Vivian’s cabal has been an interesting addition, if only because they went from moving in silence like the g in lasagna to making a lot of noise, seemingly overnight. They took so long to appear, and now that they’ve arrived, they’re underwhelming. It’s probably that their ultimate goal is to rid the world of magic, that makes them feel… less. It’s just an odd place to focus all that time, energy, and resources, but rich folks need hobbies too, I guess.
Celeste explains who she is and why the Bad Guys want her (she knows magic science, in short) and says the Charmed Ones will need the Power of Three. But as we saw in the last episode, the girls didn’t take the power because of the destiny attached to it, that it’d destroy the sisterhood. So, Celeste, in her infinite wisdom, puts a spell on the girls that send them into dreams that force them to experience their worst fears. To give them perspective, I guess.
What Charmed does well is characterization, at least where the main cast is concerned. I know the Charmed Ones. You could drop either of them into another show, and I’d be able to clearly visualize how they would behave in that setting. Macy, Maggie, and Mel are not my favorite characters by any stretch, but they are fully realized. This does hurt the show a little, though. The audience is so aware of what they want, what they fear, what motivates them, and how they move, and think, and feel… that putting them in these situations to explore their internal selves has become blasé.
Macy enters a scenario where Harry and Abigael are married with children. Dream Macy is off having an incredible career, while Abbie has become the de facto third sister. She and Abbie fight, and Maggie gets caught in the crossfire and dies. In Maggie’s dream, Maggie is.. a child? Jordan leaves her, saying “that’s what we men do.” Then the monster kills Mel. In Mel’s dream, she wakes up in an asylum, and Jordan helps her escape. Only he’s not Jordan, he’s the Witchfinder General, and her sisters are restrained over unlit pyres.
Celeste expected the sisters to wake up when they died in their dreams —based on the faulty premise that they each feared their own death— but instead, they lose each other in the dreams and are therefore trapped. I do not understand these rules, but after Macy gets Maggie killed, and Maggie gets Mel killed, they, along with Harry who made Celeste put him in the dream, die to protect Macy. That brings them all out of the dreamscape.
