For four seasons, The CW’s reboot of Charmed has struggled to fully make its mark. The season three exit of Madeleine Mantock gave the show an opportunity to move in a brand new direction, with a new “sister,” and a chance to finally move these characters forward. And, as of the most recent episode, they are succeeding.
Macy (Mantock) sacrificed herself to help save magic, and now, the Power of Three sisterhood is splintered. Mel (Melonie Diaz) is dating around, being a toxic ghoster, and Maggie (Sarah Jeffery) is going out fighting demons to distract herself from the pain. They are not talking, and not searching for the mysterious other member of their trio.
Enter Michaela “Kaela” Danso (Lucy Barrett), a mysterious artist from Philly who develops the powers of manifestation. A counterpart to Paige from the original series, she is the free-spirited new member who helps the team deal with their grief and move on to continue their purpose.
Kaela is adopted by a Ghanian family, and it is great that not only is Blackness a part of her character, but it is specific and informs her food and speaking. She is also happily adopted—and her parents are not tragically dead. That’s fantastic. Plus, with this new person fitting into a group of hurt people, they finally have someone who talks to them and pushes them to be better and more communicative, which, for viewers, is fantastic.
In the most recent episode, “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Sandwich,” we finally have Maggie talking about her Blackness again, with her admitting that she didn’t grow up with it. It was nice to see Kaela and Maggie have that conversation and made me even more frustrated it wasn’t something we saw on the series before.
Small things like that have made Kaela and her easy transition into the show a balm. We are finally getting episodes that deal with the Charmed ones and make their core relationship the focus again, with episodic monsters of the week that lead into the larger narrative.
I am even enjoying that the current storyline is dealing with the Charmed ones’ status within the magical community, especially among non-witches, who are seeing themselves as expendable to the witches. It is a compelling storyline and finally something interesting we didn’t see in the original. Charmed is often at its best when it is trying to say something meaningful about power.
As someone who is critical of Charmed due to the series’ colorism, but still watched to support the WOC of the series, I’m glad that Charmed is finally realizing that it needs to be different. With a rotating group of writers and showrunners, the show has not been given the best chance so far. As of this writing, the show has not yet been renewed for next season.
I can’t say that the show fully deserves to be brought back—it has been given a lot of chances—but it would be a shame for it to go away when it is finally hitting its stride.
(image: CW)
