How Does the Current 'Charmed' Relate to the Beloved 2000s Show?

Another day, another reboot. 

Charmed was a massive hit back when it aired in the early 2000s, so it was only a matter of time before the show got an update. The current iteration of the show premiered in 2018 and has been going strong ever since, despite misgivings from the original show’s cast. 

Premiering nearly 20 years after the original, the retooled Charmed series is naturally a little different from its predecessor. But is the new CW series a completely different show, or is this Charmed related to the old one in some way?

TV revivals like Will & Grace, Fuller House, and Roseanne (now called The Conners) usually opt to continue the stories from the original series, but the new Charmed decided to go the direction of a complete remake, as opposed to a revival. However, while the 2018 show takes a new and different direction, it still includes many important details from the original.

The "power of three" is alive and well in the new Charmed reboot and like in the original, the series follows three sisters — Macy (Madeleine Mantock), Mel (Melonie Diaz), and Maggie (Sarah Jeffery) — who all have special abilities, like telekinesis and mind-reading, that serve as a nod to the powers of the sisters in the original. 

The new sisters also have their trusty spell book and just like in the original series, the girls look to the Book of Shadows for guidance when it comes to casting spells and doing other witchy things. Like the Halliwell sisters, the Vera girls also use a ouija board to contact the spirits.

But a big difference is that this time, the sisters are multiracial and they’re also half-sisters.

Fans will recall that when Prue (Shannen Doherty) died in the original series, the show introduced Paige (Rose McGowen), who was the daughter of the sisters’ mother from an affair. In the new series, however, Macy, Mel, and Maggie all have different fathers and ethnic backgrounds, which comes up during the course of the series in many different ways.

Executive producer Jennine Snyder Unman said that having a multicultural cast was important because the writers wanted “to explore each of their unique heritages and the interesting ways that different cultures intersect with witchcraft.” 

She went on to explain that it was critical to do so “because there is a really rich tradition [of witchcraft] in a lot of different cultures,” and also because “we've had a chance to see three white witches.”

Things have also changed when it comes to how the witches on the show cast their spells. In the original, the sisters usually used a rhyming couplet or two, but in the new one, the witches use a different language to cast spells ... and there’s no cheesy rhyming. 

You can catch new episodes of Charmed every Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m. on the CW.