Loveday Writing

The Angel of Death

The Angel of Death makes his agenda and objectives clear in his first and second appearances, Death Takes a Halliwell and Styx Feet Under – to collect the souls of people who have died in the order on his list.

In Death Takes a Halliwell, he ultimately succeeds in meeting his agenda and objectives, as he takes Andrea’s and Reece Davidson’s souls, the latter Prue tries to prevent. However, he is stopped in his tracks by Prue’s crusade against him out of anger for taking her mother away from her as a child. Instead, Prue had to learn the lesson that death is not the evil and that her anger towards him left her vulnerable to the real evils of the world, which is why she was initially on his list after Reece Davidson. As Prue learnt her lesson, she was removed from his list.

In Styx Feet Under, the Angel of Death is more aggressive in meeting his agenda and objectives, as he is being stopped by the sisters from doing so. Paige cast a protection spell on the innocent of the week, Arthur, which resulted in him being undead, which ended up creating a backlog of death, as Arthur was on the top of the Angel of Death’s list.

While at first it’s Paige’s spell that keeps him from meeting his agenda and objectives, later, Piper’s refusal to help him after he takes Sirk’s help (after Sirk approaches him) becomes his major obstacle. He resolves this by making her another Angel of Death to help him with the backlog, which she reluctantly does so. Piper becomes more of an obstacle when Phoebe’s name appears on the top of the Angel of Death’s list, however in a twist, she takes Paige’s soul when “the circumstances change” and she is killed.

Phoebe eventually comes up with a plan to “change the circumstances” where Piper and Paige can be revived and the Angel of Death can meet his agenda and objectives, which involves trading a half-human’s soul for Paige’s. The Angel of Death agrees to this and everything goes back to normal.

In Vaya Con Leos, his final appearance, the Angel of Death’s objective is to take Leo’s soul. What makes this appearance different is his choice to warn the sisters due to his previous interactions with them. He tells Piper that with him, it’s not a matter of how or why, but when. Whilst Piper casts a spell to try and hide Leo, the Angel of Death tells her that he’ll find Leo eventually. When Paige suggests that something magical is behind Leo’s “circumstances”, she asks the Angel of Death about it, and he tells her there’s a reason but he doesn’t know what it is and suggests asking a being who would know. The sisters eventually summon the Angel of Destiny, who tells them that Leo’s death will motivate them to win the ultimate battle of power. The sisters make a deal with the Angel of Destiny to have Leo frozen and for her to hold onto him until the ultimate battle is over.

Ultimately, in his first two appearances, the Angel of Death succeeded in meeting his agenda and objectives, even if he was momentarily stopped in his tracks by the sisters so they could meet their own agenda and objectives. In his third appearance, with his neutrality clearly slipping, he failed in meeting his agenda and objectives, however this was only due to willing self-sabotage – his empathy led to him allowing the sisters to find another way to keep Leo alive, going as far as to help them find a way to do so.

The Cleaners

The Cleaners make their agenda and objectives clear in their first appearance in Forget Me…Not – they are neutral beings whose job it is to cover up magic when it’s exposed through any means necessary.

Forget Me…Not revolves around the Cleaners wiping Wyatt out of existence as he exposed magic by creating a dragon and letting it loose in the city. Whilst the Cleaners warn the sisters about this, after they’ve cast a spell to rewind the day, and give them time to clean up Wyatt’s mess, they end up taking Wyatt away from them after he vanquishes the dragon, as they didn’t clean up the exposure risk. The sisters ultimately defeat the Cleaners at their own game by willingly exposing magic, knowing that they couldn’t erase them from existence as they had to remain neutral.

In their second appearance in Crimes and Witch-Demeanors, the sisters inadvertently expose magic to their season-long nemesis, Inspector Sheridan, which results in the Cleaners framing Darryl for murder. To contact them, Paige and Phoebe deliberately expose magic and the Cleaners admit to framing Darryl, and tell them that they are under orders from the Tribunal not to negotiate with them. The sisters are then taken to the Tribunal where they are on trial and the Cleaners are called as a witness, neither slamming the sisters nor agreeing with Barbas’ jabs at them. When it’s revealed the whole situation was orchestrated by Barbas, the Tribunal orders time to be reversed, which saves Darryl, but one of the Cleaners interacts with Darryl, letting him know that what happened to him was real, despite being led to believe by the Tribunal that it was a dream.

Ultimately, the Cleaners failed in meeting their agenda and objectives. In their first appearance, they were outsmarted by the sisters and in their second appearance, they were not only working for someone else, but their actions were completely overruled and erased by the Tribunal when it was discovered that Evil orchestrated the entire situation that they had to clean up. When it’s revealed in Vaya Con Leos that they refuse to help the sisters, this shows that they are picking and choosing when to be helpful and honestly seem bitter after their interactions with them. If they are doing this, they are clearly not neutral anymore, and therefore have failed.

The Avatars

Unlike the Angel of Death and the Cleaners, the Avatars are the only neutral beings that had a long story arc and were even referred to on the Charmed Wiki website as a “neutral big bad” of the seventh season.

The Avatars agenda and objectives was to create a utopia beyond Good and Evil for the world, at any costs, the “at any costs” part is what ultimately led to them failing.

The Avatars spend the majority of their arc recruiting Leo into their fold and once that happens, they get Leo to get the sisters on board with their agenda and objectives. While it’s a slow burn, they manage to do so. The Avatars main adversary is Kyle, Paige’s boyfriend who believes his parents were murdered by the Avatars, and later, Zankou, a demon who is aware of their past attempts to create utopia and failing.

Although it’s later proven that the Avatars didn’t kill Kyle’s parents, he still views them as a threat and ends up working with Zankou to try and stop them, only to get killed himself before managing to kill Beta. This event ultimately leads to the Avatar’s downfall as it shows their true colours and Paige’s reaction due to her sense of Good and Evil being erased from her mind rings Leo’s instinctive alarm bells that something is not right about the situation, which leads to him investigating further and working with Zankou as well.

Throughout their arc, the feeling of “it’s too good to be true” was greatly emphasised through Kyle, Zankou, and the Elders feeling threatened by them, but it’s finally proven in their final appearance when it’s revealed that they casually erase anyone from existence who brings too much conflict in the world, and that utopia comes at the cost of free will. Once the sisters eventually come to this realisation one-by-one, starting with Leo causing conflict and leading Phoebe to have a premonition of the losses they’ve suffered over the years under the Good and Evil conflict, they quickly work with Zankou to revert the world back to the way it was. The Avatars agree and retreat peacefully.

Overall, the Avatars failed to meet their agenda and objectives due to their “at any cost” mentality, as well as not being honest and transparent with Leo and the sisters.

Final thoughts

Whilst the Angel of Death, the Cleaners, and the Avatars failed to meet their individual agenda and objectives for many reasons, they also all failed in one major and common way – their lack of humanity.

All three of these beings are magical and therefore not human, and when they go toe-to-toe with the Charmed Ones, they are going toe-to-toe with not only witches, but also human beings, who are incapable of being neutral and whose emotions play a powerful (no pun intended) role in how they view the world and conduct themselves as witches.

With the Angel of Death, Prue’s issues with and her determination to beat him briefly stopped him in his tracks, and later Phoebe’s determination to save her sisters made her come up with a compromise that he could live with but would have never been able to come up with himself, and ultimately in his final appearance, he admitted to becoming so fond of the sisters that he allowed Piper to come up with a solution to get Leo off his list.

With the Cleaners, they failed to take Piper’s motherly love and instincts into account when they took Wyatt away in their first appearance, and in their second appearance, they failed to consider that they were being played, something that was constantly being suggested by the sisters during their court session with the Tribunal.

With the Avatars, they failed to consider how important free will is to the sisters and humans in living their lives, their emotions and the decisions they make, and their lack of humanity meant they also didn’t learn from their mistakes the first time they tried to create utopia.

All three of these neutral beings also failed in one form or another as their methods of meeting their agenda and objectives clashed with the way the Charmed Ones tried to meet their agenda and objectives.

Despite their multiple failures and questionable methods in meeting their agenda and objectives, neutral beings do have a place in the Charmed universe, and they were fun and interesting to watch. While the ongoing battle between Good and Evil was interesting to watch throughout Charmed’s eight-season run, the existence of these neutral beings added nuance to the battle and the Charmed universe as a whole.