Charmed

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The Power of six Three will set you free.


A show that ran from 1998-2006 wherein three San Francisco based girl-power oriented witch sisters vanquish demons through the triple powers of CGI, rhymes, and lots of cleavage, whilst dealing with personal relationship drama.

Charmed was moderately successful, with a cast of beautiful women and hunky guys. It experienced a Series Fauxnale in the seventh season, only to be brought back for an eighth season and a series finale that many fans believed was one of the best episodes of the series, despite the general dislike for season eight overall (mainly due to the introduction of Billie, a supposed-to-be replacement witch for the sisters).

The series successfully returned in comic book form in 2010 thanks to company Zenescope, receiving mixed to positive reviews from fans & critics alike.

Tropes used in Charmed include:

Kara to a Biker: You don't command us, we command you.
Piper: This isn't Valhalla. You don't have dominion over men here.
Freyja: Then how do you train them? How do they take orders?
Piper: They don't.

  • Achilles' Heel: For all their power, Whitelighters and Elders can be mortally wounded by arrows tipped with Darklighter poison. Additionally, a wounded Whitelighter/Elder cannot heal themselves in this event (but another, unwounded one can).
  • Action Mom: Piper Halliwell
  • Adaptation Expansion: So far the comic book series is definitely a good example of this, in fact it seems to have taken a 5 year Time Skip and has continued with the foreshadowing of the final season.
    • This is helped by the fact that three of the original writers of the TV series were hired on by Zenoscope to continue the story.
    • It's also helpful that a few of the first draft scripts for season 9 were recovered and part of those stories are being used to recreate the feel of the TV show.
  • Akashic Records
  • All Abusers Are Male: Subverted in the first episode of season 4. Paige's firm is dealing with a case about an abused child. Paige is convinced that the father is the abuser and gets manipulated by The Source into trying to kill him, to punish him for this. When her sisters stop her the man turns to his wife and says "I'm not covering for you anymore. Keep your hands off our son". Another episode features a pair of demonic bounty hunters who are abusive to a child with powers. One of them is female and is not portrayed sympathetically.
    • Also subverted and lampshaded in the episode with the sisters' grandmother who dislikes the fact the Wyatt is male due to her own past experience with a demon she was in love with. The demon was evil and using her but also genuinely loved her. She comes to learn by the end of the episode that while some men are evil men in general are not inherently abusers and that her prejudice is wrong.
  • All Myths Are True: Angels? Check. Vampires? Check. Titans? Check. Human representations of the animals in the Chinese calendar? Sure, why the hell not?
    • An interesting case occurs with Pandora's Box. In the season 3 episode "Sin Francisco", Leo claims a box holding the seven deadly sins inspired the legend of Pandora's Box, implying it didn't exist. The season 7 episode "Little Box Of Horrors" would have the Charmed Ones deal with the actual Pandora's Box.
  • All Psychology Is Freudian: It's that or magic.
  • Allergic to Evil: One cupid gets hurt every time the demon of hate unmakes a relationship he put together.
  • Alliterative Family: The Halliwell sisters and other members of the family too.
  • All Witches Have Cats: The sisters inherited a cat along with their powers.
    • The cat later becomes human as a reward for being such a successful familiar.
  • All Your Powers Combined
  • Alphabetical Theme Naming: The names of The Charmed Ones all start with a P. (Prue, Piper, Phoebe, Paige.) Not a requirement, but a conscious decision of their mother Patty and Patty's mother Penny. Averted when Piper started having sons of her own (the family previously had had exclusively female births for centuries), and started giving them relatively ordinary names.
    • The eighth season also had the Triad members Asmodeus, Baliel and Candor, with the demon Dumain at their service. No wonder they didn't want the demon Xar among them...
    • The seventh season featured Avatars known as Alpha, Beta and Gamma, although whether these are their real names or a hierarchical naming device is unclear.
    • Thanks to a season three episode in which Phoebe learns that her true love's name starts with a C, every single serious love interest she has from that point on has a name starting with C.
  • Amazon Brigade: The Valkyries in season 6
  • Amnesia Danger
  • And I Must Scream: One demon, who is immortal and unvanquishable, gets turned into a tree.
  • And Starring: Beginning in Season 4, Holly Marie Combs was moved from second to third in the opening credits, but the move came with this kind of credit (complete with the inclusion of her character's name).
  • Animation Bump: Odd live action example. Footage that is obviously sped up is given away thanks to looking at the frame rate.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: The sisters have a bad habit of scoffing at anything they haven't encountered.
    • And it seems to get worse every season.
    • Subverted in "Once Upon a Time." Piper expresses disbelief over fairies and trolls, but her skepticism turns out to be based on her frustration with the Elders taking Leo away.
  • Art Initiates Life: Young witch Kevin and his power of Thought Projection since he uses drawing as a focus.
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Becoming a Whitelighter, an Elder, an Avatar etc. is this. Leo does it three times.
  • Astral Projection: This becomes Prue's second power. However, it's treated a bit differently: her original body seems to go unconscious, and she projects another physical body wherever she wants. Her main power of telekinesis is useless, as her astral clone can't use it and her original body is disabled.
  • Attack Reflector: Initially Prue would move fire and energy balls back at demons. Some Deflector Shields also acted as, well, reflector shields.
  • Authentication by Newspaper: A photo of Tony Wong holding his own death report.
  • Babies Ever After: Paige and Phoebe are revealed to have three children of their own.
    • And Piper finally gets the daughter she'd foreseen all the way back in Season 2.
  • Badass Normal: Phoebe, before she got "active" powers on par with her sisters.
  • Bad Powers, Bad People: Done in the most annoying ways possible. For most of the show, there is no middle ground: if you have "evil" powers, then you are evil, period. Strangely, some good and evil powers are functionally the same -- orbing and blinking are both teleporting powers. If a witch suddenly starts blinking, then she's obviously evil because blinking is a warlock-only power, and warlocks are all evil. The show tried to subvert this trope in an episode where Piper tells a child that his fire powers aren't evil, people are evil... only to contradict itself later when Piper realizes something is seriously wrong with Phoebe when she starts throwing fire, because fire is a demonic (and therefore evil) power. In addition to all this, Cole is (supposedly) evil because his powers are evil, and no way can he be good even if he fights evil alongside the sisters.
    • Occasionally justified by the fact that powers are tied to a specific emotion, and it is hard (though not impossible) to do good things with a power that is powered by hate.
    • It's also occasionally justified by the way one gets those powers. Evil powers generally get given to people who will abuse them while good powers end up with good people. That was the selection criteria for the Whitelighters and Darklighters.
      • In general, bad ("demonic") powers tend to corrupt people; hence why Phoebe got Drunk on the Dark Side in the series 6 episode "Witch Wars" when she absorbed all those demonic powers from an athame. The fire starter's situation might be different, since he's meant to receive those powers and likewise, they had good reason to doubt Phoebe's morality given that her past self had fire powers and was evil. Furthermore, Piper was very biased and so could easily have been talking out of her ass.
  • Bare Your Midriff: Phoebe's belly button deserved its own billing in the credits. The other sisters weren't so shy about it either.
  • Balancing Death's Books
  • Baleful Polymorph: The sisters get turned into other things quite often across the entire series. An evil-powered Piper turns a couple of people into pigs wearing blankets. Phoebe also turned a particularly chauvinistic advice columnist into a turkey twice and a pig once.
  • Battle Couple: Piper and Leo (after he becomes an elder). Lightning bolts and explosions everywhere!
  • Bazaar of the Bizarre: There is a market for magical goods. It's run by demons, naturally.
  • Beam-O-War: Happens between Paige and her past self.
    • Also happens between Leo and his Evil Counterpart.
    • And again at the end of Season 8 with the Halliwells on one side, and Billie and Christy on the other, with everyone boosted by the power of the Hallow.
  • Beard of Evil: Many demons sport goatees. So do Evil Counterparts of good characters.
  • Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Although the respective characters change due to Character Development and cast changes. The first seasons have Prue (Brains), Piper (Brawn) and Phoebe (Beauty). In later seasons, it's Piper (Brains, after she got promoted to eldest sister), Phoebe (Brawn, especially when she uses She Fu) and Paige (Beauty, being the sister with the least experience).
    • More accurately, it started out in the ways described, but the She Fu turned out to be infectious (except for Piper, though she has her exploding power) and they're all played by Hollywood hotties anyway, so really it ends up being the one with the most of X quality.
  • Becoming the Mask: Belthazor, who was originally charged with stealing the Book of Shadows and/or killing the Charmed Ones, manipulates Phoebe in order to get close enough to do so. Over time, he ends up falling in love with her and does (an albeit temporary) Heel Face Turn.
  • Belly Buttonless: "Size Matters" has a demonic construct who demonstrates to Paige that he's not like ordinary people by showing her that he lacks a belly button.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Leo is a peaceful healer who often gives words of advice to the Charmed Ones. But people forget that he was a medic during World War II and if anyone threatens Piper, he will kill.
    • He has killed an elder and even helped a magical group wipe out free will (though he didn't quite realize this at the time).
  • Big Bad: There's one for each season.
    • Season 1: Inspector Rodriguez
    • Season 2: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
    • Season 3: The Triad
    • Season 4: The Source of All Evil/Cole, though he's really just a pawn being manipulated by the Seer.
    • Season 5: Cole, for most of the season.
    • Season 6: Gideon
    • Season 7: The Avatars for the first half of the season and Zankou for the second.
    • Season 8: The Triad, succeeded by their protegé, Christy.
  • Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Chris dies and is then born. (It Makes Sense in Context.)
  • Black and White Morality: You are either good or you are evil. Yes, you have to choose and then there's nothing in between. The only ones who don't follow this are the Angel of Death and the Avatars, but they are an entire class of their own, not something in between.
    • To break it down: witches are good, demons are bad. More specifically, anyone who are allies with the Charmed Ones and they like them, they are good. Anyone else is bad. Even the neutral ones because you can't trust anyone who is neutral.
      • Also, all witches after they first get their powers, must decide if they are good or evil within 24 hours.
  • Black Magic: Practically all dark witches, warlocks, demons, dark lighters, and so forth have used one form of evil-based magic spell one way or another.
  • Blah Blah Blah: Paige once had a date that was so immensely boring that all she heard was blah blah blah; when something more interesting came up she heartily answered "blah!" and happily ran off.
  • Blasting Time: Demons love to pitch fireballs but then again so do some of the not so nice beings. Strangely one family of witches, Richard's, seems to be able to blast electrical balls at will.
  • Blessed with Suck: Leo, as a Whitelighter/Elder, has considerable power, but almost never does anything except orb and heal.
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The season 5 finale turns the sisters into Greek Goddesses. Paige had red hair at the time and Phoebe's was turned blonde with Piper keeping hers brown. Paige hersef also cycled through all the colours having black hair in season 4, red in season 5, blonde in season 6 and brown for the rest of the series.
  • Blondes Are Evil: Quite a few blonde evil witches pop up, including a trio of blonde sisters who served as another set of evil counterparts to the sisters.
    • Paige even makes an in-joke when episode when looking back into Phoebe's past when she was temporarily corrupted by evil notes that she was blonde before considering that she was evil.
  • Bodyguard Crush: Leo and Piper, and Sam and Patty before them. The latter (or former, chronologically) resulted in Paige.
  • Body Surf: The Source kept switching between bodies in order to lure Paige to evil.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Every other week.
  • Breast Expansion: Paige, "Hell Hath No Fury", due to her misuse of magic. She "borrowed" the Book of Shadows in order to right some wrongs, but being a new witch, she didn't get to read the No Personal Gain clause.

Piper: You are so... busted?

  • Brought Down to Normal: The sisters get their powers stolen on occasion. So did Wyatt. Cole too, and he did not take it very well.
  • Bullet Time: In a second season episode, a hired hit-woman goes after the Sisters and attempts to gun them down. The action momentarily slows down to show Prue using her powers to stop and repell the woman's bullets back at her. And in a seventh season episode the action slows down again while Kyle has Phoebe hostage, a gun pointed at her head as he demands to talk to Avatar Leo. Time slows when Leo throws lightning at Kyle, Kyle throws a vanquishing potion at Leo, and Phoebe just barely dodges the bullet fired from Kyle's gun.
    • Though not a straight example, Piper's ability to seemingly stop time demonstrates this when she freezes bullets, and that tends to happen on occasion. The same goes for Cole when he's stockpiles up on demonic powers in Season 5.
  • Burn the Witch: Phoebe really did get burned at the stake in "Morality Bites". Though it's averted when the sisters get sent back to the 1700s and when they're outed as witches they get hanged instead.
  • Bury Your Gays: By season seven, there had only been one confirmed lesbian couple (let's remember the show took place in San Francisco). Naturally, one of them dies.
  • Call Back: The episode "All Halliwell's Eve" had a scene where Phoebe is told her true love's name begins with a C. At the time, she thought it meant Cole, but it turns out at the end to mean a Cupid named Coop.
  • Cassandra Truth
  • Cats Are Magic: In one episode a witch's Familiar turned on her and became a Warlock.
  • Character Development: Every sister gets her fair share.
    • The most dramatic example is Piper, who in the first two seasons was the quiet, shy, mousy middle sister content to fade into the background while Prue and Phoebe took center stage. During Season 3, and especially into Season 4, circumstances, including the death of Prue and her acquiring a newer, much more aggressive power, she was forced to adopt a no-nonsense, take-charge attitude about things and become the matriarch of the family. She never got over her desire for a normal, magic-free life, but she became much more adaptable to the perpetual crises the family faced.
  • Chainmail Bikini: Paige has one. it looks as flimsy and unprotective as you'd think.
  • Chef of Iron: Piper, especially when she develops explosive powers.
  • The Chosen One: Rather The Chosen Ones or The Charmed Ones. Wyatt is also called the Chosen One. (What does that make Chris, then?)
    • The Chosen Two?
  • Class Reunion: Piper had one in "Coyote Piper" and Phoebe's in "Hyde School Reunion".
  • Clip Show: "Cat House".
  • Collector of the Strange: Gammil in "Size Matters" makes statuettes out of witches.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: For the most part, practicioners of Good Magic cast spells in English Rhyme, whereas Dark Magic was done in Latin.
    • Also Played for Laughs briefly, when Paige in Season 5 tries to colour-code the pages of the Book of Shadows with sticky tabs for more efficient research. Piper is not amused.

Piper: (Ranting) "Beings of evil are red, creatures of good are white." Oh, yeah? Well, what's a Bunyip? Because it's not good or evil, so what the hell color is that? (Finds the page with a red and white tab) Oh. Well that's confusing.

    • In the season one episode "Which Prue Is It Anyway?", Phoebe tries to color-coordinate a trio of Prues.
  • Comes Great Responsibility
  • Continuity Nod: Sometimes when they're flipping through the Book of Shadows you may notice pages that came from earlier episodes or even seasons. It gets a little more obvious that each page added for an episode never got taken out, because the book seems to get noticeably thicker by the end of the series. This works though, because the Sisters had by the later seasons started adding their own stuff to it.
    • This was almost certainly the idea. When Paige goes back to 1967 in Witchstock, the book is appropriately much thinner.
  • Coolest Club Ever: P3. Although after neglecting it for a bit, Piper has to work to make it popular again.
  • Cop Boyfriend: Andy in season one, for Prue. Henry in season eight for Paige, and she eventually marries him.
  • Cuckoo Nest: "Brain Drain"
  • Curse Cut Short: "But why me? I have nothing against that little fu - fetus."

Phoebe: Wait, if you know then that means they know. And if they know then we are fu--
Grams: Fine.

Phoebe: Who's Natalie?
Piper: She's a f--
Leo: Fellow whitelighter. See, we finish each other's sentences.
Piper: That wasn't what I was gonna say.

Paige: I can understand wanting to take a break from guys, but c'mon already, she's gonna wear out the batteries.

  • Dating Catwoman: Or in Phoebe's case, being married to the source of all evil.
  • Dawson Casting: Phoebe and Paige are younger than Piper, but their actresses Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan are older than her actress Holly Marie Combs.
    • Prue (Oct. 28, 1970) > Piper (June 7, 1973) > Phoebe (b. Nov. 2, 1975) > Paige (Aug. 2, 1977)
    • Shannen (Apr. 12, 1971) > Alyssa (Dec. 19, 1972) > Rose (Sep. 5, 1973) > Holly (Dec. 3, 1973)
  • Deadly Upgrade: Happens when people who aren't meant to be Empath's take (or are given) a legit one's power anyway, however, Prue really turns it Up to Eleven: powers in charmed are fueled by emotion and the more emotional you become the stronger (an more unstable) your powers become. So when Prue gets the empathy power she feels more emotions (specifically, those closest to her), so her empathy power becomes stronger. Its area of effect therefore increases, so she feels more (far off) emotions, so her empathy power becomes stronger, so her area of effect increases. Positive feedback continues ad infinitum. However, she still has her original powers, which logically "piggy-back" on the gains made by the empathy feedback loop. Given that one of them is Telekinesis, the result is...interesting.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Piper, Piper, oh Piper.
    • Though the other sisters are no strangers to the trope, particularly Paige.
  • Dead Person Conversation: They can summon the dead at any moment, except Prue.
  • Deal With the Wizard: Inverted. Drake dè Mon, played by Billy Zane, makes a deal with a sorcerer to become human (as in, to gain a soul rather than lose one) but keep his demonic powers with the condition that using them offensively will cause him to be sent to purgatory (as in, he's forced to be good rather than bad). The deal only lasts for one year, after which Drake will die anyway (as in, the only thing this means for his place in the world is that he's now on a clock to die), but as it turns out the whole deal was made with help from Cole as part of a Batman Gambit to restore Phoebe's faith in love (as in, the underlying force behind the deal was doing something good).
    • Another inversion, Cole was willing to transfer the essence and powers of the Source to a Wizard. Only for the deal to be ruined by Phoebe under the influence of the Seer and the unborn Source kid.
    • A more traditional Faustian Deal with the Devil happens in the episode Soul Survivor.
  • Death Takes a Holiday: And he recruits Piper to do his job for a while.
    • The punny episode title of "Death Takes A Halliwell".
  • Defector From Decadence: Billie thought she was this when Christy turned her against the Charmed Ones.
  • Deflector Shields: Most notably used by baby (and unborn) Wyatt. There are assorted people and magical items that project energy shields as well.
  • Deliver Us From Evil: Inverted with Phoebe's pregnancy, where her demonic child was turning her evil.
  • Demonic Possession
  • De-Power: Leo. First he became a Whitelighter, then an Elder, then an Avatar, then finally Brought Down to Normal permanently. The Last of These Is Not Like the Others.
  • Die or Fly: When Paige develops healing power to save Henry.
    • More literally than not in the case of Phoebe, who spontaneously levitates out of danger (indeed, its how she got the power to begin with).
      • In fact, all the sisters have developed at least one power this way: Piper learnt to freeze time initially when Jeremy tried to stab her in the face, Prue got her empathy under control just as a demon was totes about to murder her sister, Paige orbed for the first time in the just as she was about to crash into a lorry (as well as the aforementioned healing) and Phoebe's levitation has already been discussed. In season 9, when the source attacks, not only does Piper's molecular combustion power also develop radically but Paige gains the power to form an "orb shield" (basically a force field with added sparkles).
  • Disappeared Dad: Three times. Victor was forced away because he didn't want his daughters to use magic, Sam had to abandon Paige to save her from the Elders and Chris missed his father when the latter was busy as an Elder. At least in the former two cases, Daddy Had A Good Reason For Abandoning Them.
  • Discard and Draw
  • Divergent Character Evolution: Paige, from Prue. This and Cole's storyline saved the show through one of its disputed shark jumps.
  • Domino Revelation: Witches are the first we learn but then we get demons, ghosts, angels, and others to come out.
  • Drill Sergeant Nasty: Another whitelighter, Natalie, briefly serves as this in "Blinded by the Whitelighter" for the sisters when she prepares them for battle.
  • Driven to Suicide: Cole had attempted to get the Charmed Ones angry enough at him to want to vanquish him. However, he had become invincible by then, and was so powerful that he couldn't even use his many powers to kill himself.
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: Phoebe, in the S6 episode Witch Wars, where she gets a crap-ton of demonic powers and promptly goes on a demon murder spree. And she enjoys it. Of course, she had been going though active power withdrawal for some time and it was completely awesome but you can kind of see why the Powers That Be depowered her in the first place...
  • Dueling Shows: With Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: The first episode mentions the Three Essentials of Magic: timing, feeling, and the phases of the moon. It's never brought up again, nor is there any indication in the rest of the show that the moon's phases have any effect on their magic.
    • Not entirely true. It's commonly pointed out that their powers are linked to their emotions. There is also an episode where, under a strange occurrence involving a blue moon, the witches are turned into ferocious beasts who maul Whitelighters.
    • In the second episode one of the shape-shifting demons held on the book and tried to get it out of the house by carrying it. Never once did it shock him like the evil sensing and shocking book that would come later.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: By the end of season four, the sisters have lost one of their own, but in the process defeated the Triad far earlier than they were supposed to. The Angel of Destiny offers them a life without magic as reward, but they refuse. In season eight, Leo was supposed to have been killed, and the grief would spur them to fight much like the loss of Prue did. Piper, however, convinced the Angel of Destiny to only temporarily take away Leo, who was eventually returned to them. This time the Triad, among others, were Killed Off for Real.
    • Piper and Leo's entire relationship has been filled with so many trials and tribulations of both the romantic and the magical kind, they're the epitome of this trope for Charmed.
  • Eiffel Tower Effect: There are many many shots of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid, just to remind you that yes, the show is set in San Francisco.
    • In fact, the episodes usually start off with some shots of San-Fran in the morning after the opening credits and then with some night-time ones much later for the "final thought" at the end.
  • Enemy Mine: When the sisters have to work with the four horsemen, everyone gets on edge.
  • Energy Ball: The preferred power of demons everywhere. Just as much as Fireballs. Cole in particular really really misses being able to use them when he fully turns human for a while.
  • The Empath: Phoebe develops this power.
  • Endless Corridor: There's one in Hogwa-err, Magic School.
  • Everybody Hates Hades: The show never used Hades (except for a rather dishonorable mention as the father of the demon Nikos in the novel), but Hecate, another underworld god, came off particularly badly, being turned into a demon. (Way to go, have witches fight the patron of witches.) Yama also got this treatment, becoming the totally amoral gatekeeper of Chinese hell who tried to snatch whatever spirits were not "properly buried" and drag them to hell, regardless of whether they were good or evil.
    • The Angel of Death on the other hand, is portrayed more or less sympathetically, especially during his first appearance.
  • Everyone Loves Blondes: Although both naturally brunette, Phoebe and Paige dyed their hair blonde (Phoebe in season 3, Paige in season 6) and their characters fit the trope. It's worth noting that Prue's future self was shown to be blonde where she was the sexy, powerful and successful business woman. Piper also wore a blonde wig when she dressed up as Glinda.
  • Evil Costume Switch
  • Evil Counterpart: They fought an evil trio of warlock brothers who were even called "The Evil Charmed Ones". One of them wanted to be a priest, because doing so would remove his warlock half.
    • Yet another trio of evil siblings, sisters this time, appear in the episode "The Power of Three Blondes". They went as far as to actually steal the identities of the Charmed Ones in order to form their own evil version of the Power of Three. Their pettiness did them in.
    • Darklighters are this to Whitelighters. And like Leo, one (Alec) fell in love despite the rules and norms.
    • The Grimoire to the Book of Shadows, complete with the main force of evil/good having the main version that's called THE book.
  • Evil Lawyer Joke: Paige lampshades it.
  • The Evils of Free Will: In episode 12 season 7 "Extreme Makeover - World Edition," The Avatar want to create utopia by curbing free will. In the end, in episode 13 season 7, "Charmageddon," the evil side saves the day. In season 2 episode 21 "Apocalypse Not" Leo explains why evil loves free will.
  • Evolving Credits: Starting from season 2, the title sequence was regularly updated so that actors not appearing in the episode were not shown in the opening credits. Plus, the opening sequence for the pilot episode doesn't show the sisters' individual powers so that they aren't revealed in advance.
  • Executive Meddling: The creator, Constance M. Burge, left the show in Season 3 due to creative differences; she wanted to focus on the sisters and their relationship, whereas the producers and executives were more interested in doing more stories about their boyfriends, which is why the Cole storyline stretched on as long as it did.
    • Andy's death in the season 1 finale was in order to free Prue to more storylines.
    • After the heavily serialized Season 4, the network asked production to make Season 5 to be more stand-alone. This was a particularly odd request as the ratings were strong and final episodes of Season 4 were highly rated. Tellingly, after Season 5, the series returned to more season-long arcs.
  • Express Delivery: Phoebe has a nightmare that this happens, but it was All Just a Dream.
  • Extreme Doormat: Darryl Morris has done everything for the Charmed Ones. He even forgave them after Phoebe and Paige stole his soul. He had managed to grow a spine after getting put through the wringer one too many times without a thank you and put some distance between him and the girls. They didn't understand why.
  • Eye Beams: The villain from "The Truth is out there, and it hurts" has a Third Eye that sends out a beam of burning energy. It targets the same area that the victim's third eye would be.
  • Eye Scream: There's an episode where a man cursed with blindness sends his son out to steal a pair of eyes for him. The eyes removed from the bodies are just... eeeew.
  • Faking the Dead
    • Phoebe had fake-vanquished Cole because while the sisters had found out that he was really Belthazor, Phoebe was still in love with him.
    • In the season seven finale, the sisters and Leo faked their deaths in order to live normal lives. By season eight, though, they couldn't keep up the ruse and eventually reverted to their old identities.
  • False Innocence Trick
    • There was an episode where the sisters try to save a man trapped in a painting, but it turns out he was evil all along.
    • Another episode sees the sisters trying to save some kids from their Ice Cream Truck prison. Turns out, demon children.
  • Familiar: An episode dealt with familiars; they can become human either by good work, or by betraying/killing their charges. The Charmed Ones' familiar cat, Kit, was rewarded with human form.
  • Fan Service: And how!
    • And to the point that, whenever any (or, indeed, all) of the girls ends up in a costume as part of the plot, lampshades are inevitably hung.

Phoebe: Why am I always the one that winds up with the wig?
Piper: Trust me, you're not.

  • Fake Shemp
  • Fantastic Aesop: Too many to count.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Lampshaded a couple of times.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: Demons and the like come from the Underworld, but when they get vanquished, they go to the Wasteland. They lose their human forms and face being devoured by a beast under the ground. Cole - having retained his human form because he's only half-demon - kills the beast in Season 4, though.
  • Feminist Fantasy
  • Fetus Terrible: Played straight for Phoebe's child, who was the offspring of a Charmed One turned (temporarily) evil, and the Source of all evil. It was slowly corrupting Phoebe, even granting her a power she had in her past evil self. Inverted with Piper's, however. Not only would hers become a powerful force for good, but Wyatt would protect Piper even when he was still in the womb.
  • Feuding Families: Paige had to deal with this in season six. Interestingly, not only is the reason for their feuding something concrete and recent (the death of one family's daughter) rather than something vague that happened generations ago, but the feud is resolved relatively peacefully after it's revealed that the reason everything was escalating was because the ghost of the dead girl was keeping it going out of a displaced sense of vengeance. Paige's Love Interest from this episode (the same one the ghost wanted) even hangs around for a while, alternately being a source of help or danger depending on the episode, until his attempt to get rid of his family's bad karma ended up endangering Phoebe (and even exposing the magical world to her boyfriend).
  • Finger-Snap Lighter: Many, many demons. However, the very first flaming finger seen was being used by a good witch to light candles, all the way in the first episode.
  • Fire and Brimstone Hell: Not all the underworld looks like this (most of it being just dark caverns and tunnels), but select places do.
  • Fireballs: Again, demons just looooove using them. There are more good characters that use fireballs than Energy Balls, though.
  • First Law of Resurrection: Oh boy. Over the course of 8 seasons, Piper and Phoebe die 9 times each. Paige reaches the same number of deaths within just 5 seasons and Prue has 3 deaths to show. And of course, being the main characters, they all get better. Well, except for Prue at the end of season 3.
  • Flash Back / Flash Forward: The nature of Phoebe's power of premonition is that she sees visions of what might happen, and sometimes what had already happened. Then there are spells that have been cast by others to see scenes from both the past and the future.
  • Flanderization/ Early Installment Weirdness/ Seasonal Rot: Something changed after Constance M. Burge left. Originally the show tried to hang on to the spirit of Neopaganism and Wicca, with various levels of success, whereas afterward it became much more about simple "Hocus Pocus" magic (see Fantasy Kitchen Sink), alongside other things. It's just hard to classify what it would be called since it was very abrupt (Flanderization is usually more gradual) and fairly evenly balanced (three seasons on one side, five on the other.)
  • Fluffy Cloud Heaven: "Up There", as it's called, looks exactly like the page picture.
  • Flying Broomstick: The Charmed Ones are thoroughly modern witches, so this only happens once, in the past.
  • Fog Feet: Demons made of smoke.
  • Foot Focus: Happens from time to time. For example in "A Witch's Tail", Piper is barefoot most of the episode with plenty of close-ups of her feet.
  • Follow the Leader: Of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
  • Forgotten Phlebotinum: The spirit board, which was used for all of three episodes before disappearing in season three until it finally resurfaced for one last use in season 8.
  • Fountain of Youth: One is being guarded by nymphs, but is really more of a spring. Another one shows up, and this one actually looks like a stone fountain. Irritatingly enough, Piper says "But that's just a myth!" when confronted with the second one, even after having come across the first one. To be fair, she and her sisters had promised the nymps from the first fountain that they would keep its exsistance a secret
  • Four-Girl Ensemble: Although not all four Charmed Ones were on the show at he same time (since Prue died before Paige was introduced), the sisters still fit this trope. Paige was The Ditz, Piper was the Deadpan Snarker, Phoebe was the sexy one, and Prue was the wise Cool Big Sis.
    • Before Paige, Phoebe played a combination of the sexy one and The Ditz. Once Prue passed away, Piper took on her role as the wise Cool Big Sis but still had her Deadpan Snarker traits intact.
  • The Fourth Sister: Paige
  • Freaky Friday Flip: Phoebe and Paige in "Enter the Demon".
  • Freudian Slip: In the episode about the Sandman, Piper lets it slip that dreams are just "harmless, erotic exotic fun".
  • Friends Rent Control: Three twenty-something women own a large, three-story Victorian manor with a yard in San Francisco, a very dense urban area with some of the most expensive real estate in the country. The issue is supposedly handwaved that it has been in the family for generations and has been inherited, but the Halliwells would likely not be able to even afford the property tax on a home that would likely sell for at least $5 million, assuming it's not in a wealthy or desirable part of town.
    • No need to invoke that trope in this case, the house has been in the family for centuries (most likely since it was built) and the start of the series Piper has a job as a cook in a posh restaurant and Prue is a well paid art appraiser for a big auction house. Later they own a very popular night club and Phoebe becomes a famous columnist.
    • A couple of episodes have had the sisters mention the need for a proper regular income. Piper has said to Phoebe on one occasion that they depended on her salary (as P3 was seeing lean times and Paige was unemployed) in order not to lose the house.
  • Functional Magic
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Magical Version: Billie managed to "MacGyver up" a magical potion from the contents of a hostage's purse, despite the show always stating that potion ingredients are quite specific.
  • Generation Xerox: It's implied in the last episode that Chris and Wyatt are going to follow in the footsteps of their parents and aunts. So much potential spin-off material wasted...
  • George Jetson Job Security: Demons are quick to kill their underlings for even the slightest infractions. They'll even kill their underlings for not saying exactly what they want to hear at the time. About the only way a demon can hope to last long is by having a skill that's really hard to replace.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: Every other episode when one of the sisters has a date or talks about a relationship.
    • "Be Careful What You Witch For" brings us Prue announcing a date with a man named Dick:

Phoebe: Prue, you are too hot to have to duty-date.
Prue: Yeah, well, all demon-hunting and no play has made me a lot less picky. I gotta figure out a way to put some more balance in my life.
Piper: Yeah, but you don't need Dick...

  • Give Him a Normal Life: This is the explanation for why the Halliwell Sisters grew up not being able to use their powers or knowing about them: Their mother and grandmother "bound their powers" in order to let them live a safe and normal life. This was never quite as much of an option with baby Wyatt, who is an even greater Chosen One than the Charmed Sisters themselves, but the Halliwell Sisters still had a tendency to wish that they could give Wyatt a normal life, particularly Piper.
    • Often occurs so they can have conflict with the Powers That Be who act like their bosses. One example that really stands out is a multi-part episode in which it was revealed that the Balance Between Good and Evil is preserved by a Mirror Universe - if good wins in one universe, evil wins in the other and balances it out. Traveling between them disrupted the balance and made the normal universe "too good" - the sun never sets, everyone is freakishly happy all the time, and minor crimes like leaving your cell phone on in a library are punished by mutilation (instead of the suddenly-too-good people just leaving their cellphones turned off). A more reasonable person would consider mutilation to be evil.
      • Somewhat tangential, but one shouldn't forget that in the similarly-disrupted evil balance, the same sort of mutilation was enacted for such trivial niceties as saying "Gesundheit" when someone sneezed.
      • Essentially, the point being made was that Good and Evil cannot tolerate the others' existence, and therefore in a world dominated by one, any act (no matter how minor) that runs contrary to the ideals of either is punished harshly. It is the mix of the two that provides tolerance and temperance.
  • God in Human Form: After becoming an Elder and then an Avatar, Leo eventually gets depowered and mindwiped and is plopped somewhere on earth to live as a human and find his purpose. Then one Batman Gambit would foil another, and he would come back home.
  • Godiva Hair: Lady Godiva herself shows up in an episode and Phoebe dresses up as her at the end of the episode.
  • Good Feels Good
  • Good Guy Bar: P3.
  • Goo-Goo Godlike: Wyatt. Even in the womb, he was protecting Piper from a souped-up Cole. After he was born, his powers just kept growing.
  • Grand Theft Me: There is a lot of possession going on throughout the series.
  • Great Big Book of Everything: The Book of Shadows is the former Trope Namer.
  • Green Lantern Ring
  • The Grim Reaper: The Angel of Death.
  • Groundhog Day Loop: The final episode of season 1.
  • Halloween Episode: Two, the first in season 3 "All Halliwell's Eve" had the sisters sent back in time to the Virgina colony. The second in season 8 "Kill Billie: Vol 1" just happened to take place on Halloween with no plot relating to the holiday.
  • Happily Adopted: Paige was adopted by a loving family when the Elders wouldn't let Patty and her Whitelighter Sam keep the child. Then the Powers That Be had to move the adopted parents out of the way in a more brutal fashion...
  • Happily Married: Piper and Leo (for a while, and, if the epilogue is anything to go by, again).
  • Headless Horseman: Almost causes the end of Magic School in "The Legend of Sleepy Halliwell".
  • Heads-Tails-Edge
  • Healing Hands: Whitelighters and Elders. Inverted for Darklighters, who can kill through touch.
  • The Heartless: The Shadow, the Source and the Hollow. Cole became host to each power once.
  • Heel Face Revolving Door: Cole/Belthazor.
  • Hell-Bent for Leather: Especially in later seasons. Demons went from actually looking kind of demonic to just being dark-haired people in leather.
  • Heroic Wannabe: Billie (she sucks at being a hero and a villain.)
  • Hide Your Pregnancy: Holly Marie Combs.
    • Until they decided to write in her pregnancy. And the baby was born in less than six months.
      • The show did note a six-month time jump between the episode where Leo and Piper conceive Wyatt and the very next episode, which justifies how quickly Piper was pregnant and showing.
        • Or would have, if HMC wasn't obviously pregnant long before they wrote the pregnancy in.
  • Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: One a Phoebe's nightmares.
  • Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Apparently are created by, answer to, and can only be destroyed by the Source.
  • Hot Men At Work: Leo first poses as a handyman.
  • Hot Mom: Piper and eventually Phoebe and Paige, too.
  • Hot Witch
  • Housewife: Phoebe gets turned into a Samantha Stevens-esque housewife by way of a magical ring. She did mention that Bewitched was her favorite show.
  • How Do I Shot Web?: It usually takes the sister a variable length of time to master their powers when they're revealed. Particular credit goes to: Phoebe, who never was able to fully master her empathy power before it was taken from her; and Paige, who took 5 whole seasons before she learnt how to heal.
  • Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad: It depends on whether you view the sisters as human or nonhuman. If they're nonhuman, the trope is inverted in the case of Prue, Piper, and Phoebe (human dad/nonhuman mom). If they're human, the trope is played straight in the case of Paige (human mom/nonhuman dad). If they are human, Piper's sons and Phoebe's children have this trope apply to them, as well. Whether they're human or not, the trope is inverted in the case of Paige's children, since she married a "mortal" human, Henry, and is half Whitelighter (and thus, technically, nonhuman). Of course, Paige, as well as Piper's sons Wyatt and Chris, is half dead person, so I'm not sure how that works, but their fathers are still nonhuman. Brandon, the half-warlock from the first season, played this trope straight as well. It was inverted in the case of Cole, whose mother was a demon and his father a human.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: Cole, having absorbed many powers from hell to return to Phoebe, only causes problems for her and her sisters, so she ends up divorcing him. He also finds that his powers have made him Nigh Invulnerable and, as such, rendered him unable to kill himself from the grief. So he starts causing trouble for the girls to get them to vanquish him.
    • Only to subvert this trope when he explains that he just wanted to try whether he really was indestructable and goes Ax Crazy for good after the confirmation.
      • Cole didn't explain anything. He wanted to die and was quite miserable that nothing could be done to make it happen. Now, he was told by the Avatars that this was the case and cryptically said as much to the sisters, but it was quite clear that Cole was hoping against hope that they were wrong.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: All the FRICKIN' time! Yes Piper, I'm talkin' to you.
  • I Want to Bear His Children: A season five episode has this exchange:

Leo: How'd it go with the new boss?
Phoebe: Oh, Jason Dean? I want to bear his children, but that's besides the point.

  • I Was Quite a Looker: The Collector of the Strange Villain of the Week from Season 4 modeled his handsome golem after himself as a young man. The sisters' Aunt Gail from season 2 as well when she got her youth restored.
  • Identical Grandson: Though subverted in one episode where Leo attends a WWII veterans' reunion as his own identical grandson, even though he obviously wasn't.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The name of almost every episode worked on more than one level--each often included a terrible pun which was at least peripherally relevant to the plot point/MonsterOfTheWeek, unless the name of one of the sisters was somehow worked into the title. At the same time, most names were also puns which played off of a Shout-Out to another famous title or work. While just about anything was fair game, the most common contenders were works of literature, rival TV shows, classic films, and well-known songs, often oldies.
  • Idiot Ball: The later the seasons, the more these tend to be thrown around.
  • Immune to Bullets: Most demons. There's also a spell that gives a person temporary invincibility, making bullets bounce off them and giving them Super Strength a la Superman.
    • Grimlocks are a bit of a subversion. Bullets can't stop them, but they still hurt like hell.
  • Important Haircut: Averted. Piper briefly comments on Phoebe's new hairstyle in the first episode of season 6, but that's only because Alissa Milano showed up with an extremely short haircut right before they started filming that season.
  • Improbable Age
  • Incredible Shrinking Man: In "Size Matters", a shrink wand-wielding demon named Gammil does this to witches to turn them into figurines.
  • Informed Attractiveness: People on the show talked about Phoebe as if she were the most gorgeous creature to ever walk the Earth. While Alyssa Milano was certainly beautiful, she wasn't significantly more attractive than Rose McGowan, Holly Marie Combs, and Shannen Doherty. Their characters weren't praised for their looks nearly as much as Phoebe was (although she did have a tendency to show more skin than the others did, especially later on).
  • Ingesting Knowledge: In one episode, Phoebe uses a smart spell that allows her to absorb the knowledge of a book by waving her hands over it.
  • Inspector Javert: Anderson. Rodriguez. Reece Davidson. Cortez. Sheridan. Keyes. Even Darryl Morris started out this way, and even Andy Trudeau got suspicious of Prue for a cup of coffee, and the two of them were among the most reliable friends the sisters had. Needless to say, they got this a lot.
  • In the Blood: The ability to have powers is, obviously, inherit in all magical species. Crossing that blood with mortals is very dangerous.
  • Ironic Echo: When the sisters confront a Darklighter.

Alec: (pointing crossbow at Phoebe) Never used this on a witch before.
(Alec gets thrown into a bathroom stall, dropping his crossbow)
Prue: (picks up crossbow) Never used this on a Darklighter before.

  • Jerkass Genie: Genies are tricksters and will try and twist wishes to serve their needs (usually to gain their freedom). There are two genie-centric episodes with both literal and jerky genies: "Be Careful What You Witch For", and "I Dream Of Phoebe".
  • Kid From the Future: Chris.
    • They also were this themselves in "That '70s Episode".
  • Killed Off for Real: Prue.
  • Kill the Ones You Love: Phoebe needs to overcome her emotions and vanquish Cole. Twice. The first time she doesn't do it, instead faking his death. The second time wouldn't have happened if she hadn't taken the Idiot Ball an episode earlier. The third time he's vanquished is an aversion, as she hated him by then.
  • King Arthur: Briefly mentioned in "Sword and the City", Piper pulled the sword Excalibur from the stone in a very Arthurian-style and later became corrupted by it.
  • Knight in Shining Armor: One was summoned from a magic kingdom by Paige on accident.
  • Knight Templar: Witch Doctors, it's their job to clean up residual evil energies but they'll destroy good beings if they are a threat to the magical community.
  • Kung Fu Wizard: Phoebe is a Kung-Fu Witch. She learns martial arts because she's the only one without an active power (and gets bummed when Prue gets another one before she did). Eventually she learned how to levitate, which helped out her martial arts skills a bit.
  • Lamarck Was Right: Wyatt Halliwell inherits both his mother's molecular freezing and combustion powers and his father's whitelighter abilities. Chris also receives whitelighter abilities, but has powers equivalent to Prue's.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Memory dust. Leo expresses reservations on using it because it isn't quite so precise.
  • Laser Hallway: Complete with acrobatics from Phoebe. They were actually moving lasers, but having the power to stop time comes in handy during burglary.
  • Last of His Kind: The last wizard in existence was trying to kill the Source, who just happened to be Cole.
    • Clearly subverted. Not only was that little guy not the last wizard, he was trying to become the Source.
  • Latin Lover: One gets conjured up as a birthday present for Piper in "Prince Charmed".
  • Lawful Stupid: In the show's mythology, this is how our world would be if there wasn't some evil in it to balance things out.
  • Leave Your Quest Test: Happens at least Once a Season. Chances are very good that Piper will be the most tempted by it.
    • Probably the most vicious attempt at this was an episode in the 4th season that took place in an insane asylum... inside Piper's mind.
  • Lesbian Vampire: The Queen in "Bite Me".
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall
  • Lie to the Beholder: The sisters faked their deaths at the end of season seven. In the beginning of season eight, they cast a spell to make them appear as different people to everyone but family.
  • Life Drinker: Javna. He needed to regularly steal the youth of his victims, aging them into old people, in order to retain his youthful form. If he doesn't, he ages rapidly.
  • Lighter and Softer: Later seasons.
  • Literal Genie
  • Literal Split Personality: In the episode "Which Prue Is It Anyway?" Prue makes 2 clones of herself that display different aspects of her personality.
    • Done again in the episode "Just Harried" when Prue's id decides to get a little action via astral projection.
  • Living Shadow: Cole has one.
  • Long-Lost Relative: Not only a character trope but also a narrative one. It is basically the only thing that saved the show after Prue was killed off. And the fact that Patty Halliwell's affair with her Whitelighter was mentioned before is the only thing that saved this from being an Ass Pull.
  • Love Cannot Overcome: After Prue confesses to her first season boyfriend Andy that she's a witch, he admits that he can't handle it and probably wouldn't be able to no matter how long she gave him to get used to the idea.
    • This may also have been the reason that the girls' father left.
  • Love Freak: Cupids, naturally. Leo to a lesser extent.
  • Love Goddess: Phoebe was a Goddess of Love for an episode. She even wanted to form her own male harem.
  • Love Makes You Crazy: Cole jumps off the deep end when Phoebe refuses to take him back.
  • Love Makes You Evil: More than once. Phoebe willingly becomes the Queen of the Underworld to stay with Cole. Later, Cole absorbs all sorts of demonic powers to be reunited with Phoebe, only to be corrupted by them again. Also, Leo willingly becomes an Avatar to save his wife and before that, he killed an elder to save his son.
  • Love Redeems
    • A human recruited to be a demon keeps his humanity by being reminded of his love for his mother.
    • Subverted in Cole's case. Initially his love for Phoebe leads him to do good, but it wasn't enough to make up for all the evil he had done. Absorbing a whole lot of demonic powers didn't help.
  • The Lowest Cosmic Denominator
  • Lunacy: In "Once in a Blue Moon", when two Blue Moons occur in a year, weird things happen. Including The Charmed Ones turning into werewolves. And yes, it did coincide with "that time of the month".
  • Mama Bear: Piper, whenever Wyatt is in danger.
  • Magical Gesture: Binding witches' hands to their backs often makes them unable to use their powers, even if some have learned to "point" with the eyes instead.
  • Magical Girlfriend: The Charmed Ones whenever they're dating someone.
  • Magic Carpet
  • Make a Wish
  • Making a Splash: The Water Demon that killed the sisters' mother, and the sea hag. May or may not be the same person.
  • Male Gaze
  • Man, I Feel Like a Woman: When Prue gets turned into a man and hides in the bathroom, Phoebe muses "Do you think she's touching herself?"
    • An evil witch possesses a mortal man in one episode, and really does touch himself, albeit briefly.
  • Masquerade: The mortal world cannot know of the magical one. When the Masquerade is broken, the consequences are serious.
  • The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: A Running Gag is that you're not a Halliwell if you haven't dated a demon. And keeping this big of a secret from a Muggle boyfriend is impossible, so all the Charmed ones finally end up with magical love interests.
    • Subverted by Paige. Her magical love interest was not only not the guy she ended up with, he wasn't even the next best thing she had.
  • McLeaned: Prue, due to a conflict with the actresses and several people working on the show on the show, Alyssa Milano in particular.
    • Notably, Doherty directed the episode in which Prue was killed off. Granted, the writers no doubt had options to bring Prue back, but by the point of filming, it was quite likely she wasn't coming back for Season 4.
  • Meet Cute: In a Clip Show episode, Coop describes Phoebe and Cole's meeting as this. It consisted of Phoebe nearly roundhouse kicking Cole, who catches her leg.
  • Memory-Wiping Crew: The Cleaners.
  • Mind Over Matter: Prue's power, then Paige's.
  • Mirror Universe: Featured in the double episode "It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World".
  • Missing Mom: Patty was drowned by a Warlock when the main characters were very young. Prue saw her die and Phoebe was too young to remember her at all. Paige never knew her since she was raised by Muggle Foster Parents. They meet her in the past and some episodes feature her as a Spirit Advisor, though.
  • Missing Episode: On the first DVD of Season 6 the episode titled "Love's a Witch" was listed on the DVD menu but not actually present in the DVD collection of videos, a recall was issued shortly afterward in which you could trade in your 'bad' copy and get a 'real' copy.
  • Money, Dear Girl: Rose McGowan (AKA Paige In-Verse) was always eager to point out that she just liked having a steady paycheck.
    • Although, by the time the show was canceled, she did express some bitterness at how the show was treated, so it seems that at some point she did begin to have at least some affection for the show.
  • Mood Whiplash: The season 4 episode "Hell Hath No Fury". Funny jokes about Paige messing with magic and getting an accidental Breast Expansion one minute, a serious story about Piper literally losing herself in rage and grief over Prue's death the next. One of the better-acted episodes in the series, oddly enough.
  • Morality Chain: Many characters have explicitly stated that Phoebe plays this role in making sure that Cole remains good. In fact, Cole's well-known tendency for being a Heel Face Revolving Door is pretty much a function of his relationship with Phoebe—that is, Phoebe and Cole are constantly breaking up and reestablishing their relationship, and every time this happens, it has a major effect on Cole's status as evil or good. Although Phoebe is very much aware of her power to be Cole's Morality Chain, she usually seems to be merely yanking his chain based on her own emotions, rather than consistently using her influence to make sure Cole becomes and remains a redeemed demon.
  • Mr. Fanservice: The aforementioned Cole and Leo are the two greatest examples, and two sides of the same coin. Cole is a demon, and fits the handsome bad boy type. Phoebe gets to play the fantasy of turning the bad boy good. By contrast, Leo is quite literally an angel. He plays the nice guy, and is all about love and goodness. And yes, both of them have had Shirtless Scenes.
    • While Cole and Leo were both fairly developed and well-rounded characters, the pure Mr. Fanservice would have been Dan from Season 2. Hunky former baseball player turned handyman next door, he seemed to only exist to stand around in tank tops and be that nice guy that Piper saw as her perfect life that she couldn't have with Leo at that point.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Phoebe. Not that the other girls are completely innocent, mind you.
  • Muggle and Magical Love Triangle: Paige has one, briefly in the last season, between Henry (muggle) and Simon (magical).
  • Muggle Foster Parents: Paige Matthews was given to normal parents after her birth and didn't know her true heritage until her powers started manifesting thanks to a spell Piper had cast to bring Prue back.
  • Mundanger: In "Sight Unseen", a mysterious stalker turns out to be an ordinary human and not a demon at all.
    • And in "Dream Sorceror", the titular villain isn't actually a sorceror, but a scientist who built a machine that can project himself into other people's dreams and kill them, Freddy Krueger style. Apparently if you die in your dreams you die in real life.
  • My Grandson, Myself
  • Necromantic: Inverted in "Necromancing The Stone". Apparently Grams fell in love with a Necromancer, whom she had to vanquish. He was stealing spirits in order to keep himself firmly on the living side of the line between life and death. When he comes across Grams, he tries to convince her to let both of them be resurrected by using the spirits of the Halliwel line during baby Wyatt's christening.
  • Never Say "Die": Although "kill" and "destroy" belong to their vocabulary, the sisters seem to prefer to "vanquish" demons.
  • Nice Guy: Leo Wyatt.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Well-Intentioned Extremist Gideon was so determined to prevent Wyatt from turning evil he was willing to do anything and work with anyone (even Barbas!) to make it happen. But where he crossed firmly both past the Moral Event Horizon and into this territory was the two-part season finale of season six where he was willing to completely upset the Balance Between Good and Evil, work with his evil Mirror Universe counterpart, and almost destroy the sisters, all in the name of his goal...but it turns out he was the cause of the very thing he was trying to prevent, with all of his machinations and attempts to kidnap, control, and remove Wyatt from the picture being what turned him evil in the first place. (At least until later, when other events kept trying to make Wyatt that way. They all failed, though.)
    • The one that might also take the cake: Cole is about to give the evil powers within him to a wizard, so he can finally be free and with his love Phoebe. A minute before he succeeds, Phoebe kills the wizard - essentially forcing herself to have to choose between her husband and her sisters. Yet she has the nerve to gradually shun him forever as a result following what is, again, HER final decision.
      • Phoebe was tricked by the Seer into doing it for Cole and their baby's sake after which Cole takes to poisoning her with evil granted he claims to be doing it for her sake to make her feel less morality concerning the evil things he does but that is not her fault but his. Even after he was vanquished and came back he expressed his rather creepy wish to stick with her despite all her attempts to tell him to leave which he refuses to do until it drives him insane. That does make her a hypocrite for shunning after this.
    • Cole's Face Heel Turn in Season 5 is even worse. Prior to it, Cole is generally trying to do good - either helping the sisters outright or just keeping to himself. However, the sisters (especially Phoebe) don't trust him and repeatedly make that clear to him no matter what he does. Unsurprisingly, this all helps wear down on his willpower and sanity. When Cole reveals his Face Heel Turn has in fact happened, Phoebe even has the nerve to ask him why.
      • His trying to do good revolves around him trying to win back Phoebe even after being firmly told by her that for both their sakes he should move on yet he continues by his own volition to muscle in on her life with good deeds which are heavily laced with creepy stalker tendencies that exacerbate the sisters' distrust of him. He even openly admits after coming back that he'll never give up on her which is more than a little creepy. Phoebe asking him why is not her being a Jerk Sue when you take into account that she gave him the chance to leave and he didn't take it.
        • He was halfway out the door to leave the city forever thinking Phoebe turned into a mermaid out of hatred for him until Paige tugged him back and said Phoebe loved him, and it can very well be argued that nobody who Cole encountered since then even treated him like a person rather than as something to be feared or a tool for power.
  • Nigh Invulnerable: In season five, Cole and Piper. Piper reveled in it ("I'm unbreakable, dude!"). Cole? Not so much. They were blasting each other in the episode "Y tu Mummy Tambien" and Leo mentions how pointless it was.
    • An invincibility spell shows up in the episode "Little Monsters". Paige cast it on Darryl, and it made him pretty much Immune to Bullets. While one wonders why they don't use it more often, it also had the side effect of inflating one's ego, reminiscent of when Prue was infected with the sin of Pride nearly killing her. Plus it turned his strength up to beyond Herculean levels and when we last see him before Paige goes to fix it is surrounded by his broken things in his office because he couldn't control his new found strength.
  • Nipple-and-Dimed: Part of Phoebe's nipple actually made it on the air in the episode "Sight Unseen". In a scene at the club, the dress she's wearing fails to cover her up and part of the nipple is visible.
  • No Cure for Evil: Whitelighters can't heal evil. This becomes an issue when Leo tries to heal Cole - it cues Leo in that Cole isn't quite human.
  • Noir Episode: "Charmed Noir." They even have parts of it in black and white.
  • Not Even Human: It appears rather often, and in one case the whole episode ("Mr. and Mrs. Witch") plays itself out without the Charmed Sisters ever becoming aware of it. The Monster of the Week is in fact a demon, but he appears to be a human Corrupt Corporate Executive. The demon is quite aware that the Charmed Ones won't kill him as long as they think he's human, and in fact the Charmed Ones never do find out. The demon is still vanquished by his superiors for failing to accomplish their evil plan; and in fact, the Charmed Sisters read about this evil executive's "suicide" in the newspaper, without ever being the wiser that this was a demon who they could have dealt with by vanquishing him.
  • Now I Know What to Name Him: Chris, being the resident Kid From the Future. Hell, he even tries to bring about his own conception as he messed up the dates by being there.
    • Phoebe also gets one when she time travels to meet her pregnant mother, who remarks how obvious it is that she would choose another P name and that "it's not too late to change it."
  • Occult Law Firm: Cole gets employed by a few of these.
  • Omniglot: Whitelighters on the job have this ability. Paige doesn't seem to have it though.
  • Once a Season: In nearly every season finale, the last shot is the front door of the Halliwell Manor closing.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Charmed was Julian McMahon's first role that required him to use an American accent, and as such his native Australian accent breaks through a few times in the early Cole episodes. It tends to happen on the last word or two of his lines.
  • Open Sesame: In the Arabian-themed episode "I Dream Of Phoebe", which also includes Genies, Magic Carpets, and The Forty Thieves.
  • Our Angels Are Different: Whitelighters.
  • Our Mermaids Are Different: Mermaids are immortal creatures who have "hearts as cold as the ocean".
  • Our Vampires Are Different: They have social hierarchy similar to bees.
  • Parental Abandonment: Complete with Missing Mom, Disappeared Dad, Raised by Grandparents, and Muggle Foster Parents.
  • Part-Time Hero
  • Personal Gain Hurts: Oh, how they drill this one in... It's practically the Trope Namer.
  • Pirates: Type 1. They're also magical undying cursed pirates, of course. To be fair, the films are given a Shout-Out when Phoebe asks if they're "hot Johnny Depp pirates".
  • Place of Power: Halliwell Manor conveniently sits atop a nexus of magical power. Several times demons have broken in and tried to take it for themselves.
  • Playing Cyrano: Coop, for one of Phoebe's coworkers.
  • Playing with Fire: Most demons chuck Fireballs. There are some witches (including Phoebe in her past life) that can manipulate fire.
  • Plot Hole: In Season 5, the sisters constantly referred to Cole as having betrayed them and becoming the Source of All Evil. The problem is, the latter half of Season 4 made it quite clear that Cole had been possessed by the old Source and was overtaken. The sisters were told as much by a wizard, so their distrust is completely unwarranted in the presented context.
    • The Cleaners are this, as well. Shannen Doherty may have wanted off the show, but still doesn't explain their only showing up NOW.
  • The Pollyanna: The ditzy Nymphs from "Nymphs Just Wanna Have Fun".
  • Portal Pool: Zen Masters can use water to go any place.
  • Post Script Season: Season 8 is exactly this. See Series Fauxnale on this page.
  • The Power of Friendship: Should they use their powers against each other, they would lose them.
  • The Power of Hate: Whitelighters run on The Power of Love and have the ability to heal; Darkighters, being the Evil Counterpart, run on hate and have the power to kill through touch.
  • The Power of Love: The greatest of all powers. Greater even than...
  • The Power Of Three
  • Powers as Programs: There are demons that collect and exchange powers so they can broker them.
  • Power Incontinence: Phoebe is practically the queen of this trope (not that the other sisters are entirely innocent): She doesn't have any sort of control over her premonitions until ~season 6 (and even then she never learns how to turn it off), the flying power she accidentally stole from the dragon in season 2 was unreliable to say the least and she never learned to control her empathy power ever. In act neither did Prue when she [temporarily] became an empath. Also happened to Piper "Exit Strategy", where her ability to freeze time is upgraded to Stuff Blowing Up too. Plus, Paige has struggled with this in her orbing ever since she was a high-schooler.
  • Power Perversion Potential: Piper has frozen Leo on more than one occasion during sex. The first time was accidental, the next ones, not so much. Leo doesn't mind.
  • Powers That Be: The Angel of Destiny and the Elders to some extent.
  • Power Walk: In "Valhalley of the Dolls", the season six premiere, where the sisters get turned into Valkyries.
  • Pregnant Badass: Piper. It helps when your unborn child has healing powers and strong Deflector Shields to help you out, basically making you Nigh Invulnerable.
  • Promotion to Opening Titles: Brian Krause as Leo.
    • Also Drew Fuller as Chris during season six (he was credited as guest during the fifth season finale).
  • Psycho for Hire: A lot of the later demons.
  • Puberty Superpower: Some powers manifest at puberty, such as the firestarter kid in "Lost and Bound".
  • Pun-Based Title: Many episode titles are puns, especially puns that involve the words "witch," "charmed," etc., or the names of the characters.
  • Put on a Bus: Darryl who was present in all seasons but the last.
    • Also, Leo who left the show during the middle of the final season.
  • Raised by Grandparents: Prue, Piper, and Phoebe were raised by their grandmother after their mother's death and father's abandonment.
  • Rapunzel Hair: Piper's hair grew to waist length during the second season and stayed that way for the rest of the series. Prue's future self got waist length blonde hair. Paige got Rapunzel Hair when she was turned into Snow White and again into a wood nymph. Phoebe also got Aphrodite's floor-length tresses when she was turned into a Goddess of Love.
  • Real Life Relative: Averted. While on-screen, Leo and Piper were together as were Cole and Phoebe. Off-screen, Alyssa Milano was dating Brian Krause while Shannen Doherty and Julian McMahon were a couple.
    • Almost not a subversion - Cole was originally supposed to date Prue, but they changed that.
  • Real Song Theme Tune: The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?"
    • As covered by Love Spit Love, the same recording that was used in the movie The Craft.
  • Reality Subtext
  • Reality Warper: The power of Projection in all its forms.
  • Required Secondary Powers: The ability to create fire seems to come with being fireproof.
  • Revival: The series was brought back from limbo by comic book company Zenoscope as a scheduled 2 year publication.
  • Revival Loophole: Used to defeat the Monster of the Week in "The Power of Two".
  • Ripple Effect Indicator: An expanded universe book shows changes in the Halliwell family home, Phoebe's appearance, and Wyatt disappearing as the Big Bad changes events in the past.
  • Rubber Forehead Aliens: Lots of demons' inhuman forms resemble this trope.
  • Running Gag: The poor grandfather clock is destroyed a lot, and every time Piper thinks: "Damn it, we just got that thing fixed."
    • And she actually says it in "Brain Drain" (4x07).
  • See You in Hell: Cole, in response to a cowboy using the trope, says "Been there, done that."
    • Also, the similar exchange of Prue crying "Go to hell!", with a warlock responding, "I'd love to, dear. Miss it terribly."
      • Something like that seems to be the default warlock/demon response whenever anyone tells them to go to hell. You'd think sooner or later the witches would learn to stop doing it.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: In "Oh My Goddess!" it's said that the Greek gods were actually mortals the Elders infused with power in order to stop the Titans. This is not a problem in itself - the problem is that Gaea was stated to be one of these mortals, when in mythology she wasn't an Olympian, but the mother of the titans.
  • Scenery Porn: Every episode shows several flyover shots of San Francisco right after the opening credits. They're rather fond of showing the fog/clouds rolling around the Golden Gate Bridge.
  • Seer: Phoebe. Then there were two demonic seers, played by Debbi Morgan and Charisma Carpenter. Actually, Cordy- err, Kira and Phoebe were a bit flirty towards each other.
  • Self-Disposing Villain: Demons disappear after they get vanquished.
    • Subverted in "The Day the Magic Died." After killing a demon mook while all magic is tempoarily down, Phoebe and Paige have to figure out what to do with the body and hide it in a closet.
  • Sense Loss Sadness
    • "Primrose Emphath" has Father Thomas, who passed his power of empathy into a demon in order to stop him and ended up in a psych ward due to the depression and insanity that followed.
    • "Sense and Sense Ability" has an old demon woman stealing a sense from each of the sisters through a cursed monkey totem, although the result isn't so much "sadness" as it is "hilarious confused antics".
    • "Witchness Protection" has the reveal that the seer Kyra is incapable of feeling strong emotion (whether this is legit or her personal case of Informed Flaw due to demonic conditioning is uncertain) and wants to solve this problem by helping the Charmed Ones in return for a spell to turn her into a human.
  • Series Continuity Error: In "Desperate Housewitches," the sisters have to face the threat of a resurrected Source. Paige asks Piper and Phoebe how the Source was vanquished last time... as if she wasn't there... which she was... for technically three times. No one on the writing staff caught this?!
  • Series Fauxnale: End of Season 7. It ends with Darryl promising his wife he wouldn't help the Charmed Ones anymore, them destroying their own source of power to kill the Big Bad and finally changing their faces and starting living normal lives! Also Prue was mentioned a lot, and even the episode title was a mirror of the title of the pilot episode. But then they got renewed...
  • Seven Deadly Sins: The episode "Sin Francisco" had a demon hitting people with concentrations of these. Needless to say, the main cast got hit, with Phoebe getting Lust, Piper getting Gluttony, Leo getting Sloth, and Prue getting Pride.
  • She Fu
  • Shirtless Scene: Many many demons simply eschew upper body covering. Mortals and warlocks sometimes even get in on the action too.
  • Shoo Out the New Guy: The second season introduced Jenny Gordon, neighbor to the main characters. Beyond living with her hot uncle (a convenient love interest for Piper), she was apparently important enough to get mentioned in the opening credits, but moved away to live with her parents before she actually did anything important.
  • Showing Off the New Body: Twice; once when Piper was possessed, and again with Phoebe.
  • Signature Spell: Initially it was the power of three spell ("the Power of Three will set us free"). As the series continued they began using the "To call a lost Witch" spell more and more.
  • Single Line of Descent: A rare female example. The Charmed Ones are three sisters who are the descendants of 17th century witch Melinda Warren. Apparently, up until the birth of the protagonists, there never were three daughters per generation.
    • Kind of subverted in season 4 when we find out about Paige. But of course nobody had thought of her yet in season 1 when the trope was established.
  • Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter!
  • Smith Will Suffice
  • Squishy Wizard: Averted. An illusionist wizard was actually quite competent in battling a sword-wielding Cole with his staff. Of course, being the Last of His Kind may have given him a lot of determination.
  • Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: "The Wedding From Hell".
  • Spirit Advisor: The main characters can summon their dead relatives if they need help. Well, everyone except Prue, of course.
  • Status Quo Is God: No matter what happened, or what kind of creature the sisters got turned into (be them vampires, warlocks, valkyries or even demons), by the end of the episode the transformation was undone.
  • Stepford Smiler: Leo casts a spell on Piper turning her "psychotically chipper" as Paige puts it.
  • Stepford Suburbia: What our world would be like without sufficient evil to balance it out - sure, everybody would be friendly and nice, but parking your car in the wrong place is a capital offense and using your cellphone in a hospital gets your hand lopped off.
  • Suddenly Always Knew That: Despite Phoebe having trained in martial arts, the third season shows auctioneer/photographer Prue surpassing her in martial arts skills she has never learned.
    • Also, in "That '70s Episode", Phoebe suddenly reveals the ability to pick locks. Lampshaded by Prue, who rhetorically asks, "Why am I not surprised that you know how to do this?" (She had been the rebellious one in their teen years...)
    • In Season Eight, Paige showed that she knows martial arts as well despite the fact that we never saw her train in hand-to-hand combat.
    • Must be a witch thing.
  • Subbing for Santa: When Piper became the Angel of Death.
    • Paige was once turned into a nymph to replace one that just died.
    • Charmed also had many inversions of demons and warlocks and other bad guys stealing the powers of good magical creatures for their own gain.
      • Just to name a few:
        • A Demon steals Cupid's ring and starts breaking up relationships in revenge.
        • A warlock steals a ring which allowed him to harness the powers of Muses.
        • A warlock stole the powers of a Whitelighter in order to get into heaven and kill all the elders.
        • A demon once used a Sandman's dust in order to bring the Charmed One's dreams to life.
  • Super-Hero Speciation
  • Superhuman Transfusion: One episode dealt with a doctor accidentally getting injected with the Charmed Ones blood. he gained all their powers but was driven insane by them.
    • Crossing mortal blood with a magical creature's come back in a later episode where it creates a deadly virus.
  • Super Senses: The Charmed Ones became superheroes in the episode "Witches in Tights".
  • Super Speed: The above episode. Also, some magical beings naturally have Super Speed, such as Dwarves and Leprechauns.
  • Superpower Meltdown: Subverted. Prue comes dangerously close to having one of these when she accidentally becomes an Empath in season 3 but following a pep talk from Leo promptly gets her shit together.
  • Super Weight:
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Paige, when Prue left the show.
  • Sweater Girl: The girls wear quite a few.
  • Take Our Word for It: In season 5, Phoebe becomes a successful advice columnist, has her own billboard ads, gives radio interviews and is generally said to be really funny. Of course the audience never hears more than a single sentence from her columns. She also ends up sleeping with the boss.
    • We got a little insight when Phoebe first got the job. The person wrote in saying she was still living with her parents and was afraid of living alone. Phoebe's response, which seemed like something of an Ass Pull, was that she should get a dog for a companion. The previous columnist praised this for being proactive (it actually got her out of the house) and for being nonjudgemental. Both her (and Piper's) response was simply "Get a therapist, and get a life." The columnist said hers was better and handed the job over, so she must have done something right.
  • Taken for Granite: Freddy Kruger Robert Englund plays a Collector of the Strange who shrinks witches and turns them into clay figurines.
  • Take That: In season 3, they seemed to be throwing these toward Shannen Doherty as Prue is Put on a Bus to Hell. In "Sin Francisco," she was possessed by the Deadly Sin of Pride, turning her into a raging egomaniac. "Look Who's Barking" turns her into a literal female dog, and she also was responsible for destroying Piper's wedding in "Just Harried." It seemed like everybody was grateful to see her leave.
  • Talking to Himself: Especially pronounced in the season 6 finale "It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World", where Mirror Universe Evil Counterparts of characters interact with good ones.
  • Talk Like a Pirate: Pirates show up eventually in season seven. And the episode they appear in? "Charrrmed!"
  • There's No B in Movie: Phoebe's favorite movie is a B-horror movie called "Kill It Before It Dies"; in one episode, a demon's powers cause the characters to become real, then the sisters to be trapped in the movie.
  • The Social Darwinist: Evil Future Wyatt.
  • The Three Faces of Eve: The sisters fit the trope after Paige joins the cast, with Piper as the mother, Phoebe as the seductress and Paige as the child.
  • Third Eye
  • Time Master: Tempus, the demon of time, trapped the sisters in a Groundhog Day Loop in season one. The Avatars and The Cleaners could stop and rewind time. Piper is a lesser example, able to stop and accelerate time in a very localized area/target. In a season two episode where the sisters go into the future, her powers have grown to almost the same level as the Avatars and Cleaners, at least as far as her freezing powers.
  • Time Stands Still: Piper's first power.
  • Time Travel: The Charmed Ones use time travel quite a bit. Chris went back to before he was born to alter the future.
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Grimoire, which is the demon equivalent of the Book of Shadows.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: As Alyssa Milano got more creative control, Phoebe went from a likeable, well-meaning ditz to a self-obsessed, selfish Jerk Sue.
  • Troubled but Cute: Cole Turner. Possibly counts as a deconstruction. See: Unintentionally Sympathetic in the YMMV tab.
  • Twenty-Four-Hour Party People: Done a few times. First with Piper's baby shower and later would be done for every birthday party Piper's children had.
    • You could probably also count Prue's funeral and the funeral Piper, Phoebe, and Paige had when they faked their deaths.
  • Two Lines, No Waiting
  • Ultimate Evil: The Source of All Evil, The Triad, The Ultimate Power...
  • Unholy Matrimony: Quite literally if someone wants to remain aligned with Evil in marriage. It must be performed with a Dark Priest, at night, in a cemetary.
  • Unlimited Wardrobe
  • Utopia Justifies the Means: The viewpoint held by The Avatars (see Well-Intentioned Extremist).
  • Vain Sorceress: One shows up and soul-swaps herself into Phoebe's body. She has a lot of fun looking at herself, especially since her original face is terribly ugly.
  • Valkyries: Yup, they exist too.
  • Vapor Wear: Half of the time the sisters don't seem to have any concept of bras.
  • Verbed Title
  • Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Demons and warlocks and some other magical entities naturally able to steal the powers of other magical beings by killing them.
  • Villain Teleportation: Demons usually either shimmer or use flames. Warlocks would just disappear or 'blink'. Also, note while villains have the most varieties of teleportation, it's the good kind of teleportation - orbing - that appears most often.
  • Wedding Smashers: "Prue, get your astral ass back here!" yells Piper, just as Prue ruins the wedding.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Avatars.
  • "What Do They Fear?" Episode: Whenever Barbas is the Demon Of The Week, this is the basis of the episode. Well, he is the Demon of Fear.
    • Also inverted in Its A Bad, Bad World, where Barbas is the Demon of Hope
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: In Season 3, it was hinted that Cole was working for the Triad for something in return. At the end of the season, it was revealed to be his father's soul, which they had somehow acquired years earlier. However, after obtaining his father's soul, it is never stated what Cole did with it and is never mentioned again.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Played with throughout the series - originally, demons were humans who had intentionally given up their souls, but as time wore on, more variations occured: a half-manticore child, families of demons who were apparently born that way, and of course Cole Turner. The sisters end up killing them all at some point anyway.
  • Where Are They Now? Epilogue
  • White Magic: All good beings like good witches, white lighters, elders, fairies, and so forth use some form of holy-based spell casting in one form or another.
  • Widow Witch: Grams for her first husband, Allen.
    • To the point she's basically had the whole family keeping his name.
  • Witch Species: There are three known species of humanoid magic users: Witch, wizard and sorceror.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Anyone humans who gains a power. They will be unable to handle it and eventually turn demonically insane.
    • Also those who gain Empathy when they weren't supposed to (especially for demons who cannot handle emotion).
  • Wizarding School: The latter seasons featured one shortly after Harry Potter started getting popular. Young witches just coming into their powers in the earlier seasons had to do without it. Or did they just not know about it for some reason?
  • Yin-Yang Bomb
  • Your Worst Nightmare: The episode "Sand Francisco Dreamin'" pits the protagonists against their worst nightmares come to life after the Demon Of The Week gets his hands on some Sandman sand.
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