How Does ‘Charmed’ Say Goodbye to Macy in the Season 3 Finale? (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Charmed Season 3 finale “I Dreamed a Dream…”]
Heading into the July 23 Charmed finale, it seems like history is about to repeat itself. Like with the original WB series (then Shannen Doherty), one of the Charmed Ones is leaving after three seasons.
It’s Madeleine Mantock’s last episode, and “I Dreamed a Dream…” has a massive task to accomplish: write out her character, Macy Vaughn, and take out the Big Bad Whispering Evil. You may not realize it at first, but it actually accomplishes both in the opening scene.
A Not-So-Ordinary Day
Just as Macy gets her hands on the only substance toxic to the Whispering Evil that can keep it from infecting anyone else like it had Jordan (Jordan Donica), it finds her. And after it infects her, she ingests the lichen…and barely manages to crawl her way back through the portal to the command center. Her boyfriend and ex-whitelighter Harry Greenwood (Rupert Evans) finds her, and he and Jordan manage to carry her home, where her sisters Mel (Melonie Diaz) and Maggie Vera (Sarah Jeffery) quickly get to work on finding a spell to save her.
They find one their cousin Joséfina (Mareya Salazar) left them, Linea de Vida (“Lifeline”) — “Careful not to leave the stricken one’s side for then the lifeline will subside” — but what it does is transport them into Macy’s dreams. The sisters get to do something they never can: have fun together. They go to a carnival and ride a carousel. They go skydiving. They have a picnic. They go on a road trip and sing together (“You’re All I Need to Get By”) — and Macy nearly runs over a woman in the road when she falls asleep.
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But it’s not just time with her sisters Macy gets. She also marries Harry, but it’s the Guardian (Kandyse McClure) who performs the ceremony — and was the woman in the road, Mel and Maggie realize — and pronounces them “spiritually wedding” and “eternally bound in your love, through all dimensions known and unknown.” Macy even becomes a mom (with Harry taking care of their baby as she rests), but it’s then that she notices the Guardian gesturing to her. Though her sisters try to stop her, she joins the former Charmed One.
A Hail Mary
Meanwhile, Harry comes up with his own way to save Macy: by having Celeste (Kate Burton) make him a whitelighter again so he can heal her. It won’t be easy, she warns, and most importantly, he’s going to need a mortal to kill him. Good thing Jordan tagged along. Why not just run in front of a car, Jordan wonders. “Because it’ll hurt,” Harry points out, “and what if I live?”
They go to the command center, where Celeste brews the most deadly poison known to magic: a single drop to the forehead causes death. Before administering it, however, Jordan insists on bringing in a defibrillator, just in case it doesn’t go according to plan. It’s a good thing he did, since Harry doesn’t wake when he should. It’s not until Celeste gives the defibrillator a magical jolt that it works, blasting Jordan back as well as he uses it. (Oh, we have a feeling we know where that’s going…)
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And so just as the Lifeline spell breaks and Mel worries they’re about to lose their sister, Harry orbs in with an “over my dead body.”
Is This the End for Macy?
However, as Harry discovers, he can’t heal Macy because she’s dying. The toxin wasn’t the fatal part, she explains to him after her sisters give them a moment alone. When the Whispering Evil died, it was like a supernova and it exploded inside her, affecting her at a cellular level. There’s nothing anyone could have done. “You can fight or you can hold me,” she tells him as he refuses to accept the truth. They hold each other, both crying, and say “I love you” — and she tells him, “you will love again.” (They barely had any time together.)
Also refusing to accept Macy’s fate is Mel, determined to find something to help her. But she too must brace herself to say goodbye. As Macy points out, she saved the world from the Whispering Evil, and because of that, Mel’s (future) baby has a future. (She’s right, too, as future Mel returns to take back the baby present Mel’s been keeping safe.)
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“Don’t think of it as me dying,” Macy adds. “Think of it as me changing.” Into what? Well, the sisters go down to the tree room beneath the Command Center. While Macy doesn’t know if they’ll be able to see her, she’ll always be there, part of the magical world, one way or another. And after one last hug for her sisters — and a montage of the past three seasons — Macy joins the Guardian. Then, Macy glows and looks much healthier again — and dressed similarly to the Guardian — before she’s gone.
The End of the Power of Three or…?
First future Mel teases during her brief visit, “you have so much to look forward to.” Then we get confirmation that Jordan’s role in bringing Harry back did appear to make him a whitelighter (or give him at least one of the powers) as he heals a cut on Maggie’s hand.
And finally, Mel and Maggie find Harry spending time in the tree room to try to be close to Maggie, only for the Guardian to pop up as they wonder about the future of the Power of Three. It’s not over, she reveals, as there is another. “She’s out there.”
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So the door is open for Mantock to return in the future and it sounds like it’s time to meet another long-lost sister on Charmed in Season 4!
Charmed, Season 4, 2022, The CW
