The Charmed Ones

The Charmed Ones are a chosen sisterhood of three witches who are known as the most powerful trio of witches in the world. They are dedicated to protecting innocents, such as other witches and mortals, and vanquishing evil, most commonly demons. The magical bond between the sisters is known as the Power of Three, which is an extremely powerful form of magic, if not the most powerful. It is represented by the ancient symbol known as the triquetra. Despite being a very great and useful source of power, every incarnation of the Charmed Ones has been destroyed by the Power of Three, unable to handle the consequences of carrying such a powerful form of magic.

The current incarnation of "The Charmed Ones" consists of Macy Vaughn, Melanie Vera and Margarita Vera. After the sisters' auras were stripped for their own safety, this caused them to lose their active powers and seemed to render the sisters unable to access the Power of Three as well. Mel and Maggie have since developed new active witchly powers, while Macy regained an advanced version of her original witchly power. The sisters regained the Power of Three after they understood the importance of their sisterhood.

History

Dawn of Time

The first incarnation of the Charmed Ones appeared in ancient times, when magic was everywhere, but an unknown powerful being known as the Conqueror decided to appropriate all the magic for itself. The Charmed Ones were able to subdue this being using the Power of Three.^[1]

Since that time the Charmed Ones have existed in trios of sisterhoods since the dawn of time when they were needed to protect the world from destruction. However, to possess such great power, it overwhelmed every generation of Charmed Ones until one of the set of sisters died as a consequence. A previous Charmed One became a guardian of the Command Center after her death, acting as surveillance and guarding the black amber tree in hopes of meeting future Charmed Ones to help them break the cycle.^[2]

The Vera-Vaughn Charmed Ones

Early Life

In the year 1990, a powerful witch and Elder, Marisol, became pregnant by her mortal lover, Dexter Vaughn. Over the course of her pregnancy, Marisol began to feel that there was something wrong, one day even expressing these feelings to a friend. Marisol's worries were confirmed when their baby, Macy Vaughn, was stillborn.

Determined to save the life of their child, Marisol came up with a plan to reunite the pieces of the Scythe of Tartarus in order to free a Necromancer from Tartarus, knowing this was a violation of the Elders rules. After successfully reassembling the scythe, Marisol used it to summon a Necromancer named Knansie from Tartarus to resurrect Macy. Knansie's ritual worked but there was a great cost: the three could spend only the following two years as a family, but when those two years were through, Macy and Marisol could never see each other again or Macy would die.

Desperate to not lose her daughter a second time but not having no other alternative, Marisol let Dexter take Macy when the time came, although they still remained in contact by sending letters for years. During their two years together, she bound Macy's powers. However, the experience of having to leave her child was still too traumatizing, leading her to ask fellow Elder, Charity Callahan to cast an anguish spell to help her feel better, which she did despite not knowing why.

A couple of years later, Marisol met a man named Ray Vera, who became the father of her second child, Mel Vera. Eventually, Marisol and Dexter met up again in secret and ended up conceiving Maggie Vera. Despite his love for Marisol, Ray knew that get heart belonged to another and he abandoned the family on Maggie's fifth birthday.

As her daughters got older, Marisol began having premonitions informing her that her daughters would become the Charmed Ones. This lead to Marisol trying to get the sisters to reunite, by secretly arranging for adult Macy to come back to Hilltowne. One night, Marisol began the process of unbinding their powers but was interrupted by the arrival of her friend Charity. As Charity continued to question Marisol, she told her the truth of the revival of her eldest daughter. Charity, however, didn't believe it was safe, considering Macy was a Charmed One tainted by dark magic. This led her to try and stop Marisol, but when begging didn't work, Charity killed her. However, Marisol was able to finish the spell with her dying breathe.

Becoming the Charmed Ones

Three months after Marisol's ultimate demise at the hands of Elder Charity Callahan, Macy moved to town and discovered her family. When she went to meet her sisters, their powers unbound. Harry Greenwood, their Whitelighter, explained the situation and told them to decide whether to accept their destiny as witches within the next forty-eight hours. The dangers of magic were soon revealed when Maggie's ex-boyfriend, Brian, was possessed by a demon. However, they were easily able to vanquish the demon and save a confused Brian. After some further bonding and much consideration, the sisters unanimously agreed to accept their new fate, becoming the Charmed Ones and vanquished their first demon together with the Power of Three.

The sisters quickly went under tutelage by Harry, while also battling demons who seek to unleash chaos on the world. Macy soon learned the truth about her resurrection, while also struggling with her growing demonic attributes and powers. She entered a relationship with Galvin Burdette, who later left in search of a cure for Macy's darkness. Maggie entered a complicated relationship with Parker Caine, a half-demon whose father, Alistair Caine, and half-brother, Hunter Caine, wished to use to unleash the power of the Source of All Evil. Mel quickly learned the consequences of magic when she had to alter history in order to save her girlfriend, Niko Hamada, from a powerful demon, making it so that the two of them had never met. She soon was tasked by the Elders to infiltrate the Sarcana, a rebel coven of witches who did not follow the rules of the Elders, when a mysterious Whitelighter and witch hybrid, later revealed to be Jada Shields, stole the Scythe of Tartarus and used it to release the imprisoned witch and sister of Charity, Fiona Callahan, from Tartarus. Mel later became enamored by the Sarcana and began a relationship with Jada. The sisters soon learn that Fiona is the Keeper of the Sacred Flame, a primordial source of power that is actually the source of magic itself.

During Christmas 2018, Alistair had his sons attempt to steal the powers of the Charmed Ones using a magical amulet. Ultimately, Parker betrayed his family, assisting the Charmed Ones in banishing Hunter to Tartarus, but Harry was also unfortunately sucked down into the hellish prison. Soon after, the sisters were able to rescue Harry and fend off Alistair, who had came to retrieve his son, causing him to flee. Soon after, Maggie and Parker found a Vortex Viribus, a magical location capable of supercharging a witch's powers, underneath the manor. Around this time, Alistair began mesmerizing Maggie's friend, Lucy, to do his bidding, even going as far as having her poison Parker with a demonic virus. However, this was later cured through treatments.

Eventually, one of Macy's demon powers was able to reveal the truth about Marisol's death, ultimately resulting in Charity being stripped of her powers by the Charmed Ones using the Vortex Viribus. However, she was taken by Alistair before she could be imprisoned in Tartarus. As punishment, the Elders stripped Harry of his powers. After Harry's powers were stripped, he began to rapidly age and would soon die, which devastated the Charmed Ones. In order to provoke the Elders, the sisters attempted to use magic in public, which caused the three of them to be summoned by the council. The trio begged to no avail with the Elders to restore Harry's powers before being teleported back to the manor. Mel broke up with Jada and left the Sarcana, when her or the coven wouldn't help Harry.

Soon after, Harry was taken by Fiona who used the Vortex Viribus to restore his youth and Whitelighter status. Fiona then took Harry as her captive, forcing him to heal her as she massacred the Sarcana and attempting to scan his mind in search of the Origin Dagger, a dagger that can control the Sacred Flame and can be used to become the Source of All Evil. Meanwhile, the Charmed Ones were given a new Whitelighter, Tessa Flores-Cohen, who was decidedly unimpressed with the sisters’ abilities and not afraid to be snarky about their shortcomings. Galvin returns from his journey, and was briefly possessed by a demon, before his relationship with Macy was brought end when she decides to embrace her darkness.

Eventually, Fiona was able to track down the Origin Dagger to an old tomb. Using Tessa as a way to track down Harry and Fiona, the sisters were able to rescue Harry and fended off the evil witch with the Power of Three. However, Tessa was killed in the battle protecting male. Meanwhile, Alistair used Charity in order to break his son, Hunter, out of Tartarus. After Hunter's return from Tartarus, he took the form of Parker's mother, in order to convince Parker that he had killed his mother. Later, Hunter took the form of Maggie to make Parker succumb to their father's wishes. After Fiona and the Charmed Ones have left the tomb, Alistair arrived and was able to obtain the Origin Dagger, which he then used to trigger Parker's transformation into a vessel for the Source.

Despite now being a free Whitelighter with no connection to the Elders at all, Harry ensured the Charmed Ones that he would remain their Whitelighter. However, when more Elders were killed, the sisters and Harry were forced to put aside their differences with the Elders to stop the prophecy of the apocalypse from being completed. The Charmed Ones and Elder Silver then came up with a plan to lure out the killer. As if their problems weren't bad enough, with the continued usage of her demonic powers and Elder Bari's needle, Macy's darkness soon began take over more often. She was able to use her demonic side in order to strip Fiona of her immortality, but eventually she attacked Mel which caused her to come to her senses and break the needle. When the remaining Elders came together as planned, they were ambushed by a power-boosted Hunter Caine with each of them being killed except for Elder Silver, who managed to escape with the Charmed Ones.

Macy briefly took on the power of the Source, but later relinquished the power with a spell into her pendant. The pendant was split into three pieces, which the Charmed Ones hid in different corners of the world in order to prevent it from being reassembled, having Harry wipe their memories for added protection. Soon after, they were approached by other magical beings who chose them to take over governing the magical community in the Elders' stead.

Everything Changes

Some weeks later, the sisters were attacked by a powerful hooded assassin with the Book of Shadows being destroyed in the crossfire, and had no choice but to escape through a portal that brought them to the Command Center which stripped their auras as a consequence. This ended up rendering their active powers dormant, but still leaving them access to the basic abilities of a witch. Upon leaving the Command Center, the sisters find that they have been magically transported to Seattle, Washington and quickly learn a lot about communal workspaces.

Macy quickly developed a demonic power when Mel was in danger and rapidly turns into the "soldier" of the group, due to having retained her demonic capabilities and being the only one with powers. During this time, Mel became extremely frustated due to the fact that she didn't have active powers and started to study magic in depth and effectively mastered potion making while attempting to recreate the Book of Shadows. Maggie, in turn, accepted her role as part of "the B team" as she described it, being the one who provided supplies, money, food and access to the Command Center. She also used this to learn hand-to-hand combat with Jordan Chase, which she used to her advantage in demon fighting.

After being in contact with the black amber in Jordan's ring, Maggie gained a new power that allowed her to see visions of the future. After that, Macy tried on the ring, however she wasn't able to access her telekenisis, coming to the conclusion that whatever magic that the ring possessed had been exhausted when it activated Maggie's power.

After discovering Abigael Jameson-Caine, Alistair's half-witch daughter and half-sister to Parker and Hunter Caine, the sisters learnt of the existence of a "Demon Overlord", a powerful demonic figure said to unite the demon world. It quickly transpired that Abigael used the myth of the Overlord to create a place for herself in the Underworld, but she was quickly overthrown and replaced with Parker. Maggie believed this could be useful for the sisters, as Parker's influence could help them end the war between witches and demons.

Parker proposed to Maggie in a bid to show the demon world his truce was genuine, but the night of the wedding, Mel cursed herself to spy on Parker, and learnt it was him who orcastrated the attack on the Sacred Grove, and not Abigael as they had been led to believe. To reverse the curse, she had to have a moment of self-reflection, and achieved this by realising that she wasn't insignificant, she was powerful in her own way and accepted that if she wasn't meant to receive active powers again, she'd still fight as she loved her family and her witch nature.

When confronting Maggie on her knowledge on Parker, Mel was cast out by her own sister for not respecting her choices and spying on her fiancé. Frustrated and enraged, Mel returned to the Command Center and started breaking objects, eventually breaking a piece of a pillar. Here, she discovered the root of an upside down black amber tree, but after trying to use it regain her powers, she believed it to be ineffective. Later, while fighting Parker after he went mad and tried to force Maggie to marry him, she discovered she had awakened a new power that allows her to manipulate molecules, and unwittingly uses it for the first time to literally freeze Parker.

Macy began experimenting with black amber in hopes of restoring her original power, but each attempt was without success. In an act of hopelessness, believing her demonic powers were displacing her witch powers and causing them to be unable to access the Power of Three, she purged her demonic powers with Abigael's help, unkowningly giving them to Abigael in the process. Her powers were still "lost", however, and were only restored after they met the Guardian of the Command Center, and learnt of the previous Charmed Ones, drinking from a chalice of pure black amber to do so. However, the Power of Three was yet to be recovered, even with the sisters' attempts.

Believing it was safer to not restore the Power of Three, now that they knew of the dangers is possesses to the sisterhood, the sisters were willing to give up the mantle of the Charmed Ones. However, when rescuing a witch from the Faction, they discovered she was a retired Elder, Celeste. Celeste reasoned that the Power of Three was needed if they were to beat the Faction, and, against the sisters' will, forced them into an enchanted sleep to face their fears in an attempt to restore the Power of Three.

But even with this attempt, it took Mel, Maggie, and Macy an encounter with a near-unbeatable magic-infused corpse to realise that they needed the Power of Three, even if there was a risk of it overwhelming them, allowing them to regain the might of the Charmed Ones once again.

The restoration of the Power of Three did bring fourth other problems, though. While saving a witch from a group of Carnals, and using the Power of Three to vanquish them, Mel, Macy, and Maggie discovered they had vanquished the son and only heir to the Carnal leader, causing a power-struggle. Abigael, having reclaimed the throne of the Demon Overlord, was flippent at destroying the Charmed Ones, believing them to be useful to her, while Godric, her right-hand man, wanted them gone. This ended up forcing Godric to stage a coup against Abigael so he could claim the throne himself, even enlisting Parker's help to do so. However, Parker decided to help Maggie and her sisters, saving Mel and Abigael before Godric could sacrifice them to take the title of Demon Overlord.

Powers and Abilities

As witches, the Charmed Ones have the two basic abilities of casting spells and brewing potions. The Charmed Ones are capable of performing extraordinary feats of magic, overriding a demonic security system with simplicity and using a Vortex Viribus seemingly instinctively to strip another witch of her powers.^[3][4] Being witches, the Charmed Ones are also inherently immune to certain magical abilities (e.g. the Sirens' songs and to pixie dust). Being so powerful, the Charmed Ones are afforded a greater resistance to certain mental manipulation; for example, as Macy is a Charmed One, the effects of Charity's memory-wipe was not totally effective and the memories kept coming back.^[4]

Unique Powers

Aside from their basic abilities, each Charmed One possesses separate active powers which expand and evolve overtime. These powers are linked to each other, which is how their advancements are selected. As of "Safe Space", the Charmed Ones have been stripped of their auras, and as such can no longer access their original powers, but have since developed new powers in their stead. As of "Needs to Know", Macy has been stripped of her demonic powers as well, but as of "Breaking the Cycle", her power of telekinesis has been restored, but in an advanced version.

The Power of Three

Main article: Power of Three

Although each sister is a powerful witch in her own right, the Charmed One's true strength lies in the Power of Three — their collective power, which stems from their bond and connection as sisters. Evidently, there are certain spells that require the Power of Three and cannot be cast by even the most powerful witches, like Charity Callahan. According to Charity, only the Charmed Ones have the Power of Three. When upset at each other and not working together as sisters, the Power of Three is not accessible.^[5]

As a result of having their auras stripped, the Power of Three was rendered dormant for a period of time. After regaining their active powers and learning the history of the Charmed Ones, they reactivated the Power of Three.

Weaknesses

• Emotions: The Charmed Ones' powers are subject to the influence of their emotional state and may fluctuate according to them. Their collective power (i.e. the Power of Three) is also tied to their sisterly bond, and when not acting as sisters this collective power is unusable.^[5]
• Magic: The Charmed Ones are still susceptible to the powers of magic. This is inclusive of mystical objects such as the Prism of Souls and the Amulet of Archangels.
• Mortality: Despite their mystical attributes, the Charmed Ones are still human and share many of the same weaknesses as non-supernatural beings (e.g. age, blunt-trauma, decapitation, disease, heart-failure, suffocation, snapped neck, etc.). They can potentially get around these effects through powerful magic, considering Macy was resurrected by the Necromancer Knansie.
• The Power of Three: The potency of the Power of Three has always been too powerful that overtime one of the Charmed Ones would die and the cycle would restart with the next generation of Charmed Ones. There are three known ways for this end to be prevented, loss of their powers, one of the sisters becomes another creature altogether, or the sisters involved form an emotional bond powerful enough to bear the Power of Three permanently.

Known Charmed Ones

Current incarnation

• Macy Vaughn, Mel Vera & Maggie Vera

Previous incarnations

• Nancy Sanchez, Nir Sanchez & Nicole Sanchez
• Lucy Stone, Leva Stone & Lisa Stone
• Jenifer Turner, Julia Turner & Jamie Turner
• Flora Young, Fifi Young & Fiona Young
• Amy Gomez, Andrea Gomez & Alexandra Gomez
• Gina Andrews, Gigi Andrews & Gloria Andrews
• Anne Forbes, Alison Forbes & Ashley Forbes
• Kara Evans, Kathryn Evans & Kendall Evans
• Charlotte Parkes, Clara Parkes & Cynthia Parkes
• Josephine Ives, Juliana Ives & Jacques Ives
• Winona Adams, Wendy Adams & Whitney Adams
• Unnamed H Lord, Hailey Lord & Haget Lord
• Tabitha Montgomery, Taliana Montgomery & Tiffany Montgomery
• Ray-Ane North, Rhonda North & Rose North

Trivia

• In the original Charmed, the only Charmed Ones were Prue, Piper, and Phoebe Halliwell, and Paige Matthews. The last sister joined in after the eldest sister was killed by a demon.
  • In the reboot, Macy, Mel and Maggie find out that they haven't been the only Charmed Ones throughout history.^[2]
• Unlike the original series, the Veras were given a choice as to whether they become the Charmed Ones, but had 48 hours to decide. The Halliwell sisters from the original show weren't given that opportunity and had to forcefully accept their destiny.
• Despite having obtained all of their individual powers, the Charmed Ones are required to accept their destiny as witches together to unlock the Power of Three.
• Similar to Paige, Macy is a witch hybrid due to being resurrected with demon blood at infancy, but unlike Paige, who had angelic powers due to her Whitelighter side, Macy has demonic ones.
• In "Breaking the Cycle", The Guardian & her two sisters are stated to be three of the names revealed in the Book of Elders, though it is not specified which ones.

Gallery

References