The Charmed Ones find themselves in a world very different from our own. But can this vision of paradise really last?

Turns out when Inara ended last week’s episode telling the girls she’d see them in Paradise, she wasn’t being metaphorical. This week’s episode opens up with the three girls living their best life in a world where magical creatures are all equal and living openly in the world. There’s something quite off about that though, and once they realise what that is, the full horror of that world becomes apparent.

What’s also apparent is that the writers don’t really have the budget available to commit to this storyline. If Inara is now the all-powerful controller of the world and everything magical, why would she choose to create a paradise in which she rules from Safe Space? The plot might argue it’s because that’s where the command centre and its secrets lie, but that seems a little convenient given Inara’s aforementioned godlike powers.

At any rate, with their memories wiped (just like everyone else) the Charmed Ones are quite happily going about their new lives (Mel, as a cleaner, Kaela as the mail woman and Maggie as some sort of magical travelling IT-Girl) when one of them is snapped out of rather brutally and then goes to free the other two. And then things get… silly.

Well, perhaps sillier. Harry is still in the realm beyond watching hours and hours of videotape of various possible futures and pasts and hits upon one tape which suggests to him the possibility of undoing all that Inara has done. Meanwhile the girls have a plan of their own, which involves enlisting the help of Jordan (also under Inara’s control and working as her PA in this new reality). That plan goes about as well as you might expect, and the show races towards a rushed conclusion in which there are multiple casualties and a setup for the finale which feels just odd.

Part of the problem Charmed has struggled with since the beginning is the need for ever-escalating threats, which leads to constant invention of new and more deadly magical threats which feel like things people really should have mentioned before and which the show has struggled to ever make feel organic. Another issue here is that not only have we lost Macy, the strongest (in my opinion) of the three sisters, but we have also lost Abigael, who was always a delightful character, and who actually gets name-checked here, reminding one forcibly of what we have lost.

The issue now is Inara is being presented as the new, all-powerful completely unmatchable arch nemesis but we know that the girls will find some magical doohickey and do a bit of ‘Power of Three’ and it’ll all work out fine. As strongly as this final season began, it’s finishing poorly.

Verdict: On its way out with a whimper rather than a bang. 4/10

Greg D. Smith