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If you're unfamiliar with a little genre drama called
Charmed, you may have at least heard of it, or seen it while browsing Netflix. This campy supernatural series was created by Constance M. Burge and produced by Aaron Spelling (
Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place). It followed three sisters - Prue, Piper, Phoebe, and later half-sibling Paige when one of the sisters dies - that learned they are the Charmed Ones, the three most powerful witches around. With their magic, they fought demons and monsters when not dealing with their own personal issues. The show aired for eight seasons on the WB, which later merged with UPN to form the CW. While there have been other witch oriented television shows, none of them have had the same following or impact as
Charmed did.
This post focuses only on the active powers of each Charmed One and the cool ways they used them.
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Prue's first active power was telekinesis, the psychic ability to move something or someone without exerting physical force or pressure. She channeled it through her eyes initially before she could do it with her hands. Prue could disarm enemies or even use their own weapons against them. |
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With her telekinesis, Prue could deviate or redirect her enemy's attacks. When Phoebe had temporary firepower, Prue forwarded her sister's flames toward the true bad guy. Prue also regularly returned demons' energy or fire balls back to them. |
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Next to Phoebe, Prue was the most likely of the original Charmed Ones to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Being telekinetic, she had the advantage of being able to strengthen her hits. Prue had always been able to toss demons and attackers around, but now she could pack a wallop with a telekinetic-influenced punch or kick. |
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![]() Prue's second active power was astral projection, which allowed her to temporarily project herself into a corporeal, astral form outside of her body. In this state, Prue would usually pass out or remain still until she returned to normal. Her astral self could not use telekinesis, though. In one instance where she briefly acquired the power of empathy, Prue cast her decorporealized astral self inside of a demon, causing him to explode from within.
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When the sisters traveled to the future to understand Phoebe's strange premonition in "Morality Bites," the three got a taste of what their powers would be like in the future. Future Prue was able to make objects (and people) combust using telekinetic waves that applied high amounts of pressure. Fellow witch Billie Jenkins was capable of this, too, but only when her telekinesis was augmented with a magical belt. |
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Piper inherited her mother's active power of freezing, or molecular inhibition. With a gesture of her hands, Piper could slow molecules down to the point where they appeared to be "frozen." At first, there were limits to this power. Piper initially needed to be in the same room as her target, and she couldn't really manipulate the length of the stasis effect. As she grew older, Piper gained better control. In the future, she froze an entire city block. |
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Piper's freezing ability advanced to where she could un-freeze people or things on command rather than wait for the effect to wear off naturally. She could unfreeze body parts on people, specifically someone's head if she needed to interrogate them. When in a room full of people and demons, Piper was able to only freeze the innocents. |
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With molecular combustion, Piper could rapidly speed up molecules, causing targeted objects or people to explode. This was effective against many low-level demons, but upper-level enemies were more resistant or even completely immune. |
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Due to how dangerous Piper's combustion ability could potentially be, she had to watch her emotions as those are always directly tied into a magic user's powers. When up against a seemingly impenetrable demonic barrier, Piper got angry enough to blow the protection spell apart. Something the collective Charmed Ones were unable to do even with a Power of Three spell. |
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When Piper needs to break a glass security case in a museum (long story), she shattered the glass before immediately freezing the flying shards. This technique was previously demonstrated by The Source of All Evil, too, when he stole the Charmed Ones' powers. |
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| With her coveted power of premonition, Phoebe could psychically see events from the past, present, and future. Without these premonitions, the Charmed Ones would never know who to help or how to help them. Initially, Phoebe's visions came to her by touching something or someone (psychometry), or they happened randomly with no warning. She couldn't always call for a vision either. As Phoebe aged, her gift became stronger. She could experience the emotions in her visions, or even share a psychic bond between herself and someone inside the vision. Being a seer, Phoebe was also aware if she was stuck in a time loop. |
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| Randomly as well as rarely, Phoebe could astral project herself into her visions. However, she took a great risk in doing so. In "The Eyes Have It," Phoebe was injured while inside of a vision. Once Phoebe came out of it, she still bore the same wound from her vision and nearly died from it. Notably, her psychic bond with an innocent in "The Good, the Bad and the Cursed" made her experience the same physical pain as he did. |
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| Phoebe eventually got an active power - levitation. She really had poor control of it at first, and she wasn't very mobile when using it. Phoebe levitated herself to avoid attacks, or to propel herself in the air while delivering kicks. In "Enter the Demon," her levitation power was augmented by her short stay in Limbo. This gift was eventually stripped along with Phoebe's other ones as punishment for misusing her abilities. While her visions returned, she never regained this or her empathy power. |
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| In the future, Phoebe murdered someone who hurt her friend. She did so by using a highly evolved form of empathy. With psychic reflection, Phoebe flooded her victim's mind with memories and emotions. As a result, the victim's brain was "overloaded" and he died. |
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![]() Phoebe could have been one of the strongest witches around if she had kept her gift of empathy. All magic user's powers are tied to their emotions. By tapping into someone else's emotions, Phoebe could in turn control their powers, too. For instance, if a demon shot a fire ball at her, Phoebe would channel the demon's emotions and reverse the direction of the fire ball. Phoebe was stripped of her non-basic witch powers because she was abusing them for personal use. She regained premonitions, but not empathy or levitation (at least not in the TV series). |
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| Once Prue died, her telekinesis passed on to half-sister Paige. Since Paige was half-Whitelighter, the power manifested differently. She didn't levitate or float objects like Prue did. Instead, Paige tele-orbed them. She typically called out her target's name or description, and it would orb to her or wherever she desired. She could even orb something based off a drawing. In "Sense and Sense Ability," Paige lost her voice. When Piper and Phoebe tapped into Paige's power, theybecame her "voice" and all three tele-orbed Piper's baby to safety. |
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| Being half-Whitelighter meant that Paige had more active powers than a normal Charmed One. She could glamour herself to look like other people. Paige also could heal injuries and automatically speak other languages, depending on the language spoken by her charge (a Whitelighter's client) she was with. In addition, she could sense her charges' whereabouts. |
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| Like Prue, Paige could deviate or redirect others' energy attacks. She would call out her opponent's weapon of choice (i.e., "fire ball" or "athame") and orb it right back at them. |
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| Paige tossed her enemies around by orbing them. If the target wasn't used to orbing or teleportation, they might feel physically ill from the experience. |
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| Not only could Paige orb herself and anyone she was physically in contact with, she could also remote orb people and objects. She would simply call out the desired location and her target would orb there without her. |
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Which Charmed sister's powers do you covet, ONTD?
Prue's second active power was astral projection, which allowed her to temporarily project herself into a corporeal, astral form outside of her body. In this state, Prue would usually pass out or remain still until she returned to normal. Her astral self could not use telekinesis, though. In one instance where she briefly acquired the power of empathy, Prue cast her decorporealized astral self inside of a demon, causing him to explode from within.
Phoebe could have been one of the strongest witches around if she had kept her gift of empathy. All magic user's powers are tied to their emotions. By tapping into someone else's emotions, Phoebe could in turn control their powers, too. For instance, if a demon shot a fire ball at her, Phoebe would channel the demon's emotions and reverse the direction of the fire ball. Phoebe was stripped of her non-basic witch powers because she was abusing them for personal use. She regained premonitions, but not empathy or levitation (at least not in the TV series).
