With the Elders all dead, responsibility for all Witch kind falls on the Vera sisters. But do they really want that sort of burden, or would they rather just get on with their lives? And ultimately, will they have a choice?

It’s funny that this episode of Charmed takes place mere weeks after the finale, in which all the Elders died, Macy nearly destroyed the whole world before instead destroying the source of all evil, and tearful goodbyes were said to the loves of Mel and Maggie’s lives. Funny because we open on a mad birthday party for Maggie, Macy announcing an intention to move on to a new, better job out of town and Mel in her element ‘being the boss’. Nothing really seems to have stuck with the Charmed Ones, and that’s kinda setting the theme for what comes next.

Unsurprisingly (because by now it’s sort of the established order of things) Macy gets to be the one who suffers the worst in a multitude of ways, leaving her sisters to mostly get all the action. The show powers from one confusing new setpiece/idea to the next, barely leaving room for the reams of half-expository dialogue the characters keep needing to spew as they end up at yet another random new location, the cast seemingly as lost as we the audience are as everything gets turned completely on its head.

Making matters worse, every apparent ‘solution’ that’s been bequeathed to them by the Elders to help in their new role as… leaders of all Witches, I guess, seems wrapped in obtuseness, be it a spellbook written in a language none of them (including their whitelighter) can understand and some sort of protective safe space in which they are stripped of their powers and left to randomly fend for themselves in a series of random locations while getting attacked by… all sorts of stuff.

It’s confused and confusing, and some of the worst bits come off as literal hand-waving by a writers’ room who have the action sequences and locations shots worked out but don’t really seem too fussed with small details like plot. As for Niko and Parker, neither gets so much as a mention, let alone a second thought. Quick to recover, these Vera girls.

Even the opening ‘previously on Charmed’ montage is weirdly disjointed, smashing together tiny fragments of mostly unrelated scenes in an order and execution that leaves anyone who might have forgotten what happened in season 1 none the wiser. Then it just goes downhill from there. Apparently, there’s a war on – God help the world if this is the standard of the people on humanity’s side.

Verdict: Awkward, disjointed and frequently just madly confusing. Not the best start to a second season. 3/10

Greg D. Smith