The Command Centre is under attack and the Charmed Ones must look to unusual methods to gain entrance.

Having revealed to us that Julian is a bad guy, which rather conveniently solved the whole Harry/Julian conundrum for Macy while proving that the Vera women have terrible luck in romance, Charmed can move onto the next phase of the narrative – why Julian is doing what he’s doing and whether he actually is all that bad a bad guy.

The answer is a bit muddled. It feels mostly like it’s his aunt driving things, even as the show runs flashback after flashback showing that it was Julian who never stopped believing in magic after witnessing a Whitelighter save the other people involved in his parents’ car accident and that eh was the one who had to drag his heart with him. The Charmed writers’ rom does love its tortured male villains who aren’t necessarily all bad though, and in fairness Eric Balfour does a fairly good job of portraying nuance in a fairly hackneyed script.

Meanwhile, because he’s onto the girls, Safe Space is in lockdown with magic detectors all over the place and crews trying to dig into the basement to get to the Command Centre. The girls can’t risk just walking in the door or using magic, so they need another solution, which brings Elder Celeste back into the picture as the girls seek the best advice they can. That advice leads Mel into an unexpected encounter and the Vera sisters into more trouble in a Peril of the Week so weak that it’s actually painful to watch.

Oh, and there’s the small matter of Macy and Harry’s new relationship – I wonder if there might be some sort of rule laid down by the Elders about Whitelighters getting intimately involved with their charges, and whether that might be super relevant here even though the Elders are no longer a thing? I wonder indeed…

To be fair, nothing here is as bad as the show at its absolute worst, but it’s not good either. There’s very little originality here, even by the standard of the show itself, and there’s also not really a lot of forward progression among the predictability either. I was hopeful that the show was on an upward trajectory, but it seems it may already have peaked.

Verdict: Slap-bang average stuff. Disappointing, considering recent weeks. 6/10

Greg D. Smith