “drugged” Ghanaian banana fritter to show her what’s going on in the magical world when it comes to the Lost One. Under the spell, Kaela spray paints what Ishani tells her on her bus. Ishani tells her that when the Conqueror tried to steal magic for himself, an ultimate weapon was needed to fight back, so the nine original tribes of magic came together and gave up their remaining power into the Unity Bowl. Their collective magic created the Power of Three, as only a trio of witches would be strong enough to hold the power. The tribes asked them to drink from the Bowl and they became the first Charmed Ones.

Ishani also explains that after they defeated the Conqueror, they no longer had a shared purpose and they drifted apart. Inara wanted to release the power back into the world, but she and Ishta knew it was too risky as the temptation would always be there for another Conqueror to rise up so they put it into the Source. Inara wanted to become a ‘benign’ Conqueror, so Ishani and Ishta “sealed her up” i.e. buried her in the tomb alive and Ishta was bound to the Tree as its Guardian. Ishani also tells her that since that day, the Day of the Fall, magic has punished them, destroying the sisterhood and that every sisterhood after it is doomed to be destroyed. Ishani also warns her that Inara has grown more hateful.

When they get back on the bus, Ishani informs her that Macy’s stem cells went to five other people and none of them became a Charmed One, and that she needs to make a choice about whether she is going to be part of the sisterhood or not.

Harry – Harry’s subplot was minor in comparison to the sisters. We find him tied up at Infinite Home Video after being knocked out by the mysterious necrolighter last week. The necrolighter tells Harry her name is Diana and that he doesn’t recognise her as a whitelighter as they’re from different worlds.

Diana tells him that in her world there is a different Charmed One with incredible powers of premonition (not Maggie) who created Infinite Home Video 15 years ago, recording every possible version of the world’s history on tapes. As Diana is talking to him and telling him about the Day of the Fall, Harry manages to untie himself and escape.

After he witnesses Mel and Roxie confront Lloyd and the Lost One and the Day of the Fall are mentioned, he goes back to see Diana. He tells her he needs to see the tape from that day but she doesn’t know what tape it’s on.

Rise of the Lost One – Mel, Maggie and Kaela eventually come together with Chloe at the Lost One’s tomb where they see hypnotised Unseen members sacrifice themselves and give up their powers into the Unity Bowl to help the Lost One rise. They manage to find Daphne and Maggie incepts her to bring her out of the trance. Chloe tries to talk Daphne out of sacrificing herself but fails. Inara ends up rising.

Inara tells them that she doesn’t want to kill them or start a war, she wants to end one. She says the Charmed sisterhood treats symptoms but she wants the cure the disease, which is a fundamental imbalance of power. When Maggie calls her out on manipulating the nine tribe members who sacrifice themselves so she could rise, Inara attacks her. When Mel and Kaela help her up, Inara drinks from the bowl, taking their powers away.

Inara then tells them there can only be one true power and that she’ll see them in paradise, smashing the Unity Bowl as they approach her, ready to attack, and the screen fades to white.

I mentioned in the beginning of my review that this was the strongest episode of the season. I believe it is due to the fact that the Lost One has finally risen and been identified as one of the original Charmed Ones, which I felt was a satisfying twist/outcome. I also liked that all of the stories (Mel’s, Maggie’s, Kaela’s and Harry’s) tied everything together, and the fact that the original Charmed Ones weren’t blood related further enabled Kaela being Macy’s replacement in the current Charmed sisterhood to be plausible and make sense. Also with Inara revealing herself, her motivations and tactics, this entire season, especially the purpose of the Tallyman as a threat, as I felt that he wasn’t well-written as a threat, makes sense.

On a smaller note, I liked the appearance of a Bee Bop, as the band intrigued me since their first appearance (especially the questions of why they were so small, whether they liked being in the cage, and whether they were immortal since they looked the same in the 1920s as they did in the present day. I shared these questions on Twitter with Charmed writer, Joey Falco, who told me that there would be an episode or part of an episode dedicated to them). I appreciated that they got a bit of a back story, but I still would have liked to have seen all of them (it didn’t seem like they were all killed, but maybe I’m wrong). Although I didn’t see him with the band in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Sandwich, but I’m guessing that they either hired a real-life band or at least extras miming the music in that episode.

My only criticism of the episode is why the sisters didn’t just smash the Unity Bowl before Inara rose from it. They had plenty of seconds to do so.

I’m looking forward to seeing where we go from here with two episodes left and the sisters’ powers being taken away from them by an original Charmed One.

Stray Observations:

-I believe this is the first funeral shown in the series, Macy’s and Marisol’s funerals weren’t shown onscreen.

-The name of the food sample Chloe is trying is actually called Amaze Balls.

-Chloe has little hard candies in her handbag.

-Annie was born in 2004 and was only 18 years old when she was killed.

-Apparently Josefina was supposed to come to Dev’s memorial service. Maggie thought she was running late. I didn’t see the point of this dialogue when Josefina didn’t make an appearance and we never find out why she didn’t show up.

-When Harry comments on the fact that the unknown Charmed One from Diana’s world had the power to create a whole video store containing every possible version of the world’s history but could only put them on VHS tapes, Diana suggests that maybe time magic isn’t compatible with digital file format.

-I’m honestly surprised that this series’ Book of Shadows didn’t have a forcefield to protect itself from evil like the original series’ Book did to prevent it from being taken away. Although that being said, you could argue that the Unseen members aren’t evil, as Maggie pointed out, Inara manipulated them.

-When Roxie tells Mel that the Bee Bops came to her for help in 1917 when their home was destroyed by the war, I found it interesting that human wars can affect the magical world.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “You’re telling me this witch had the power to do all that, and she put them on VHS?” (Harry to Diana on the mysterious unknown Charmed One who created Infinite Home Video)
• “You gotta love a band the size of fleas that can play any song on the planet.” (Mel to Roxie on the Bee Bops)
• “Really? That’s the only reason you let them live with you?” “Fine, they’re ridiculously adorable. I’m softer than a baby Zamba Zaraa, but don’t you dare tell anyone, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.” (Mel-Roxie on the Bee Bops)
• “I feel like I’m on a TV show, CSI: Magical Victim Units.” (Chloe on the Command Centre, mixing up her mortal crime show references)
• “Is that like, a sacred, magical lasso that’s been passed down by generations of witches?” “No it’s just a rope.” (Chloe-Maggie on the rope in Maggie’s case of weapons)
• “Easy peasy mac and cheesy.” (Chloe to Maggie)