The Charmed Ones face a race against time to save magic, and must enlist allies new and old to help them. But overhanging them all is the prophecy that ultimate sacrifice must be made – could this be the end of the Power of Three?

There’s one thing you could never accuse this season of Charmed of so far and that’s being slow. We started out with the resolution of the Julian/Aunt Viv storyline which literally wrapped in the first two episodes and now we’re facing the death of magic and of all magical creatures.

The setup allows for the usual Charmed formula of splitting the gang to do their own separate things with other people. The death of magic, which was sold to us last week as an inevitable and undoable consequence of any mortal touching the Black Amber, turns out in fact to be actually undoable, but it will require a dangerous artefact the girls have encountered before, and also, chillingly, ‘the ultimate sacrifice’.

If it sounds like I’m being snarky, I am a bit – Charmed has a wheelhouse and it mostly likes to stick to it. That said, the difference with this season so far is that it’s finding fun ways to do it, and this episode is no exception. I’ve been harping on about the show’s treatment of Macy for two seasons now so it’s only fair I start with her and say how nice it is not only that she gets to go off with Harry on her part of this week’s quest but that over the course of it, we get him declaring that she damned well is important and valued enough that he doesn’t want to lose what they have, and we have Macy having actual agency and a sense of self-worth. More of this, please.

Mel gets paired off with Abi, who’s the sort of girl for the gang to implement part one of their plan and it’s a delight to see the writers finally play with the expectations of the audience properly with Abi’s character. You spend the entire episode thinking you know what’s coming and then it really doesn’t go that way at all. Added to that, Mel gets possibly the most interesting storyline as she draws what seems a fairly cast-iron conclusion from the available data which the episode then does interesting things with.

As to Maggie, she’s off with Jordan visiting one of her old haunts from her Kappa days. It’s a little on the nose in terms of a way to address how much the character has grown since that opening season, but the chemistry between the characters means that it works well enough.

As well as a fast-moving main plot we also get what seems to be a rapid conclusion to another side narrative that’s been bubbling away for a season or so and all in all as the credits roll after another revelation it’s hard to dismiss the idea that the Charmed writers’ room are going for a different sort of narrative altogether this season. Time will tell, but so far it seems to be working pretty well.

Verdict: Doesn’t reinvent the wheel but uses it a lot better than usual. 8/10

Greg D. Smith