Mel and Maggie turn to the darker side of spellcraft to try to locate their missing sister, while Harry makes some rash decisions of his own in order to do the same.

At the end of the last episode it became clear that Macy had been kidnapped by Harry’s dark alter ego – his ‘Darklighter’ which was the result of a process of deduction as he sought the mysterious Helen McGaintry through a series of clues and discovered not only her but her apparently mad twin. Sussing that she was the original Whitelighter (or ‘Alpha’) Harry was able to piece together the jigsaw as to why a malevolent version of himself was running around killing witches. When Macy disappeared with what her sisters assumed to be Harry, everything fell into place.

I mention all this because I’m not really sure why Harry spends most of this episode mucking about with Abigael helping him to ‘unlock his subconscious’ and discover the full exact story of how he was made into a Whitelighter, what happened to the dark half of himself etc, all apparently in an attempt to deduce the psychic link he assumes he must share with this other half of himself to locate Macy. I only ask because the Vera sisters take a much more direct and logical approach.

Of course, it’s also a slightly dumb approach in and of itself, involving (inevitably) a spell that’s banned because… well, that much is never really specified but suffice it to say that the spell requires that both the girls know their missing sister really well and obviously they don’t, resulting in various shenanigans as they try to finesse the formula. Honestly, that they don’t have much clue about their older half-sister isn’t surprising – if the writers can’t be bothered to give Macy much to do other than be a constant victim, why should her fellow characters make any more effort?

Hands down the most interesting part of the show at the moment is Abigael, and that’s thanks partly to the performance of Poppy Drayton, and partly to the fact that she’s the only character who acts in any vaguely smart way and displays some sort of depths beyond the surface. Finding out last week that she was the half-sister of Parker wasn’t exactly as thrilling as the show seemed to want me to think – it feels more like the world of Charmed is a lot smaller than the real world to be fair – but it does at least give the character some bite. Watching her manipulate Harry isn’t as fun as it could be, because he’s always been so easily manipulated, but trying to guess exactly what she’s up to at any given moment and just when/if she’s going to betray everyone at least passes the time.

Verdict: Spends a good deal of its runtime ‘solving’ a mystery it had already solved in the ways that mattered, and inadvertently adds some meta commentary into itself about the writers’ treatment of one of its characters. About as good as usual. 4/10

Greg D. Smith