Whitelighter Helen reaches out to the gang, drawing them into a conflict that involves Darklighter Helen and more of the mysterious organisation with the strange tattoo who seem to be hunting down magical creatures. Macy fixes on a drastic course of action in an attempt to regain her lost powers.

Having received a mysterious call from the institution where Helen is being held, Harry arrives to find a lot of dead bodies and no sign of Darklighter Helen at all. Whitelighter Helen appears mostly bemused, and Harry, Mel and Maggie set about helping her and finding her dark counterpart before she does too many awful things to too many innocent people.

Or rather, Maggie and Harry do that while Mel stays back at home base with Whitelighter Helen to look after her and learn more about here. This is all very adorable and stuff, but isn’t Maggie supposed to be the compassionate one? Also, what’s Jordan up to at the moment, having survived his first magical mission last week?

On that first point, it does turn out that there’s a fairly solid reason for Maggie to be the one accompanying Harry, not that either of them could really have predicted it, and that’s all well and good until the show rather undermines the whole point of it all in the final act in the name of tying up the narrative neatly. In fact, all any of this seems designed to actually do is define some parameters for the inevitable coming conflict between Harry and his own evil twin. It’s no good giving me heartfelt, emotional storytelling about the background of a side character if the mechanics of the walking plot device they are remain so obviously on display. Sorry.

As for Macy, having struggled without her powers, and feeling (inevitably) like she’s the weak link holding back the Charmed Ones from recovering the Power of Three, she decides that the only way to get her powers back is to do something very drastic. That drastic thing will require her asking the last person in the world she would want to for help, and then doing something the impossibility of which was literally one of the fundamental narrative threads of the first season but which is now apparently the work of moments. Oh, and she finds out a big secret as well (which again feels like the main reason for the other stuff). So far, so humdrum.

Verdict: Narrative requires plot devices in order to function. Good narrative requires them to be at least vaguely hidden from the audience. Consistency never hurts, either. Another swing and a miss. 4/10

Greg D. Smith