In honor of the 10th anniversary of the Charmed series finale I think it’s about time we recognize, once again, how badass of a show it was and why we need more like it in today’s TV lineup.
Yes, you read that intro right. It’s been 10 years since the WB show we all know and love wrapped up the story of the Halliwell sisters. May 21, 2006. What the hell? Where has the time gone and why have we come this far without a Charmed revival and/or movie?
Despite recent rumors of a CBS reboot happening, we’ve not heard anything about Charmed coming back into our lives in any official capacity. But now that we’ve hit the 10-year anniversary of the finale, I wanted to share a couple of reasons why it was so fantastic, and why we need another show like it back on our TV screens.
It was unapologetically matriarchal
With today’s society being the type who gets outraged at Rogue One having a female lead, I’m not sure many men reading this know what the term matriarchy even means. As per Dictionary.com, for those boys too lazy to look up the term, it is officially defined as “a family, society, community, or state governed by women.” Yeah, you heard that! A society in which men do not dominate. Weird, right?
Charmed has always been about women kicking ass. The most badass characters in the show all come from a line of extremely powerful female witches, and the Halliwell line has had magic pass through the women in the family for centuries. And the best part about it is that even when there were male co-stars they were always less important than The Charmed Ones.
The sisters’ romantic lives were important but never more important than the story, and they sacrificed their lead romances to make room for character and plot development countless times in the show’s eight season lifespan. Oh, and Charmed passes the Bechdel-Wallace test on every single episode.
While Charmed definitely had some problems in the diversity department, you can’t say that it didn’t pave a path for TV shows to give us even more badass women without feeling the need to weaken them with needless romantic arcs. It’s because of shows like Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer that networks realized that audiences actually appreciate and want more female-centered dramas, and I’m so glad they helped the trend take off.
The success of Charmed proves that we need more shows driven by an entirely female cast with a matriarchal society. While we have shows that focus on incredibly strong and independent women (Supergirl, Quantico, and Scandal, just to name a few) that just isn’t enough when today’s TV slots are filled with leading men. I want another show where the women take all the lead roles and every single male is just a supporting character — bring back my matriarchy!
It was the best kind of supernatural show
Keep in mind that Charmed began airing a whole seven years before Supernatural premiered, and when it did first air it was just plain fun. It was fall of 1998, and the world needed a new fun show to watch. When it premiered on October 7 of that year we all fell in love. A really light hearted supernatural drama about a bunch of women who find out they have magic? Yes, please!
It was kind of like what you’d get if you mixed Fraiser with Supernatural and replaced all the characters with women. I know, that’s a very weird combination but hear me out here.
The characters were just trying to go about their daily lives and figure out how to get through their late-20s/early 30s (this would be the Fraiser aspect, aged a little younger, because while I could have used Friends, Charmed is nowhere near as comical) while simultaneously learning how to figure out magic and how to control it, and also dealing with the fact that they’re given the responsibility of saving the world.
The show managed to balance a fantastic pairing of quirky, almost ridiculous, comedy alongside some pretty dark drama — this is from the same show that forced the sisters to deal with someone trying to murder their son/nephew while in the same episode acting like five year olds because of a ridiculous spell cast by their grandmother. I feel like no other show at the time could get away with the brilliant juxtaposition of comedy and drama in just a single scene.
It was a perfect mix of procedural and episodic
Charmed wasn’t strictly a procedural show, but it wasn’t a monster of the week episodic type show either, and I think that’s what made it succeed for so long. Yes, of course they faced a new demon every week but whatever demon that was there didn’t affect the character growth that was happening when the sisters weren’t fighting evil. The sisters could fight their demons and live their lives too, which made them that much more badass in my book.
In every season there was an epic story to tell, and whether that was about figuring out how to start learning magic or working with their son from the future to prevent the apocalypse it was always perfectly blended with weekly demons and dangers that kept us interested week after week. But it wasn’t the monsters that kept us coming back, it was the sisters and their stories.
Maybe I’m a little biased because it was my first fandom ever, but I find Charmed to basically be the perfect show because of how well it blended the procedural and episodic show style… along with everything else I listed out.
Bonus: It was the 90s version of a fantastic CW show
You may not know that The CW used to be called the WB, and the WB is the network that Charmed premiered on back in the ’90s. So if you love your CW shows like The 100, The Vampire Diaries, and of course Supernatural then you understand why Charmed is so good. Those folks over at CW know how to make a damn good show, don’t they?
Watch the final few minutes of the Charmed finale below:
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.