20 Things Wrong With Charmed (We All Choose To Ignore)
To this day, the biggest fans of Charmed still miss witnessing the journeys of the Halliwell sisters unfold. This wasn't just a show about witches and warlocks-it was a show about sisterhood, making choices, acting selfless, and female empowerment.
Though the story has continued in comic book form, and a reboot has come to the small screen, fans will always look back fondly on the original eight seasons with the original cast. Those were the days!
Although fans love the show and hate to fault it, there are a few plot holes that disrupted the story over the seasons and just didn't make much sense. From characters who were just created out of convenience to magical rules that changed from season to season to dates and facts that were plain wrong, there are a couple of things hard-core fans choose to ignore about Charmed. But that doesn't mean they love it any less!
Though the show wasn't perfect, it taught viewers a lot of lessons and brought them a lot of enjoyment for nearly a decade, and for that, they'll always be grateful! Keep reading to find out what details just don't make sense about the lives of the Halliwell sisters.
20 Prue Disappeared For Good, Even Though The Sisters Can Communicate With Ghosts
Yes, we're still mourning the loss of Prue after the Season Three finale. But after the eldest Halliwell sister passed away, we never hear from her again. In most cases, that would be normal.
But in a world where the sisters are constantly communicating with ghosts and other magical beings, and people have been known to come back from the dead, it's a little odd.
We understand that Shannen Doherty left the show and that's that, but they could have come up with a better excuse for why she never appeared again. In the comic book continuation of the series, it was explained that Prue reincarnated into Patience and was unable to visit her sisters.
19 The After Life Is Inconsistent
Some of the principles of the magical world tend to change throughout the series, based on whether or not they're convenient for a particular episode. The afterlife and how people move on, for example, seems to be different for everybody! In Saving Private Leo in Season Four, Leo's charge Maria passes away and her soul immediately moves on. But then later in the episode, Piper also passes away and is able to stick around long enough to vanquish her husband's old ghost enemies. And in Enter The Demon, the Zen Master walked through a gateway into paradise. Maybe it depends on whether you're human, witch, or other?
18 The Sisters Only Have Powers In Other Times And Realities When It's Convenient
Throughout the series, the sisters do their fair share of traveling to different times and realities. The general rule of thumb is that they adopt the life (and powers or lack of powers) of themselves in that reality or time.
When Paige accidentally orbs to the other reality in Centennial Charmed, she finds herself without any powers because, in this world, she was never called as a witch.
That's all well and good, but she should have still had her Whitelighter powers. She was living the life this reality's Paige would have lived if she hadn't died, and that Paige was still half Whitelighter.
17 If Bad Guys Wanted To Get Rid Of The Charmed Ones, They Probably Could Have
When you think about it, it seems a little hard to believe that those from the Underworld don't get more creative in their attempts to vanquish the Charmed Ones. Since they're bad guys, there's no reason why they wouldn't play hardball and do whatever they can to get rid of these good witches, whether it's fair or not. If they really wanted to vanquish the Halliwells, wouldn't they shimmer in during the night when everyone is sleeping and take care of it then? They can teleport in at any time, and the sisters never really install a magical security system to stop that from happening.
16 Exactly What Does It Take To Become The Source?
The Source is one of the most serious enemies the sisters have to face over the seasons. But what exactly does one have to do to become the Source? In Womb Raider in Season Four, after the Charmed ones have vanquished Cole as the Source, it is established that a demon has to lay his or her hands on the Grimoire to become the Source. That's why Leo hides it all the way in the Andes! But Cole also says to Barbas that he can use his powers to become the Source. Unless Cole meant he could use his powers to get his hands on the Grimoire, this seems like a mistake.
15 Sometimes The Sisters Used Magic For Personal Gain Without Consequences
It's pretty clear that good witches don't use their magic for personal gain, and if they don't resist temptation, there are consequences. We saw that in Season Four when Paige tried to cast a spell on her coworker and, instead, magic gave her body some major enhancements.
But there are still a few times over the series where the sisters do use magic for personal gain and they don't receive any punishment.
What comes to mind is Phoebe turning a rival advice columnist into a turkey. Granted, she was under a spell from the witch doctor, but that's not an excuse!
14 In Fact, Time Travel Rules Changed From Season To Season
Admittedly, time travel is a tough subject to make work. Across the eight seasons of the show, the rules regarding time travel tend to change. In A Witch In Time in Season Five, Piper goes back in time to keep Phoebe from saving her boyfriend Miles, and once she does her job, the original Piper just fades away and the new one stays. Yet in the final season, Piper goes back in time to save her sisters from dying and get rid of the Hollow, but the old Piper doesn't fade away. The new one takes over her body as time catches up with itself, according to Leo.
13 Sometimes The Characters Were Too Silly To Be Believable
The sisters have a lot to deal with as they save the world from darkness, but sometimes, they just don't help themselves. Whenever one of the sisters is possessed, replaced by something bad, or under a spell, the others can't manage to figure it out until it's too late. Even though they live together and know each other better than they know themselves, and know they live in a world where creepy beings are always trying to mess with them, they never seem to pick up on it when one of them is acting differently. Though he was a good liar, the sisters should have realized the truth about Cole a lot sooner!
12 The Halliwell Family Tree Is All Wrong
From Seasons One to Eight, the Elders perhaps go through the greatest character changes. We're just not sure they were planned (or make sense)! In the first four seasons, they're pretty much never seen, are super mysterious, and are reasonable although strict. Then in Season Five, they're portrayed as weaklings needing protection from witches and leprechauns who just want to retire. In Season Six it's suddenly okay for Elders to lead schools and hang around their ex-wives. And finally, in the last two seasons, the Elders are basically petty and selfish with more powers but a reluctance to actually help. Um?
10 Basically Nobody Came To Paige's Wake
We know that since becoming a witch, Paige gained a whole new set of priorities and stopped socializing as frequently with the people she used to see.
But we would still expect more people to show up to her wake than who did!
Glenn came along to pay his respects, as did members of the leprechaun community after Paige helped them out. But that's it! Even if she didn't have many friends, Paige actually had a whole other side of the family (her father's side), not to mention any relatives she had through her adoptive parents. On one occasion, she was even speaking to an aunt and uncle on the phone!
9 Who Did Wyatt Get His Blonde Hair From?
Piper's first son Wyatt is portrayed in the last couple of seasons as a gorgeous toddler with locks of blonde hair. Future Wyatt never loses his fairness either.
Fans have noted that since Piper and Leo are both brunettes, it's pretty remarkable that they have a blonde child.
It's not impossible that two people with brown hair could create a blonde child, but what makes it weirder is that Wyatt had dark hair when he was born. During his birth, Phoebe told Piper she could see a head with dark hair, and Paige jokingly asked Piper if she was expecting a blonde.
8 Cole Never Actually Chose To Become The Source
After his final vanquish in the fifth season, Cole only returns once more to the Halliwell manor, in the 150thepisode of the series. We won't get into how he has no interaction with Phoebe in the episode (annoying!), but when he and Piper are talking about the past, they get a detail wrong. Piper accuses him of choosing to become the Source of all things bad, and he admits it: “Look, I already feel guilty enough, all right?” The problem is, though, that Cole never really chose to become the Source. He took on those powers in the first place to save the sisters!
7 Did Leo Have A Problem With Orbing?
In Saving Private Leo, two ghosts from Leo's past, brothers Rick and Nathan, return to get revenge on him for leaving them to die during the war.
They try to get even by hurting the people in his life since they can't hurt him because he's a whitelighter.
At first, they go after his charge Maria, and Leo is there when it happens. Nathan holds him down so he can't get to her and save her before it's too late, but Leo can orb. Can he really not get past someone holding him down? Leo loses his powers later in the episode, but not before he loses Maria!
6 Phoebe Drinks Sometimes, And Doesn't Other Times
Avid Charmed fans would have noticed a few of the plot holes that came up across the seasons. One that only the biggest fans would have picked up on was Phoebe's drinking.
When Kaya pretends to be Phoebe in Season Five's The Importance Of Being Phoebe, Cole sees through her instantly because “Phoebe doesn't drink.”
Really? In I've Got You Under My Skin, Alec buys her a drink at Quake. And in Lucky Charmed, Jason buys her a drink at the end of the episode. We're guessing this was an error made by the writers, not by Cole!
5 The Cleaners Just Showed Up One Episode
You'd be hard-pressed to find a Charmed fan who doesn't have a problem with the Cleaners. The idea behind these neutral beings is that they exist to protect the world of magic from exposure. Whenever a magical being does something that exposes magic, the Cleaners come along and do whatever they have to in order to hide the event from the non-magical world. This idea doesn't really work when you consider the whole series, because the sisters have revealed magic many times before the Season Six arrival of the Cleaners. The events in All Hell Breaks Loose wouldn't even make sense in conjunction with these two!
4 The Case Of The Necromancer
Like many of the other witches in her family, Grams is no stranger to falling for a bad boy. It is revealed that she had a romance with the Necromancer when she returns to give Wyatt a blessing.
But the facts get a little muddled as the writers try to explain the timeline of events.
Piper mentions that Grams banished this demon sixty years ago at Patty's Wiccanning. Then Grams says that the Necromancer has had “almost seventy years” to become strong again. These dates don't make sense since Patty was born in 1950. The episode aired in 2003, so he couldn't have been banished for more than 53 years.
3 The Power Of Whitelighters Varies
It is made pretty clear that although Whitelighters are super powerful, they can't bring deceased people back to life. If this weren't the case, Leo would have been able to save a lot more characters, including Prue. However, in Love Hurts of Season One, Piper and Leo switch powers so that she can save him after he's pierced with the arrow of a Darklighter. Leo ends up losing his life, but Piper saves him using his Whitelighter's powers. Some fans argue that maybe his brain hadn't passed on yet, but we'd have no reason to make that assumption.
2 Piper Didn't Know As Much About Whitelighters As She Thought
Being married to a Whitelighter, you'd think that Piper would know all there is to know about these magical beings. In Be Careful What You Witch For, Piper says to Leo, “You have been watching me my whole life.”
This suggests that she is up to date with how Whitelighters work.
But later when she and Leo are preparing the nursery, he tells her he's been watching her for her whole life, and she acts surprised, telling him, “That's a little bit creepy.” There was also the time that Piper was surprised that Whitelighters could have babies with mortals, even though she saw herself with his baby in the future.
1 There Should Have Been A Different Alternate Reality In The Witchstock Episode
In Season Six's Witchstock, we get to see a whole different side of Grams. After Paige accidentally changes the past, Grams becomes a total pacifist and shadow of her former self.
The episode makes it clear that if Grams had never become assertive and filled with a hatred for the dark side, she would have passed away young, along with her granddaughters.
But in the new reality that Paige accidentally creates, Grams is a pacifist ghost, but she's a middle-aged pacifist ghost. She should have been decades younger when she died, and Chris and Wyatt shouldn't have been born since Piper wouldn't have lived to become a mother.