Seasons 5-8 to 5-7 Concept

[Darkhorse Christian]

It all started when esperanzaa asked a question to kick off a thread in this section of the Cafe titled "Seasons 5-8":

Mar 6, 2014 18:16:20 GMT -5 esperanzaa said:

I think I speak for quite the majority of Charmed fans, when I say that season 5-8 weren't....um...weren't good.

So let's imagine, Season 1-4 stays the way they are now, but you could change EVERYTHING in 5-8.

What would you do? Which  guest characters would you/wouldn't introduce? The stories? Powers? Charmed children? Story-arcs?
How many season would you Charmed version have?  Which parts of the now S5-8 wouldn't you change?

 I don't mean that you should write a fanfic, but just write a few keywords, so the others can  get the idea.
I think it's interesting to read different versions.

Then, cyma stepped up to the plate and offered up some of her ideas. Needless to say, Esmeralda and I immediately stood in approval for pretty much everything she was saying, as we both felt that her ideas were fabulous at doing exactly what the thread was created for—fixing many of the inherent problems we felt marred the latter seasons of Charmed. Two of her overarching ideas in particular, we ended up convincing her to combine together into the same storyline, thus lightening up the would-be "workload" from eight seasons to simply seven.

Then my gears started spinning with ideas to fill in some of the blanks, mostly within that season, which ultimately came crumpled together in the form of a 500-pound big show…I mean, a seventeen-page post. Both Es and cyma read through the whole thing, but whlie cyma was too much of a busy bee at the time to sift through everything, Es in particular offered many brave and bold and reasoned critiques to my ideas, some she loved and others she, well…didn't. While it's never easy to lay one's thoughts on the table and get criticized, and even less so to actually examine the criticism and see its validity or otherwise for what it is, yours truly (this guy) decided to do the hard thing for once—taking her thoughts into account, welcoming her challenge, and making the changes, clarifications, additions, and subtractions necessary to maximize the plan's would-be potential for success.

This brings me to the reason for this new thread, which is obviously an offshoot of the original "Seasons 5-8" thread. In light of cyma stressing how impossibly difficult reading through both my big gorilla in the room, Esmeralda's myriad of critique posts, and the ensuing back and forth we had in order to put my ideas together with all the changes therein, Es and I both expressed that it would be beneficial for both cyma's sake and everyone else's who's interested in seeing it, to create a new thread putting cyma's posts together with my modified ideas. Seeing that we both felt the same way, Es then put it forward to me to make the thread. And thus, here we are.

The series of posts you'll see as you travel down this thread will feature two sets of blockquotes: cyma's awesome launching-pad posts, complete with byline timestamps, and my creative additions fine-tuned with Esmeralda's critical direction (which are, of course, ultimately subject to cyma's approval as part of her universe).

Ladies and gentlemen, stand back and (hopefully) enjoy the show.

[Esmeralda]

Absolutely LOVE this intro post, DC!! And can't wait to see what your new vision of Cyma's universe (I feel weird not capitalizing people's screen names...) will look like.

And publicly I want to commend you for indeed being able to take all of my critiques and taking them in the spirit in which they were offered. Like you said, it's not easy to have someone else criticize your baby (and the universe you came up with was indeed your baby, not Cyma's) and to not only take those criticisms but use them to make your own vision better, but you did fantastically and I tip my cap to you.

[Darkhorse Christian]

I'll start us off with cyma's post for season 5:

Mar 8, 2014 7:49:08 GMT -5 cyma said:

If S1-S4 stay the same then Cole’s return was inevitable since he already was back in the S4 finale. And even though I wouldn’t want Piper or any sister having children until the end of the show, Piper is already pregnant at the end of the S4 finale. Keeping the balance tone of serious and humor of the previous seasons, this is what I came up with roughly so far:

Season 5

• Paige doesn’t quit her job. As Mr. Cowan mentioned, she now has flexible hours. Instead of the ridiculous temp jobs, innocents can be sent her way through social work job. She could meet Sam that way. She could even meet Henry this way. She would also try to help Cole instead of abandoning him like her sisters. This would obviously get her into a lot of trouble with them.

• Phoebe won’t be a sudden celebrity with billboards and what not, because I’m sorry, all that was ridiculous. She will be happy to be an aunt but at the same time, she would think about the baby which the Seer claimed was never Phoebe’s. Being around Cole….I guess it’s just a bad reminder of that part and that’s why she just doesn’t want anything to do with him. Paige helping Cole worries and annoys her. But she might warm up to Cole when she sees him try hard to be good.

• Piper…I guess being pregnant, she would be worried all the time. Even with a self-healing baby, I can imagine her worrying and not wanting trouble. So Paige helping Cole would also be one of the things she would be irritated by. But perhaps the realization that Cole was a victim and also lost a child because of the Source and Seer might make her warm up. Also instead of forgetting about Melinda, I would want Piper to wonder why she had a boy instead of girl. And instead of Grams pointing this out being taken for hatred for all men, Piper would take this into account. Crone’s vision of power so much power would also worry her. And Crone won’t die.

• I would also want Elizabeth Turner to return try to be supporting to her son but at the same time, try to lure him back to the darkside. Since she’s not just a demon, but actually family too, it would be hard for Cole to resist for long. She could trick Cole into doing something that would again make the sisters lose faith in him again. Especially Paige who had been helping him for so long. Now abandoned by the sisters, she would be free to playing the doting, manipulative mother.

• Paige tired of having to make decisions after consulting sisters, doing things on her own, and ofcourse given grief for helping Cole, who despite her best efforts couldn’t be helped, finally wants to move out.

• The season finale can be a two-parter where Cole accepts the Avatars offer and changes reality(his mother playing a big part in that too), with only Cole and his mother remembering. This reality would have Prue alive. Wyatt doesn't exist. Paige is able to end up in this reality too. I haven't thought of more in much detail about Phoebe's role. But Paige and Prue can finally have their sisterly bonding moment, even though Paige feels guilty that turning things back to normal would mean ending Prue too and this is something Piper doesn't want, no matter how many times Paige tries to convince her that she would get her son back who doesn't exist because of what Cole did. And all the innocents who they saved who are dead now. In the end, Prue convinces Piper it's the right thing to do. Cole also finally realizes how much his Mommy Dearest tricked him and in the end....well things end tragically for Cole and his mother. But I want Cole to try to redeem himself in the end before he's vanquished for the final time. After everything is back to normal, Paige decides to not move out.
 
• Crone can releases the Titans. Because a random demon releasing the Titans of all things and saying he would use them to rule the Underworld….somebody needs to give that writer a death sentence 

Initially, for both Esmeralda (who answered her relatively immediately) and for myself (who came into that thread a while later), when we first read and reacted to her season 5, all we really had for it was our approval for her concept not turning Cole into a stock obsessed stalker villain nor rushing into the sisters' decline as true heroes in the process. However, something would come up during my eventual big brainstorm, and seeing as I'm trying to present this all relatively in order, I find it fitting to give said thought, edited for direct relevance, a small block here:

Tidbit worth mentioning—going by the three Avatars that are eventually actually named, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, we can surmise that the Avatars' names and/or call-signs are based on the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. But since Kern and company apparently hadn't worked that part out yet, Cole was never given a call-sign when he joined the Avatars—nor was the actual call-sign of the "Avatar of Force" who accompanied Alpha ever revealed. Since we have the benefit of hindsight, let's change that here. Alpha's name is given during these early appearances, the Avatar of Force is called Epsilon, and Cole is given the call-sign Delta upon being made an Avatar.

Mar 8, 2014 7:49:08 GMT -5 cyma said:

And that’s the end of Season 5.

[Darkhorse Christian]

Folks, let's keep this train going. Here comes cyma's season 6—most of it is the second half of the same post as her S5, though there's also a bit from her prologue to her initial season 7 post:

Mar 8, 2014 7:49:08 GMT -5 cyma said:

Season 6

The thing I hated about Chris is that he just suddenly pops out of nowhere….and well, let’s just say the whole Oh my Goddess episode was bad, but Chris’s inclusion sort of made it a thousand times worst. Another thing which got annoying was the over-focus on Leo and Piper. The whole show became about them, rather than what it was originally supposed to be, about three sisters who happen to be witches.

• So what I would’ve wanted would be a either one or a two-parter premiere showing the dark and bleak future and introduce Chris though we’re not sure whose son he is, only that he is a Halliwell. The episode can have us mislead that the dark future was Titans doing. Because Chris is going back in time when the Titans first attacked. That he is going back to protect the Charmed Ones and Wyatt. That is until Chris stays on in the past even after the Titans are defeated.

• We find out releasing the Titans was Crone’s way of catching the Elders attention. If she really wanted all the Elders dead she would’ve released all the Titans rather than three. She is able to locate one of the Elders in hiding, Gideon and reveals that there’s a bigger threat to both their worlds than the Titans and shows him the vision.

• After Titans, while Leo becomes an Elder, Gideon stays on Earth with the pretense of opening a Magic School to help witches learn and maybe make sure someone releasing Titans like that never happens again. Real motive is obviously to get rid of Wyatt.

• While Chris going back in time to save Wyatt because he is his brother sounds good. Too much focus on Piper and Leo became problematic to me in S6. So I wouldn’t mind Chris instead was made Paige’s son. One sister’s son evil in the future and one is good trying to save him. And if he can’t, he will stop him. All that’s gonna test their sisterly bonds to the limit.

Jun 13, 2014 5:14:27 GMT -5 cyma said:

Even though I haven’t figured much about how season 6 or whether Chris should be Paige’s or Piper’s son, two things I’m absolutely sure of I want: Chris death in the finale and Gideon being responsible for it and also making an attempt on Wyatt’s life. For now, I’ll assume Gideon dies by Leo’s hands. I’m also assuming Chris is Piper and Leo’s son at the moment. And Gideon also kills Sigmund too.

This is where things first started getting quite a bit interesting. Esmeralda and I were once again both fans of what she'd done with the season, but also in particular the plot change of having Chris be Paige's son instead of Piper and Leo's. While cyma was undecided whether she wanted to pull the trigger on that or not because of questions as to how it would work (hence her defaulting back to the Piper/Leo setup for a bit as seen above), I myself, with Es' help of course, had a few thoughts about that very thing.

The following is adapted from three different sources—the Chris-related potion of my initial post in that thread, mine and Esmeralda's thoughts in the ensuing conversation about the Chris idea, and even a bit from the big brainstorm and critical/creative back-and-forth between Es and me responsible for this thread—but all edited to fit together as parts of one piece to avoid confusion:

As far as Chris being Wyatt's cousin via Paige instead of his brother…I know you say in your season 7 proposal that you're going by the assumption that Chris is Piper and Leo's son because you haven't decided concretely which idea you want to go on. But you mention being concerned about the overt focus on Piper and Leo's issues.

While I could defend the show going that route for a reason, said defense wouldn't erase the fact that it does take away from the sisterhood being the central tenet or the show, nor the fact that Piper does become a selfish face in the process of trying to eke out her "normal life" with him. So in the spirit of changing things for the better, and pulling the Piper and Leo stuff back into perspective instead of letting it stick out like a sore thumb, I'm gonna promote going the Paige's son route because it makes that easier.

Now I want to say the one thing I'm curious about is who's the father. But I just realized they can easily change the age difference between Chris and Wyatt from two years to six. Meaning Henry can easily be introduced later and revealed to be the father. Matter of fact, with your ideas of her not quitting her social work job in season 5 and having Paige meet Henry through the job, her meeting Henry through the job, falling in love with him, and being able to trust him with her secret can easily all happen within season 6. Though, the names Chris Matthews and Chris Mitchell do kinda make me chuckle for various reasons unrelated to Charmed, but I digress.

Also, through the whole season, the present-day Halliwells should never find out for sure that Chris is Paige's son. Piper and Leo knowing what to call him in the original series was kind of a cosmic cheat code to me, not because all it did was make that easier for them, but because it makes things hazy as to whether the original Piper and Leo that named him Chris to begin with technically ever existed. Maybe he can tell both Paige and Phoebe that they are destined to be moms in the future, but that's as far as it should go.

---

Here's an interesting question, though: Would Leo react the same way towards his mentor killing his nephew as he would towards his mentor killing his son? I say he very much would. Remember, this nephew, who he and the family have been getting to know for the better part of a year, came back from the future in order to save his son. And who did his mentor kill his nephew to try to get to? Who did the man who taught him everything he knows about being a whitelighter and an Elder, the man he looked up to for so many years, target insidiously this whole entire time? HIS SON. Chris being Paige's son rather than his and Piper's makes the kid no less of a Warren (Halliwell, Matthews, etc.), nor does it make Gideon's attempt to kill Wyatt or Chris dying to protect Wyatt any less poignant.

Furthermore, if Leo was Chris' uncle rather than his father, he wouldn't be as upset with Leo as Chris was—meaning no making Leo the bad guy of S6 in terms of family/personal issues just to cater to Chris' insecurities (or Piper's, for that matter). Without that animosity, along with Chris wanting to save his son, it might be even MORE fitting to see Leo turn around and be upset when he's killed than it was in the show.

---

Which reminds me…well, actually, us. Because consistency is key for good execution, this Chris is not a lying, whining, murdering brat. He's still something of a brat, since the way Drew Fuller played him came across that way and we might as well use it for character development. But those other adjectives are out of the question. We're talking about POSITIVE character development for CHRIS, not NEGATIVE character development where THE SISTERS come to believe that the wrong things done for the right reasons suddenly become the right things because the ends justify the means.

Matter of fact, since "Valhalley of the Dolls" isn't the two-part season premiere in this version, here's a way of going about that episode and introducing Paradise Valhalla (our nickname for the place, since we noticed that it's more akin to a Norse-named version of an Amazon concept like Wonder Woman's Paradise Island than the actual Asgardian Valhalla) to the Charmed universe mythos that fits with this theme for Chris and doesn't carry the ulterior motive of getting the leads into skimpy Xena-esque costumes.

First, the episode prior to it ends by having Chris do something reckless or stupid away from the Charmed Ones and get himself killed in the process, with Mist then getting his spirit before it can cross to the other side and bringing him to the island. Then, in the pre-opening credits scene of the Valhalla episode, Chris gets tested by Freyja and her lieutenants. The first half of the episode travels between scenes of Chris entering training with the warriors and trying to get himself out, and scenes of the Charmed Ones wondering where he is while going about their own lives and maybe dealing with a demonic nuisance or two. Eventually he'd convince Leysa (the one he's seen killing in the show) to get her to help him sneak out, which he's able to do so, but unfortunately the warriors spot him and get out after him.

The second half of the episode can be Chris eluding the warriors, them killing a human or two in all their confusion, Chris telling the COs where he was and getting scolded for his own stupidity, the Valkyries realizing what's happened and Elder Odin orbing to them as his debut appearance, then scolding them for their tunnel-vision about collecting warriors and what it's led to (while in the process establishing that he's their former champion), the COs tracking down the warriors and having to fight them, the three main Valkyries suddenly appearing and bringing the warriors to heel with their powers, the Valkyries explaining what they do, Chris explaining why he has to stay, and both sides going their separate ways, with Chris in the end learning a valuable lesson about not being stupid.

Mar 8, 2014 7:49:08 GMT -5 cyma said:

Well that’s what I've gotten so far. 

[Darkhorse Christian]

This one's gonna be all cyma. Meet her initial idea post for season 7 (minus the season 6 bit above):

Jun 13, 2014 5:14:27 GMT -5 cyma said:

Here’s me trying my hand at Season 7. Like season 6, season 7 also had potential to be something great, but yet again, the good ideas and the talents of the actors were wasted because for some reason, Kern and company believed audiences were more interested in watching things like the sisters finding men, going on dates, Piper whine about kids and normal life and Leo, etc.

Avatars were actually a very good concept. Much better than Zankuo which was the same old recycled plot in leather pants and even the Billie and Christy concept in season 8. I say concept not execution. The concept of fellow witches and the magical community turned against the Charmed Ones was good, but Billie and Christy, the Triad and whatever the hell happened was…even awful would be an understatement.

So here are the points for season 7:

• What I found unrealistic was the consequences of two things: Chris’s death and Gideon. Losing a sister is one thing, but losing a child no matter what their age should be devastating to not only Leo(seeing Gideon was his mentor), but Piper as well. Paige and Phoebe should also be affected in some way. So the whole ‘meh we stopped Gideon, Chris is alive’ attitude was kind of ridiculous in S7. There should be worries and doubts of Chris facing the same fate again. It should even make all of them regret continuing on instead of accepting Angel of Destiny’s offer. I mean they’ve been fighting demons this whole time and what gets one of their kids(well actually both their kids) wasn’t a demon, but an Elder. So their whole world should be shaken by this incident.

• Gideon trying to kill Wyatt and having killed Chris, not to mention one of the Magic School teachers too shouldn’t just impact the Halliwells. But much more. He was the headmaster of Magic School. Apart from Wyatt, other children also attended. So other parents naturally would fear the same happening, wouldn’t they? A Headmaster kidnapped one of the children and then attempted to kill him and killed one of the teachers when he tried to warn people. It’s ridiculous other parents and teachers wouldn’t care. On top of that, Elders are mysterious beings to most witches and this incident should have them questioning and wondering more about who or what they really are and things like the fate of other hybrid babies not to mention what would the Elders done to Paige if she was discovered? So thanks to Gideon and even the Elders’ actions, their reputation will slowly crumble infront of witches and the rest of the magical community. Then in step the Avatars offering a better world.

• Of course at first no one would believe them. But when demons start popping into the Charmed Manor wanting to be human(among them the Seer Kira and Drake), and Kira shows vision of good winning and a demon-free world, something Elders couldn’t do in thousand years and after having sacrificed other witches and their loved ones as well, Charmed Ones and Leo will be tempted by the Avatars offer. So will the rest of the magical community. Seeing the Avatars want to change the whole world, it makes sense to involve other witches and magical beings also this season, besides the Charmed Ones to make such a decision.

• After everyone agrees(perhaps an untoward incident occurs like Kira and Drake being killed), world is changed, unknown the price they paid. Their freewill. Unlike in the show, Leo will also be affected. You think after what happened with Cole, the Avatars would learn their lesson. So save for demons and Elders, the world is unaware of the cost they paid.

• Now for waking up the Charmed Ones from their freewill states, instead of sequence flashbacks by Phoebe by touching the book, I would really prefer a dream sequence like scenario like what we saw in S8 Jung and the Restless. Except instead of their desires, like to see them dealing with physical manifestations of pain and loss….and accepting it before they break-free of the Avatars hold on them. I want Cole to be involved in the waking up the Charmed Ones operation as he was the one who was an Avatar and with this knowledge he becomes invaluable and something the Elders resurrect temporary when they learn about Cole’s brief stint as an Avatar. So instead of Leo, Cole snaps Phoebe out of it who then does the same for her sisters.

• Unlike the show when they wake up, the Avatars don’t just bend backwards and surrender. So once they’ve awoken, the whole world would be against them along with Leo also….who was the most in pain after Future Chris’s death and betrayal by Gideon and doesn’t want to deal with the pain. Not dealing with pain means you’re still under Avatars control. So waking up the world wouldn’t be an easy task. Especially when the world and Avatars give them the same treatment as for demons. Which is annihilation.

• Haven’t figured out more, but I do want the Avatars to not hand over their perfect world without a fight so they later change their minds from annihilating demons to using them to get rid of the Charmed Ones and anyone who's helping them. Charmed Ones join forces with Elders, few demons and rest who didn’t see from the Avatar point of view. We could even have Prue, Grams and Patty(the ones responsible for informing the Elders about Cole) and other Halliwell witches to help them. Good and evil fighting together to get rid of Avatars and save--or rather wake the world up, well for evil it’s to save themselves from extinction. And hence we have our Ultimate Battle.

• After the Ultimate Battle, seeing Avatars would’ve probably wiped out more than enough demons, we have our temporary truce between good and evil. And after that…well is there a reason for season 8 after this? Seeing the concept of fellow witches and magical community being against the Charmed Ones is already incorporated into season 7?

Eventually, much to Es's surprise (in particular after seeing her awesome S7 conclusion), cyma decided to actually give season 8 a try nonetheless:

Jun 15, 2014 12:54:15 GMT -5 cyma said:

Well...let's see if I can indeed continue on to Season 8. Though the ending doesn't get any perfect than this.

Jun 17, 2014 14:23:11 GMT -5 cyma said:

After Source, demons, Elders, then Avatars, magical community and witches against them, what else was there which the Charmed Ones could face off against in Season 8? Simple answer. Themselves. Or their evil selves. And no, not the parallel/mirror world ones which mirror each other movements. Alternate Ones. From another reality. One where Phoebe choose a different path and remaining Queen of the Underworld. And somehow turning Piper and Paige as well. Or perhaps Cole going back in time succeeded in turning Melinda evil or something else—their back story could be explored in detail because there won’t be much point to focus so much on the original Charmed Ones.

As Cole demonstrated, Avatars have unlimited power, changing time and reality, bring back the dead, basically make anything possible. Avatars in desperation of losing Utopia, could bring the Evil Charmed Ones. But Avatars are destroyed or weakened before they could use Evil Charmed Ones to win the Ultimate Battle.

After the writers constantly churned out episode after episode of sisters turning evil, or demons-shape shifting into the sisters, possessing and what not, why not just get it out of their system and focus a whole season on Charmed Ones as the Big Bads?

Watching them how they turned and what they did for the remaining years before they were rudely pulled into a different reality to defeat their counterparts by the Avatars would’ve been something to watch. Especially with how their powers would’ve worked or how exactly the Power of Three would work. I guess Evil Charmed Ones would have to break-up the Power of Three so they could access it?

But I guess it makes sense two sets of Charmed Ones can’t exist like this for long and have to either go out of existence or merge if their reality has disappeared. This might not be grand Ultimate Battle scale, but the personal stakes are very high. Seeing Evil Piper’s idea of a normal life means turning Wyatt, Chris and Leo to her side and getting rid of Piper.

Instead of the silly evil nanny demon resurrecting the Half-Face Source in S8, we could have Evil Phoebe using Wyatt to bring her son to life.

This is the only thing which makes sense if there needs to be a season 8. Which of course is the last season this time. Unless I get another idea  

[Darkhorse Christian]

Now here's the one time that I'm directly quoting any posts from myself or Esmeralda through this whole thing with no edits and keeping the byline timestamps. Meet these excerpts from a couple of our posts in which we both noted that her storyline for season 8 would be better off combined with/into her season 7 angle:

Jun 19, 2014 16:36:17 GMT -5 Esmeralda said:

I would've loved to have seen something like that as the last season rather than what we got.

But honestly, if this had followed what you showed as your 7th season, I would've been grumbling about how they should've ended it while they were ahead, just like we do with the last two real seasons. Had you had something like that for Season 7 - oh, yes! I'd actually prefer it. But following that? No, it would be a letdown.

Jun 27, 2014 11:35:31 GMT -5 Esmeralda said:

…and actually the best ending of your alternate Charmed would probably be some sort of combination of your Season Eight and Season Seven with some great cliffhanger in between.

Jul 3, 2014 1:13:10 GMT -5 Darkhorse Christian said:

Regarding seasons 7 and 8, I see an overarching plot-line there involving the Avatars and evil alternate Charmed Ones essentially being the final big villains for your planned series, and I really like it. The concept itself is pretty great, but like Esmeralda hinted at, for it to resonate as greatly as possible it would have to be rearranged a bit. To sum the particulars up in one possibly run-on sentence, the way I look at it is that if the Avatars have the ability to summon evil Charmed Ones from an alternate reality, they should be genre savvy enough to know that our reality's Charmed Ones would somehow become alerted to the truth about their plans, and as a result they would make sure the sisters have to overcome their own counterparts BEFORE standing a chance at threatening Utopia. I've been looking this over in order to try to figure out exactly how I would go about it, but with my obsession with detail, I'm not exactly anticipating the swiftest of jobs here.

And of course, cyma, stepping up to the plate as per usual here, would figure out her own idea as to how to get that done:

Jul 9, 2014 4:35:50 GMT -5 cyma said:

While I’m still working out the whole Chris being Paige’s son and Chris himself and generally figuring out S6, so I’ll just focus on the S7 and S8 now.

I get the obsession with details. It’s because of the lack of details that Avatars and Evil Charmed Ones together wasn’t appealing to me at first. I guess I was afraid they could end up merely as brainwashed pawns or doing it because it’s either destroy or be destroyed by the Avatars. But if there was something which was mutually beneficial to both parties, season 7 can now indeed be the last season. So taking that into account and also what you said above, here we go:

Season 7: The Final Season

• Charmed Ones are supposed to be the most powerful force of good the world has ever seen. So it made sense after losing invincible Cole, Avatars set their sights on them. They targeted Leo in the show, made him an Avatar and even erased him afterwards for causing conflict. Which is strange seeing after one of their Avatars was killed by Kyle, why erase Leo? Why make themselves more weaker? Even if Utopia was achieved, there were still threats out there. Then when they saw the Charmed Ones had woken up and were planning to work with Zankuo against them, they didn’t erase a hair on the sisters’ head and instead retreated and obediently did what the girls said. To change the world back to what it was.

• So here’s my spin on it. The Avatars need the Charmed Ones to actually be the potential for unlimited power. They needed them to create Utopia and will need them to continue to maintain it too. And hence the Avatars can’t just erase the Charmed Ones after stealing their powers, seeing it’s not just the Charmed Ones individual powers which made them so powerful, it was so many other things, one being their sisterly bond and the Power of Three. Also learning from their mistakes with Cole—who had freewill and who then ended up using the Avatars instead—they keep the Charmed magic under their control by brainwashing the sisters along with the world.

• Now when Cole tries to free them, the Avatars know it was only a matter of time their Utopia will crumble no matter how many demons or brainwashed magical beings they send after the Charmed Ones. They can’t outright erase the Charmed Ones as they’re actually the key to unlimited power. So their solution is to replace them. So enter the Evil Charmed Ones 

• I’m still trying to figure out what exactly could the Avatars promise them in return. I can’t imagine them wanting to live in Utopia and being brainwashed would just make them fight against the Avatars if they woke up. Since Avatars prey on people’s grief, so a promise to bring a loved one back or something? Like Phoetus or something? But the thing is, if Phoebe and her sisters are evil, they already would’ve tried and succeeded in resurrecting the deceased or vanquished. Now if Evil Phoebe isn’t strong enough only because her sisters are good and won’t assist her, then I could see Avatars swoop in with an offer to make her deepest desire come true. Then they go into another alternate reality, find Piper, promise her something in return and then so on for Paige. So basically three sisters each from different realities coming together to form the Power of Three. And just to be on the safe side, not to mention make it more harder for the good version of the sisters, I imagine them getting an Evil Prue as well(or she could also be the loved one Evil Piper wanted bought back to life). I guess there's still a lot of work needed trying to figure out the background of the alternate sisters for this to properly work.

• Seeing the original Charmed Ones would never accept to pay the high price of the world’s freewill to get their lost loved ones back or even get rid of those who stand against the Avatars, it makes sense to summon Evil counterparts of the girls. Even with so much power, Avatars seem more like the brain sort of beings than the brawns one. So it makes sense they would leave the dirty work to others. Also who else would be better to control and command the desperate demon army than Evil Charmed Ones? Or evil Prue?

• So now the key to defeating the Avatars lies in defeating the Evil Charmed Ones and unlike the original Charmed Ones, I can imagine them individually be stronger power-wise too.

• Now when the Charmed Ones wake up, they find themselves utterly powerless as two versions can't share the same powers. Neither can they access the Power of Three. After experiencing so many moments of grief to break from Avatars’ control, they would be mentally weakened, enough for the Evil Charmed Ones to gain access to their magic. Reclaiming their magic won’t be as simple as reciting Power of Three a few times over the Book now.

• Also there’s another problem for the girls. As we saw in Centennial Charmed, two same beings seem to merge and only one set of memories and powers remain. Like Cole going from invincible back to demon, but having no memories of his alternate self. I guess two same souls can’t co-exist together, they have to merge eventually. The same would apply for the sisters. The only danger this time is that the victor might not be the original reality Charmed Ones once the two Charmed Ones merge together.

• I can totally imagine Cole preparing them against their evil counterparts. Both physically and mentally. Especially the mental battle as the guy has experience with battling one’s evil and demonic half from taking over you. So who better than to teach the Charmed Ones to not let their evil doppelgangers overwhelm and completely take over them once the merger takes place? And if they win, they get the Power of Three and hence defeat the Avatars too.

• So now we’ll have two battles going on simultaneously: One with all the witches, warlocks, Elders, ghosts, etc against evil working or brainwashed by the Avatars. And one mental battle between the two Charmed Ones for their existence. And it is the outcome of this battle which will determine the overall victory.


• And that concludes the last and final season 

Since I have sleep and college stuff that I need to attend to, I'll have to stop here for now. But stay tuned, folks, because when I get back on here in some 17-18 hours or so, we will finally be getting through my superpost of ideas bouncing off both of cyma's season 7 posts, edited to account for the changes made as a result of Esmeralda's critiques—aka, the primary reason the necessity of this thread exists.

[Esmeralda]

Jul 18, 2014 3:05:09 GMT -5 Darkhorse Christian said:

Folks, let's keep this train going. Here comes cyma's season 6—most of it is the second half of the same post as her S5, though there's also a bit from her prologue to her initial season 7 post:

Mar 8, 2014 7:49:08 GMT -5 cyma said:

Season 6

The thing I hated about Chris is that he just suddenly pops out of nowhere….and well, let’s just say the whole Oh my Goddess episode was bad, but Chris’s inclusion sort of made it a thousand times worst. Another thing which got annoying was the over-focus on Leo and Piper. The whole show became about them, rather than what it was originally supposed to be, about three sisters who happen to be witches.

• So what I would’ve wanted would be a either one or a two-parter premiere showing the dark and bleak future and introduce Chris though we’re not sure whose son he is, only that he is a Halliwell. The episode can have us mislead that the dark future was Titans doing. Because Chris is going back in time when the Titans first attacked. That he is going back to protect the Charmed Ones and Wyatt. That is until Chris stays on in the past even after the Titans are defeated.

• We find out releasing the Titans was Crone’s way of catching the Elders attention. If she really wanted all the Elders dead she would’ve released all the Titans rather than three. She is able to locate one of the Elders in hiding, Gideon and reveals that there’s a bigger threat to both their worlds than the Titans and shows him the vision.

• After Titans, while Leo becomes an Elder, Gideon stays on Earth with the pretense of opening a Magic School to help witches learn and maybe make sure someone releasing Titans like that never happens again. Real motive is obviously to get rid of Wyatt.

• While Chris going back in time to save Wyatt because he is his brother sounds good. Too much focus on Piper and Leo became problematic to me in S6. So I wouldn’t mind Chris instead was made Paige’s son. One sister’s son evil in the future and one is good trying to save him. And if he can’t, he will stop him. All that’s gonna test their sisterly bonds to the limit.

Jun 13, 2014 5:14:27 GMT -5 cyma said:

Even though I haven’t figured much about how season 6 or whether Chris should be Paige’s or Piper’s son, two things I’m absolutely sure of I want: Chris death in the finale and Gideon being responsible for it and also making an attempt on Wyatt’s life. For now, I’ll assume Gideon dies by Leo’s hands. I’m also assuming Chris is Piper and Leo’s son at the moment. And Gideon also kills Sigmund too.

This is where things first started getting quite a bit interesting. Esmeralda and I were once again both fans of what she'd done with the season, but also in particular the plot change of having Chris be Paige's son instead of Piper and Leo's. While cyma was undecided whether she wanted to pull the trigger on that or not because of questions as to how it would work (hence her defaulting back to the Piper/Leo setup for a bit as seen above), I myself, with Es' help of course, had a few thoughts about that very thing.

The following is adapted from three different sources—the Chris-related potion of my initial post in that thread, mine and Esmeralda's thoughts in the ensuing conversation about the Chris idea, and even a bit from the big brainstorm and critical/creative back-and-forth between Es and me responsible for this thread—but all edited to fit together as parts of one piece to avoid confusion:

As far as Chris being Wyatt's cousin via Paige instead of his brother…I know you say in your season 7 proposal that you're going by the assumption that Chris is Piper and Leo's son because you haven't decided concretely which idea you want to go on. But you mention being concerned about the overt focus on Piper and Leo's issues.

While I could defend the show going that route for a reason, said defense wouldn't erase the fact that it does take away from the sisterhood being the central tenet or the show, nor the fact that Piper does become a selfish face in the process of trying to eke out her "normal life" with him. So in the spirit of changing things for the better, and pulling the Piper and Leo stuff back into perspective instead of letting it stick out like a sore thumb, I'm gonna promote going the Paige's son route because it makes that easier.

Now I want to say the one thing I'm curious about is who's the father. But I just realized they can easily change the age difference between Chris and Wyatt from two years to six. Meaning Henry can easily be introduced later and revealed to be the father. Matter of fact, with your ideas of her not quitting her social work job in season 5 and having Paige meet Henry through the job, her meeting Henry through the job, falling in love with him, and being able to trust him with her secret can easily all happen within season 6. Though, the names Chris Matthews and Chris Mitchell do kinda make me chuckle for various reasons unrelated to Charmed, but I digress.

Also, through the whole season, the present-day Halliwells should never find out for sure that Chris is Paige's son. Piper and Leo knowing what to call him in the original series was kind of a cosmic cheat code to me, not because all it did was make that easier for them, but because it makes things hazy as to whether the original Piper and Leo that named him Chris to begin with technically ever existed. Maybe he can tell both Paige and Phoebe that they are destined to be moms in the future, but that's as far as it should go.

---

Here's an interesting question, though: Would Leo react the same way towards his mentor killing his nephew as he would towards his mentor killing his son? I say he very much would. Remember, this nephew, who he and the family have been getting to know for the better part of a year, came back from the future in order to save his son. And who did his mentor kill his nephew to try to get to? Who did the man who taught him everything he knows about being a whitelighter and an Elder, the man he looked up to for so many years, target insidiously this whole entire time? HIS SON. Chris being Paige's son rather than his and Piper's makes the kid no less of a Warren (Halliwell, Matthews, etc.), nor does it make Gideon's attempt to kill Wyatt or Chris dying to protect Wyatt any less poignant.

Furthermore, if Leo was Chris' uncle rather than his father, he wouldn't be as upset with Leo as Chris was—meaning no making Leo the bad guy of S6 in terms of family/personal issues just to cater to Chris' insecurities (or Piper's, for that matter). Without that animosity, along with Chris wanting to save his son, it might be even MORE fitting to see Leo turn around and be upset when he's killed than it was in the show.

---

Which reminds me…well, actually, us. Because consistency is key for good execution, this Chris is not a lying, whining, murdering brat. He's still something of a brat, since the way Drew Fuller played him came across that way and we might as well use it for character development. But those other adjectives are out of the question. We're talking about POSITIVE character development for CHRIS, not NEGATIVE character development where THE SISTERS come to believe that the wrong things done for the right reasons suddenly become the right things because the ends justify the means.

Matter of fact, since "Valhalley of the Dolls" isn't the two-part season premiere in this version, here's a way of going about that episode and introducing Paradise Valhalla (our nickname for the place, since we noticed that it's more akin to a Norse-named version of an Amazon concept like Wonder Woman's Paradise Island than the actual Asgardian Valhalla) to the Charmed universe mythos that fits with this theme for Chris and doesn't carry the ulterior motive of getting the leads into skimpy Xena-esque costumes.

First, the episode prior to it ends by having Chris do something reckless or stupid away from the Charmed Ones and get himself killed in the process, with Mist then getting his spirit before it can cross to the other side and bringing him to the island. Then, in the pre-opening credits scene of the Valhalla episode, Chris gets tested by Freyja and her lieutenants. The first half of the episode travels between scenes of Chris entering training with the warriors and trying to get himself out, and scenes of the Charmed Ones wondering where he is while going about their own lives and maybe dealing with a demonic nuisance or two. Eventually he'd convince Leysa (the one he's seen killing in the show) to get her to help him sneak out, which he's able to do so, but unfortunately the warriors spot him and get out after him.

The second half of the episode can be Chris eluding the warriors, them killing a human or two in all their confusion, Chris telling the COs where he was and getting scolded for his own stupidity, the Valkyries realizing what's happened and Elder Odin orbing to them as his debut appearance, then scolding them for their tunnel-vision about collecting warriors and what it's led to (while in the process establishing that he's their former champion), the COs tracking down the warriors and having to fight them, the three main Valkyries suddenly appearing and bringing the warriors to heel with their powers, the Valkyries explaining what they do, Chris explaining why he has to stay, and both sides going their separate ways, with Chris in the end learning a valuable lesson about not being stupid.

Mar 8, 2014 7:49:08 GMT -5 cyma said:

Well that’s what I've gotten so far. 

Wow, DC! Very simply jump-up-and-down WOW!  We didn't really discuss Chris and what to do with him before, but, oh, if you only knew how much I wish we had seen something like this rather than what we got stuck with in the series! If it was done this way, I might have actually liked Chris!

[Esmeralda]

Fantastic job splitting up these posts, DC, and the order you put them in - I would've put them all in the same one and come up with a "superpost" to rival your original one!

And now I'm very curious to see what changes you come up with after my critiques.

[Esmeralda]

Decided to bump this forward, DHC, in hopes that it will get you going on this series again.

[cyma]

Damn I forgot I still haven't done Season 6, especially the version where Chris is Paige's son.