One of the overarching mysteries of the fourth season of nuCharmed has been the identity of Michaela “Kaela” Danso and how she connects to the Charmed Ones. This past Friday, that connection was finally fully explained, and the response has been mixed.
Spoilers for nuCharmed Season Four.
Kaela is happily adopted and used magic to figure out the identity of her biological parents, a biracial couple living in Virginia. It was assumed that they were witches, but when they are accidentally poisoned by Maggie, the shoe is dropped that they are human. That means they’re not related to the Vera family, which is a long family of witches.
In the newest episode, it was revealed that when Macy’s father Dexter had cancer, she donated stem cells to a program. Kaela had leukemia and got some of Macy’s stem cells. When Macy died, it is implied that the magical energy in those cells was activated even though Kaela should be human. Showrunner Joey Falco explained that the intent was to “break down the old trope that you need ‘royal blood’ to be special. That felt so archaic and elitist. Instead with Kaela we wanted to say…anyone of any birth can be a chosen one.”
He continued: “It’s more about who you are as a person. Deep down. As a human being. And future episodes will go into this more. But it was really important for us to not go the Paige route and say you need to be born of certain special people to be special yourself.”
I do understand the intent of this, but I think it falls a part slightly because (a) those special bloodline tropes are not often given to women of color, so there’s still room for it, and (b) by having Kaela be chosen because of Macy’s stem cells still makes it about an arbitrary connection to someone with power. It especially doesn’t make much sense when Josefina was already there as part of the family and a witch. If they wanted to do someone not a sister, but also make a diverse choice, trans Afro-Latina Josefina was perfect.
When asked about Macy’s demon powers, Falco said that would’ve been explored in season five. “The plan was to explore Kaela’s potential demon side in a Season 5 – it’s SO much to unpack and we had too much story that still needed to be told in 410-413, as you’ll see. As for the other thing…you can’t just steal Charmed One blood to become Charmed. 411 will elaborate.” Hopefully that elaboration will show us how why Kaela was a subversive choice.
Charmed was canceled as part of The CW’s recent, huge culling, and the show will likely end on a cliffhanger—a disappointing end for the reboot.
(featured image: The CW)
