Previously: Sorority demon.
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Out of Scythe
Marines: Wine store. The lights all go off after the guy working there helps his last customers. He calls “hello?” out to the darkness, which exactly what you do before you die. His hello is answered by the chitters of a shadow monster. The shadow monster throws him into a bunch of wine bottles (R: so much wasted wine!) (M: true evil) and then super punches into his stomach and pulls out a glowing red… something. Wine Man’s anguish takes us int the title card, which is smokey this week.
Rebecca: I don’t have wine this time, just coffee, and they had to go and throw me in a wine store and make me want wine didn’t they? It’s 2pm I don’t think I should…
Mari: If you can’t have wine, I support coffee.
Plain Parker knocks on a… greenhouse? Maggie opens the door and tells him he shouldn’t be there. Parker says that Lucy has a new boyfriend so nothing is stopping them. He asks to take her on a proper date, plus he has Beyonce tickets, backstage VIP. Maggie looks down and smiles. When she looks back up, Parker is shirtless and adds, “oh, and I have this kitten. Can we cuddle?”
Rebecca: Take the kitten and close the door in his boring face.
Mari: Maggie’s dream is interrupted by Mel banging on her door. Mel sees that Maggie has Harry’s training orb and asks if she’s using it for Parker fantasies again. Maggie claims she wasn’t at first, but then admits she totally was. I get it. Why be a witch if you can’t make and star in your own porn. (R: But with PARKER? You could pick literally any man on Earth.) Maggie says more importantly than any of this, when are they going to tell Macy about seeing their mom in the 80’s? Maggie feels weird keeping it a secret. Mel says there isn’t much to tell anyway, so they should keep it to themselves.
Macy is in her room, looking at the key she found last episode. She’s got it on a chain she puts around her neck and tucks the key into her shirt.
Rebecca: This definitely won’t come out in a bad way later.
Mari: Harry calls out that breakfast is ready and serves them all something called a British bacon butty. From what I gather, it’s bacon and bread. Sounds great to me, but the girls don’t want. (R: I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE.) Around the breakfast table, Harry asks if any of them felt any seismic activity last night. Macy incredulously asks “…in Michigan?” Maggie admits she felt something when she got up to pee. Harry explains it was a hell-quake, like an earthquake, but only magical beings can feel it. The one last night was small.
Mari: Harry next asks Maggie for his training orb back. Mel tells Harry to definitely take back the sex fantasy orb or else Maggie might miss signing up for classes all together. Maggie says Parker has nothing to do with it, while Harry wipes off his orb. (R: LOL.) Maggie’s been thinking about dropping out of college. Mel is against it, even though she’s currently bartending at the Haunt since she can’t find a job at the school. Macy says she might have to do the same soon because they have a new manager at the lab who has already fired her old manager. On that note, Macy wants to get to work early so she and Maggie leave.
Rebecca: College is a hella expensive way to “figure out what you wanna do.” Maybe figure that out first? For much less than 30k a year.
Mari: Alone, Harry reminds Mel that she hasn’t submitted her thesis proposal and it was due 6 weeks ago. Mel says she’s been busy saving the world, but she will get it done.
At work, Macy meets with her new boss, Julia Wagner. She tells Macy that she intends to do groundbreaking work here and wants Macy to step up as lab supervisor. The bad news is that budget constraints mean a layoff for Galvin, and Macy has to be the one to do it. The HR lady in me is dying.
Rebecca: Yeah this seems uhhh not the way it’s done? But Julia is wearing all black with gold buttons so I think she’s supposed to be evil.
Mari: The only explanation.
Plain Parker catches up with Maggie on campus and asks if she saw Lucy’s group message. Maggie pulls out her phone and sees that Lucy sent a picture of her and her new boyfriend with a blessing for those two to date. In a sequence that very much mirror’s Maggie’s fantasy, Parker asks her out on a proper date.
Rebecca: I can’t believe I had to hear the line, “the smile…. gets me every time” TWICE now. Even his damn pickup lines are cookie cutter boring.
Mari: Haunt. Mel is staring at her mostly blank thesis proposal on intersectional feminism. A pretty woman at the bar comes up to flirt with her and tell her to keep at it. She’ll feel a spark soon enough.
Mari: When the pretty lady leaves, Mel video calls Maggie, mostly to tell her not to quit school. Maggie just wants time to think. Thankfully, she has an excuse to hang up when there is a knock at the door. Unfortunately, it’s Wine Man and after asking the Charmed One for help, he faints into the house.
Rebecca: Random but do people really video call? My adrenaline spikes when I have to regular call someone. They don’t need to see me pacing around my house in a panic while we talk.
Mari: I don’t think I’ve ever voluntarily video called anyone.
After a not!commercial break, the 3M’s and Harry carry Wine Man onto the couch. Macy starts to take off his shoes and finds a goat hoof. Harry says it’s a good thing they called because this is a satyr– you know, the mythical, sex-crazed drunken wood goats. (R: I didn’t realize I was a satyr.) Harry heals him awake, and the satyr can’t believe the whole Charmed Ones thing is true. Word is out in the magical community: if you need help, you go to the Charmed Ones. I hadn’t really thought about how this reboot was missing the whole “protect the innocents” thing. I wonder how much of that we’ll get from here on out.
The Satyr is named Leon. He tells them what happened at his wine shop and shows them the wound from where the shadow demon attacked him. See, he’s one of the protectors of one of the pieces of the Scythe of Tartarus. Macy asks what that is and Leon is R E A D Y for story time. He flicks his glass of water and suddenly everyone is wearing flower crowns and drinking wine. Talk about POWER.
Mari: Truly.
Leon explains that Tartarus is a prison for magical baddies. Zeus sent Apollo there when he killed a Cyclops. Maggie knows this reference– the Cyclops created the lightening bolt that killed Apollo’s son– and Leon toasts to her for her knowledge. “World Lit,” Maggie says proudly as the Strings of Woodland Magic play in the background. Honestly, I couldn’t make this up. (R: SOMEONE did.) The rest of the story is that Leto was so distraught when Apollo was taken that she used her scythe to pound on the earth until the earth gave way, and Apollo was released. After that, Zeus broke the scythe into three pieces and entrusted a piece to three sentinels. Leon comes from a long line of sentinels. Harry takes off his flower crown and tells the 3M’s that they have to find the other two shards. They’ve seen the demons running loose– imagine the ones bad enough to lock up.
Rebecca: But most importantly, Harry, put that flower crown back on. You deserve it, babe.
Mari: On cue, we head over to Allistair’s office where the Shadow Demon is showing him the piece of the scythe they recovered. Allistair can’t open the paint can where the Harbinger of Death is trapped because of a super strong containment spell. He figures if he can put the scythe back together, someone in Tartarus can help him open the paint can. He sends the shadow demon off.
Rebecca: You missed his pun though, Mari. InCANtation. Do you get it? Because Harbie is in a CAN.
Mari: Allistair should stick to being evil.
At the MMMansion, Harry is making everyone green shakes because they partied too hard with Leon.
Rebecca: Maggie does say she only had 4 or 5 glasses of wine, and maybe I drink wine too much because I would also be 100% fine after that.
Mari: Bless your liver.
Anyway, the plan for today is that Macy is going to run some test on the demon residue from Leon’s wound, Mel is going to research shadow demons and Maggie is going to set up a Google alert for blackouts in the area, since that’s the shadow demons whole shadow-y MO.
Maggie goes on her low-key, not fancy date with Parker. They bond over being different from their families and coming from single-parent homes. Maggie can intermittently hear Parker’s thoughts, so he’s super impressed with how understanding and empathic she is. They kiss, but Maggie breaks it when she hears Parker thing about how she can’t find out the truth.
Rebecca: If she hasn’t figure out you’re the human equivalent of Wonder Bread by now, Parker, she never will.
Mari: After a break, Maggie is on the phone with Macy, telling her about Parker’s deep, dark secret. Macy talks her off a ledge and says that a dark thought doesn’t mean a dark secret. Some things are just hard to say and if anyone can get Parker to open up, it will be Maggie.
After the call, Macy meets with Galvin for coffee. He congratulates her on her new position and is generally positive and good at his job before she can say anything to him. Then, he gets a call about a lab mate in need of help and quickly scurries off to do that. Macy gives a look like, “well, shit.”
Maggie goes to the frat house to find Parker carrying champagne and two glasses. A random directs Maggie to Parker’s room and she knocks, but no one answers, so she just opens the door. Parker is sitting in a chair injecting himself with a needle. Maggie jumps to conclusions and runs out.
Rebecca: WHO WOULD REACT LIKE THIS? Sooo freaking rude what the hell?
Mari: Mel is doing Book of Shadows research. She calls for Harry who apparates in and asks if Mel has a thesis update. She says nope, but she has found that if they are dealing with a shadow demon, they need something called the Light of Theia. Harry is more interested in the thesis. Mel says she needs another extension, but the university won’t let Harry give it to her. He whispers, though, that she could use her freezing time power and only incur minimal personal gain consequences. Mel is saved by the chime of her phone– there’s been another power outage.
The power outage is at a clinic. The shadow demon attacks a nurse and steals her piece of the Scythe. He smashes it just as the 3M’s and Harry arrive and there is another hell-quake. The Shadow Demon walks through the wall and shadows-out.
Rebecca: I do love how the nurse approached the idea of an intruder. Way braver than wine satyr. “SHOW YOURSELF.” She was ready to throw tf DOWN.
Mari: We cut to the nurse explaining to the 3M’s and Harry that she knew this was coming. The pendant where she kept her Scythe shard had been vibrating. I love that the one dude kept his shard in his body and homegirl was like “necklace.” (R: tbf they were equally ineffective.) Maggie asks if she’s also a satyr and the nurse is like bitch please. Harry is v embarrassed and explains that Sela, the nurse, is an Egyptian fertility goddess. Like royalty. Like Meghan Markle. All three girls stand up immediately and bow awkwardly. Every time the show mentions Meghan, a Mari grows her wings.
Rebecca: I was very endeared by this. So cute.
Mari: Back at the MMManor, Macy thinks maybe the shards are magnetic, actual lodestones that are reaching out to each other. Before she can continue on with her theory, they all hear an intense buzzing. Outside all of the windows of the manor are a ton of bees. Harry starts hyperventilating because he has entomophobia. (R: Same, babe.) Macy connects the dots and tells them that bees are attracted to strong magnetic pulls and so the last piece of the Scythe must be in the house.
Rebecca: Glad all these pieces were in a 20 mile radius of each other. I guess it’s the “magnetic pull”, but you’d think it would be safer to have the Sentinels all over the world, not all in, you know, Michigan.
Mari: Small town Michigan lol.
The girls wonder if their mom was a Sentinel or if she ever used the Scythe. The bees start getting violent, banging on the doors and shit. Macy suggests letting them in and following them to the shard, which seems like a plan with one too many bees, if you ask me. Everyone agrees, though. Macy telekinesises the door open and the bees flood in and head to the attic.
Rebecca: I would vomit. There is very little I fear more than bees what a TERRIBLE PLAN just search the house wtf is wrong with y’all?
Mari: Up there, the bees start swarming around a bit of wall. Mel freezes them and then Macy uses her telekinesis to remove a wood board and pull out the box hidden in there. Maggie grabs the box. Inside is the last bit of the Scythe. It starts vibrating in Maggie’s hand. And the necklace Macy has been wearing starts vibrating too until the key and the shard are pulled together. The bees leave.
Rebecca: That definitely seems like something a swarm of bees would do.
Mari: That’s Harry’s cue to finally join them and ask where they got the key from. Macy confesses that she found it a week ago and has been wearing it ever since. Maggie recognizes it: their mom was wearing it in the 80’s. So now all the secrets the sisters have been keeping from each other are out, kind of. Macy asks about the whole 80’s thing, but she’s upstaged by the fact that the key is Zeus’s beacon, the thing that woke up all the shards of the Scythe. Macy says she was ashamed of what the key might’ve of meant. Maggie assures her that she can always talk to them about this, but Harry cuts their heart to heart short because a Shadow Demon will be here soon.
We get a montage of them preparing to face the demon. They light a bunch of candles as the 3M’s take turns voice overing that if the Shadow Demon wants to fight them in the dark? They won’t let that happen. Mel casts a spell over a candle and then blows it out. After a pause, it relights, and she smiles.
Rebecca: Honestly very cool and clever. Although this is all a serious fire hazard.
Mari: The lights in the manor cut out, and the Shadow Demon lets himself in. He heads to the attic and grabs the box where the girls are keeping the shard, but when he opens it, it mists away and all that’s left is a candle. In the COOLEST SPELL YET, the girls call on Theia with a spell that includes the lines “We call upon Theia, goddesss of light, she who persisted, she who could fight.” You guys, I love it. I JUST LOVE THIS GIRL POWER CHEESY GOODNESS, GIVE IT TO ME.
Mari: They hold the light circle against the Shadow Demon but he pulls out his shards and it calls to the third piece. Maggie manages to grab it before the demon does and this leads to a struggle between Maggie and the Shadow Demon. She can’t get away because her shard is attracted to the other pieces. They all snap together to make the Scythe and then Maggie and the Shadow Demon tug-of-war over that. When Maggie touches the Shadow Demon, though, she can feel his pain, and this distracts him long enough that the others show up and Macy is able to telekinesis the Scythe to Mel. BUT THEN, Mel gets hit with lightening, and the Pretty Lady who not so randomly flirted with her at the Haunt takes the Scythe for herself and disappears.
Rebecca: THE PRETTY LADY HAS LIGHTNING POWERS THOUGH. I hope she’s not evil because I am in love with her.
Mari: She is very pretty.
After a not!break, everyone sits around a table, bummed that they lost. Mel tells everyone about seeing Pretty Lady at the Haunt and they speculate over what she even is. Harry offers to follow up with the Elders and see if they can’t find this person and their Scythe.
Maggie wants to take a moment to appreciate that her powers are growing, and she read the demon’s feelings. Harry offers to heal Mel’s shoulder and when she pulls down her shirt, she sees that Pretty Lady left the same listening pattern on her that Marisol had on her body when she died.
Rebecca: Oh dang. I’m still on Pretty Lady’s side. I think she’s innocent(ish).
Mari: Meanwhile, Macy is feeling guilty about not being upfront with them. Mel says they didn’t tell her about the 80’s either. Maggie takes that opportunity to say they should really tell each other everything. So, they tell Macy about the rest of the 80’s vision, in which Marisol was pregnant and worried about the baby. Macy thinks this is probably why Marisol got rid of her, but her sisters and Harry are quick to tell her not to jump to conclusions. Macy insists she can feel that inner darkness. Harry tells her that everyone has the capacity for darkness. It’s our actions, not our nature, that define us.
Rebecca: Damn right, Harry. Now go get your flower crown.
Mari: We cut to Macy in the lab, telling the new boss lady that she isn’t going to fire Galvin, who is a good employee and a team player. She’s figured out some ways to save money doing testing in house, but she still has to figure out a way to cut 40k. The boss lady agrees that if she can, Galvin can stay. Macy walks out of the office and finds some other lab bro who has got his feet up and is playing with his snacks.
Mel is looking at her lightening scar. Maggie joins her and announces the she finally signed up for next semester. She’s thinking psych major, so she can understand all the minds she’s reading. Mel says she’s actually quitting school. She doesn’t want to do her thesis anymore and she needs time to figure out what she is gonna do.
Rebecca: Suddenly school isn’t a great place to figure out what you wanna do? Go figure.
Mari: This is the biggest big sister shit I’ve ever seen.
Plain Parker visits Maggie to explain: he wasn’t doing drugs. He has an autoimmune disorder and he needs the medicine to live. He’ll be lucky to live until 40. He usually keeps it a secret, but Maggie promises not to leave him.
Rebecca: I’m glad we get more of this thoughts while they make out. They’re just as thrilling as you’d expect.
Mari: We cut to Allistair asking the Shadow Demon where the heck the Scythe is and SURPRISE, THE SHADOW DEMON IS PLAIN PARKER. NOOOOOOOO. I’m having Cole and Phoebe trauma-backs. STOP THIS. SAVE ME.
I don’t even know what is happening in this rest of this scene except that Allistair is a bad dad and Plain Parker has feelings.
Rebecca: BUT WHERE IS HIS PERSONALITY, MARI? I STILL CAN’T FIND IT.
Mari: I’m honestly distraught. I was so happy when they were doing their girl power spells and now this– a demon boyfriend.
Rebecca: If she doesn’t kill him, we riot.
Next time on Charmed: A bug demon and a dating app in S01 E08 – Bug a Boo.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I am a book, movie, and TV fanatic over the age of 30. I love baking, video games, and D&D. Legally I must tell you I am a disaster. I've written like 6 novels but haven't had the real courage to query agents yet, and also I don't know how to make decisions (DISASTER). So please send me wine for Courage. Maybe a heart too. Oh and also a brain.
