The Power of Three

Effects

Enhances the spells, potions and powers of the Charmed Ones

Trigger

Unity of the Charmed Ones

Alignment

Good

Overview[]

The Power of Three is the collective power of the Charmed Ones that increases their magical strength. It allows them to fight and vanquish upper-level demons and/or monsters and to achieve supernatural feats (such as exorcizing the Harbinger of Hell) which cannot be achieved by other witches.

The Power of Three can be used to augment the spells of the Charmed Ones. When they join hands and cast a spell utilizing the Power of Three, their hands are often shown to glow. While most of the spells written in the Vera Book of Shadows require the Power of Three to take enough effect, it has been shown that it isn't always necessary for all three sisters to chant a spell together as long as they are all together at the same time. For example, Macy Vaughn and Maggie Vera cast the spell to invoke the Moirai while Mel Vera was in another room of the Vera Manor with Niko Hamada. It has also been shown that the Power of Three may be channeled through its own unique spell.

It can also be used to augment their individual powers to make them more sufficient and/or powerful. However, this has only be shown through the powers of Maggie. The Vera-Vaughn Charmed Ones were able to tap into Maggie's power of Emotional Energy Manipulation to create a powerful force field on two separate occasions in order to fend off attacks. Later, the Vera-Danso Charmed Ones tapped into the Power of Three to boost Maggie's foresight on one occasion when she was having trouble seeing the premonition clearly.

The Power of Three requires harmony between all three sisters in order to be functional. If there is any discord between them, the Power of Three will be weakened to the point that it can even be rendered unusable, if said discord is intense enough, until the sisters resolve the issues at hand. It is also known that if one of the Charmed Ones are killed, the Power of Three will become lost to the remaining sisters, and eventually pass on to a new sisterhood. In the case of the Vera sisters, this was miraculously solved by the revelation of Kaela Danso who had received stem cells during her cancer treatment which had been donated by Macy Vaughn. However, this event was brought on by some higher fate or destiny, and it is incredibly unlikely to occur under normal circumstances.

The Power of Three can also be rendered dormant if the sisters' auras are stripped. If at least one of them doesn't have a witch power, the Power of Three will be inactive. In the case of the Vera-Vaughn sisters, the Power of Three could not be restored until all three of them had a power that came from their witch side, as it prevented the restoration of the Power of Three until Macy regained her witch power. Even then, they weren't able to fully restore the Power of Three without facing their fears with the help of a former Elder.

History[]

Dawn of Time[]

Ten thousand years ago, during the time of either the 8th or 9th millennium B.C.^[3], when magic was everywhere, the original nine clans of magic, including mermen, hobgoblins, elves, gremlins, Loveland frogs, lamias, trolls, leprechauns, and pixies, came together to fight the first Conqueror, a power-hungry mortal who wanted to steal all magic for himself. The clans created a powerful artifact known as "the Bowl of Unity" and each creature poured their remaining power into the bowl to forge an unprecedented ultimate power that would be able to defeat him. Knowing it was too much for one being to handle and only witches could bear such power, they asked Ishta, Inara & Ishani to drink from the bowl. The magic split between the three of them, creating the Power of Three, and turned them into the first Charmed Ones.^[4] As a fail-safe in the event where the Power of Three failed to stop the Conqueror, they also create a Nebron Root Bomb to destroy his magic by destroying all magic and every magical creature in what would be considered the Mercy Days, though they managed to defeat him without resorting to the bomb. However, after the battle had been won, the original Charmed Ones also drifted apart as they no longer shared a common purpose, for while they chose to become charmed, they had never chose to be sisters.

Eventually, Inara wanted to restore the stolen power of the Conquerer in order to put magic everywhere again. Ishta and Ishani disagreed, knowing it would continue to create temptation for another Conquerer to rise. So, they combined the power in one place and hid it so no one could find it, thus creating the Source. However, the argument tore the Charmed Ones apart, with Inara growing power-hungry and wanting to take on the power, which resulted in Ishta and Ishani entombing her alive south of Baghdad in the Akahtu Mines, at the cost of betraying their sisterhood and creating a vicious cycle of destruction. As a punishment, Ishta was bound to the Black Amber Tree to serve as its guardian and guidance to future Charmed Ones to help them break the cycle, while Ishani was forced to wander the Earth alone for all eternity, watching events play out from the sidelines.^[4]

Since then, new Charmed Ones were born and chosen to wield the Power of Three when they were needed to protect the world from destruction. However, no matter the time, the place or the realm, every generation of Charmed Ones ended in the event known as the Destruction of the Sisterhood with one member of each sisterhood dying as a consequence, meeting their end through various external, unnatural causes, such as in the midst of battle. It seemed that no sisterhood throughout history had managed to form an emotional bond powerful enough to break the cycle.

At some point, one (or some) of the incarnations of the Charmed Ones unsuccessfully struggled with the Whispering Evil with the help of the Power of Three, until it was imprisoned within the Tomb of Chaos by the Perfecti.

Eventually, an ancient incarnation of the Charmed Ones battled the Perfecti using the Power of Three. Though the witches were able to lock the duo up and put them in a slumber inside the tomb dimension of their own making, the Perfecti also had a golem bring about the end of that sisterhood.^[5]

Throughout the Series[]

In "Pilot", Marisol Vera began the process of unbinding the powers of her three daughters – Macy Vaughn, Mel Vera and Maggie Vera – before she was murdered by being thrown from the attic window. The sisters' individual powers were activated three months later when all three sisters were united at Vera Manor, but they could not access the Power of Three until each of them fully accepted their destiny as witches. Once the sisters all agreed, they used the Power of Three for the first time to vanquish the demon, Taydeus.

In "Let This Mother Out", an Imposter Demon took the form of Marisol in order to trick the Charmed Ones into helping it retrieve the Prism of Souls which was contained inside a mirror in their mother's old office at Hilltowne University. The sisters found the prism inside a triangular box within the mirror and used the Power of Three to open the box as well as escape the mirror before they were trapped inside.

After containing the Harbinger of Hell inhabiting Angela Wu's body in "Exorcise Your Demons", the sisters found a spell to exorcize the demon and used it to free Angela, despite Elder Charity Callahan's warning.

Floor symbol — Mel, Maggie, and Macy making the symbol needed to cast the spell to invoke the Moirai.

In "Other Women", a shapeshifter went after Mel's girlfriend, Niko Hamada, which forced Mel to alter history to protect her. She and her sisters drew the Moirai symbol together, then Macy and Maggie cast the spell, which altered events and everyone's memories but theirs.

In "Out of Scythe", a Shadow Demon started hunting sentinels for the shards of the Scythe of Tartarus, which were being guarded by them. Realizing their mother had the last shard, the sisters lured the demon into a trap and tried to vanquish it with a spell. However, the demon summoned the last shard, which knocked down Mel and disrupted the spell. A mysterious individual intervened and stole the Scythe and the Shadow Demon left.

When the sisters fought the Queen of the Cicada Demons in "Bug a Boo", they used a spell to vanquish her. However, the effect was slow as she was too powerful. Knowing her death was inevitable, she tried to self-destruct to kill everyone. However, Macy managed to kill her by telekinetically crushing her with a control panel.

On Christmas Eve in "Jingle Hell", Hunter Caine tried to attack the sisters for wounding him. His half-brother, Parker, came to their rescue and tried to banish his brother to Tartarus. Growing weaker with every attempt, the sisters then grab the staff and cast the spell together, successfully banishing Hunter, but Harry Greenwood gets accidentally sucked in as well in the process.

In "Keep Calm and Harry On", after retrieving Harry and a freshly imprisoned Maggie from Tartarus, the sisters fought Alistair Caine whom had come to retrieve his son, Hunter, from Tartarus. He had the upper hand at first, until Maggie joined hands with her sisters, and together they generated a powerful shield that held back Alastor's fire. Their combined magic proved stronger than his and started to blow his own power back at him until he teleported away.

1x11-Expel-the-Maestro — The sisters successfully resolving their internal conflicts and casting the spell.

In "Witch Perfect", the sisters used a spell to expel the Maestro from Mr. Miranda. The spell didn't work the first time because of the girls' internal conflicts. It was then revealed that the Power of Three doesn't work if the sisters are in disorder and not focused on a common goal. When the girls resolved their conflicts, they were able to fulfill the spell.

After touching a rune in the Vortex Viribus in "Memento Mori", the sisters' power expanded to the point where they were able to strip Charity Callahan of all of her powers without physically having a connection but mentally.

1x19 Force-Field Generation — The Charmed Ones deflecting Fiona's Deathbolts with the Power of Three.

In "Source Material", the sisters were able to produce another force-field to fend back Fiona Callahan's deathbolts, deflecting them back at her although this did not affect her because of her immortal status.

In "The Source Awakens", it is revealed the Power of Three was broken when Macy took on the Source in "Red Rain", and as such, she began to feel distant and insecure of her sisters and being abandoned. Due to these feelings, Macy attempted to rectify it by using her new powers to rewrite history to make it so that their mother never died. However, each revision was never able to have Marisol alive and the Charmed Ones instigated, as Marisol's death was fated to happen for the sisters to become the Charmed Ones. As such, the Power of Three was never able to be used in Macy's alternate realities. In one of Macy's realities, in which she was never resurrected, Marisol was able to show a spell to Mel and Maggie that would take them back to when the Power of Three was first shattered so that they could attempt to repair it. It took Maggie and Mel showing Macy that they cared about her and would never leave her to repair their sisterly bond, and allowed them to all cast a spell that would extract the Source from Macy and trap it in her pendant.

Potentia Trium — The Charmed Ones use the Power of Three against the assassin.

In "Safe Space", three weeks after preventing the Apocalypse, the sisters were attacked by a powerful assassin. They tried to stop him with the Power of Three Spell, but it was only strong enough to slow him down. When their aura was stripped as they escaped through the portal to the Command Center, the Power of Three became dormant.

After more than two months, when Mel and Maggie received new powers, the trio of sisters tried to restore the Power of Three in "Needs to Know" and they started to succeed, but unfortunately, the recovery was interrupted since Macy was not able to receive her witch powers by that time. Distraught, Macy gets Abigael Jameson-Caine's help in removing her demonic powers, in hopes that this would help restore the Power of Three. It is later revealed that Abigael had actually stolen Macy's demon powers in the process.

While digging through the floor in the Command Center in "Breaking the Cycle", the sisters accidentally trigger a security system that locked them inside and rendered their powers useless. Hoping to turn off the system, the sisters all touched the Book of Elders at the same time, accidentally conjuring a name list on all the previous Charmed Ones. They realize there had been other Charmed Ones in the past and questioned the Guardian who looked over the system. The Guardian then trapped them inside a cage of deadly laser beams, prompting them to admit their innermost secrets. By admitting them, the security protocol was negated and a new path was opened. The Guardian presented herself as one of the previous Charmed Ones and warned them about the Power of Three's danger in hopes that one day a sisterhood would be powerful enough to break the cycle. After spending some time to think about it, Macy decided to restore her power and try to break the cycle of the Charmed Ones, to the joy of Mel and Maggie.

In an attempt to restore the Power of Three in "Sudden Death", the sisters tried the Power of Three Restoration Ritual. Though all three felt the connection momentarily, the spell ultimately failed.

In "Third Time's the Charm", when the Charmed Ones rescued a witch from a zealot in the Faction, they discovered she was in fact an Elder. Celeste's research into transferring magic had fallen into the Faction's hands, and Celeste explained that the only way to stop them was to use the Power of Three. Mel, Maggie, and Macy had to explain how they were stripped of their powers when they came through the portal to the Command Center, but Celeste knew a way to help them regain the Power of Three and started chanting a spell to induce sleep, despite the sisters' attempts to stop her. Macy's dream was a reality where Abigael and Harry had married and had children, while Mel and Maggie reformed the Power of Three with Abigael; Maggie's dream was where everyone saw her as a child, and no one took her seriously over a demon attack; Mel's dream was one where she was trapped in an asylum.
In Macy and Maggie's dream, one of the sisters died; Macy, when attacking Abigael, accidentally stabbed Maggie in the heart, while Maggie's dream had Mel be attacked by a magic-infused corpse and die as a result.
Celeste reasoned to Harry, when he questioned her motives, that she was not trying to harm the sisters, but help them realise their fears, but made a miscalculation: the sisters' greatest fears were losing each other, not dying themselves. Harry demanded to be let into their dreams to help them wake up, and successfully did so.
Now awake, the Charmed Ones once again tackled the magical corpse, but realising they need the Power of Three, they were finally able to come to terms with their duty and were fully able to restore the Power of Three, causing a nearby door to burst off its hinges. Through Maggie Vera's power of foresight, she was able to determine when the monster was going to attack, allowing the Charmed Ones to use the Power of Three spell against him and vanquish him, leaving behind only a skull.

2x15 The Power of Three Spell — The Charmed Ones is the Power of Three against the Faction's monster.

In "The Enemy of My Frenemy", a witch and her sisters were hunted by a swarm of Carnal demons. The Charmed Ones came to the last living witch's aid and saved her by vanquishing the group of Carnals, including the son of their leader, Alfie, with the Power of Three. While all of Alfie's troops were quickly vanquished, Alfie materialized shortly midair and told them they had no idea what they had done before he finally withered away.

When Vivienne Laurent broke into the Command Center and poisoned the Black Amber Tree in "Someone's Going to Die", she went after the Charmed Ones next to destroy them. The Charmed Ones then used the Power of Three against her. As her prism glove siphoned their powers, it soon proved to be too much for her and exploded, killing Vivienne in the process.

Source Fusing Spell — The Charmed Ones reassemble the pendant containing the power of the Source.

In "Triage", with the magical community having been poisoned by Vivienne touching the black amber beneath the Command Center, the sisters were forced to search for the pieces of the pendant containing the power of the Source that they had each hidden in various locations. Upon locating the three pieces, the Charmed Ones used a spell calling on the Power of Three to fuse the pieces back into one.

In "Witchful Thinking", the Charmed Ones used it to activate an Enchanted Egg.

In "Chaos Theory", the Charmed Ones used it to protect Jordan Chase from the Perfecti, when they attempted to place him back inside the Tomb of Chaos. The spell was able to momentarily shut down the Perfecti's whole system, freeing both Jordan and Abigael Jameson-Caine in the process.

When facing the Whispering Evil in "The Storm Before the Calm", they were told that the Power of Three wouldn't be enough to destroy it and therefore need to come up with a new kind of attack. This gives Macy the idea of combining the Power of Three with her demonic power over fire. Abigael assisted her in restoring her demonic powers. By combining both forces, the Charmed Ones were able to expel the Whispering Evil from Jordan Chase, but not enough to permanently destroy the monster.

In "I Dreamed a Dream…", Mel and Maggie lost their connection to the Power of Three when Macy sacrificed herself by ingesting bioluminescent lichen to destroy the Whispering Evil, and became a guardian. However, the other Guardian later told Mel and Maggie that there is another Charmed One out there, and she could help them restore the Power of Three.

In Not That Girl, only by activating the Power of Three did the newly formed Vera-Danso Charmed Ones have the power to put Joséfina Reyes's paper doll form inside the Negative Space Being without being absorbed themselves (with the Power of Three acting as a shield to protect them) and bring her back to the real world while destroying the monster.

In The Sisterhood of the Traveling Sandwich, the girls chanted the incantation on the Filiation Frame to activate its power and reveal Kaela's birth parents.

In The Tallyman Cometh, Maggie asks Kaela and Mel to help strengthen her power through the Power of Three. By doing so, she received a vision of a bombing at the Gnome Is Where Your Hearth Is Hotel, where hundreds of people were attending a one-year memorial of those fallen victim to the Faction.

In Divine Secrets of the O.G. Sisterhood, a resurrected Inara drank from the Unity Bowl and took the Power of Three into herself.

In Be Kind. Rewind., Kaela, Mel and Maggie devised a plan to distract Inara long enough to sneak into the Black Amber Tree chamber and drink Black Amber. By drinking the tree sap, they successfully restored the Power of Three as well as their individual powers but didn't have the chance to use it before Inara killed Mel, then Maggie and Kaela.

Trivia[]

In both the the original and reboot series, the triquetra acts as their symbol and is used to represent the Power of Three on the front cover of the Book of Shadows.
Unlike the original series, the Vera-Vaughn sisters had a choice as to whether or not they became the Charmed Ones. The Halliwell sisters did not get that luxury.
Unlike the original, the Power of Three did not come from an ancestral prophecy or biological ties, but a combination of magic bestowed on three witches by nine magical species, which would be reincarnated into new trios of witches, most of the time sisters, after the deaths of the previous ones.
In the original series, the Power of Three depended on the three sisters, each having one of the three powers of their ancestor Melinda Warren, whose powers would pass down throughout her entire bloodline. Those powers were Telekinesis, Molecular Immobilization and Premonition.
- With the death of Prue and the arrival of Paige, the Power of Three could be recreated if Paige also had Telekinesis like Prue, which in her case developed in a different way due to her hybrid physiology.
- A notable example was, when a time-traveling Piper, gathered her grandmother with the power of Telekinesis, and her mother, pregnant at the time to Phoebe with the power of Premonition, and was able to recreate the Power of Three, herself having the power of Molecular Immobilization.
- In the reboot, the Power of Three does not depend on what the powers of each sister are, but on whether they have at least one power deriving from their witch side.
Despite obtaining all of their individual powers in the reboot, the Charmed Ones were required to accept their destiny as witches in order to access the Power of Three.
According to Charity Callahan in Exorcise Your Demons, only the Charmed Ones have the Power of Three.
According to Harry Greenwood in Ambush, as far as anyone knows, there is no Power of Three if one of the Charmed Ones is a demon.
- In season 2, when the sisters were trying to restore the Power of Three, they were unable to do so, since Macy only had a power from her demon side and no power from her witch side.
Unlike the original, the Charmed Ones were born in every era in times of great need, thus the Power of Three had existed in many sisterhoods. Also unlike the original, carrying the Power of Three had one major consequence: in every generation of Charmed Ones, when the power became too great for them to bear, it would destroy one of the sisters.
Another name for the Power of Three is the "Ultimate Power". In the original, the Ultimate Power referred to the union of two sisters, Christy and Billie Jenkins, and was originally supposed to be a great force for good like the Power of Three, but was corrupted to become evil by the Triad.
Despite the Power of Three being the greatest known force of good, a few forces can withstand/overcome it.
- According to Jada Shields, there were few witches alive who had enough power to match the Power of Three, Fiona Callahan included, presumably due to her status as the Keeper of the Sacred Flame.
- When Jimmy, the Darklighter of Harry Greenwood, attacked the Vera-Vaughn sisterhood at their home, he was only capable of being momentarily contained by the Power of Three. It is still unknown how he managed it. The sisters were forced to call Harry and retreat before he broke through the containment field.
- The second monster created by the experiments of the Faction was able to withstand an assault of the Power of Three for a few moments before finally succumbing to the effects and being vanquished. Similarly, Alfie was shown to survive for a few moments after being struck by the Power of Three, while the rest of his birthday posse were vanquished immediately, before he finally crumbled away into nothing as well.
- The Whispering Evil was immune to all forms of modern magic and was capable of withstanding any magical attack once to gain immunity to it. As such, he was immune to the Power of Three. However, the Vera-Vaughn sisterhood was able to fend him off and drive him out of Jordan Chase's body by combining the Power of Three with Macy's demonic firepower in an unseen attack, though the Whispering Evil was able to quickly regenerate himself and return more powerful than ever.
As revealed in "Someone's Going to Die", the Power of Three is too much for one being to handle, and as a result, they will die.
- However, according to the writers, Inara, being an original Charmed One, was immune from the overload of the Power of Three when she stole the power in "Divine Secrets of the O.G. Sisterhood", as opposed to Vivienne Laurent, who was a mere mortal. It is unknown if ordinary witches or other magical beings, besides the Charmed Ones, will also die from the overload of said power. It is also unclear why, despite being an original Charmed One, Inara was immune from the overload, as she was still only one being taking on the immense power.
According to Joey Falco, "the Power of Three manifests differently for different trios of Charmed Ones."^[6]
- Initially, the Vera-Vaughn sisters invoked the Power of Three through physical touch only for specific spells and through Maggie's power to channel the emotional bond they shared and turn it into energy. They later used the Power of Three Spell as an offensive form and once as defensive.
- The Vera-Danso sisters can summon the Power of Three through physical contact. It then engulfs their bodies in a clear blue electric light, like an aura. When Inara stole the Power of Three for herself, it manifested over her body in a similar manner.
- In "Perfecti Is the Enemy of Good", one ancient incarnation of Charmed Ones are shown via the Memory Mirror to be using the Power of Three to battle against the Perfecti, similar to the Vera-Vaughn sisterhood's usage of the Power of Three Spell. However, while these sisters cast it, triquetra symbols appeared on their palms, unlike the Vera-Vaughn Charmed Ones.
  - It could be presumed that they used a spell that required for them to draw the triquetra, or that one of the sisters possessed the power of Manifestation. It is also possible that triquetras did appear on the Vera-Vaughn sisters' palms, but it was simply never shown. It's also possible that the triquetras appeared on the board only as an indication that they were the Charmed Ones, while it may not have happened in real life.
Like with the Perfecti eons before, the Power of Three was created by mixing of the magic of nine magical tribes.
- The Source was once referred to as "the greatest power on Earth", and the only magic known to be capable of restoring life to the magical world and the Black Amber Tree after it had been poisoned. However, the Power of Three was also referred to as the Ultimate Power, and the first Charmed Ones were somehow eventually able to defeat the first Conqueror after he had stolen the power that would eventually become the Source, though the exact circumstances of his defeat were unknown.

Gallery[]

References[]

↑ Triage
↑ Unlucky Charmed
↑ The End Is Never The End
↑ ^4.0 ^4.1 Divine Secrets of the O.G. Sisterhood
↑ Perfecti Is the Enemy of Good
↑ Joey Falco's Tweet (Broken link: In the fall of 2023, Joey Falco deleted his Twitter account through which he gave most of the information about the show.)

[1] Triage

[2] Unlucky Charmed

[:7-3] The End Is Never The End

[:6-4] 4.0 ^4.1 Divine Secrets of the O.G. Sisterhood

[5] Perfecti Is the Enemy of Good

[6] Joey Falco's Tweet (Broken link: In the fall of 2023, Joey Falco deleted his Twitter account through which he gave most of the information about the show.)

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

“	Since the dawn of time, the Power of Three has come to sisters with great promise in times of great need to save the world from its own destruction.	”
	— Ishta^[src]