Why was Gideon's orbs purple?

[jdpm1991]

Why are all of the Elders + Leo's orbs were normal blue, but Gideon's were dark purple. Was it a sign of him crossing over to Evil?

[yinsoul]

I don't think it was any indication of his alignment. Violet is a higher vibration of light than blue, so I always sort of figured it was a sort of seniority thing that some Elders had. Gideon seemed like a leader even among them. Though I guess that prompts the question why didn't others display it? Choice, or perhaps no other Elders since that we saw occupied that same 'lead' position. Or forgetfulness from the writers

This is just my headcanon though.

[Deleted]

Don't think there's any real reason other than them just wanting to make the effects a little different. We saw that sometimes with orbing.
Leo's orbing differed from Paige's for example. That Simon guy had the spinning orbs, Sam's orbing looked kinda like a cross between Leo and Paige's.

As with many things, they were pretty inconsistent about it though. Gideon's orbs were no different to anyone else's originally; it wasn't until towards the end of the season that they were purple.

[Deleted]

yinsoul I like your headcanon.

Purple orbs looked awesome. I thought Paige's green orbs was pretty as well. Tho we only saw it once.

[Esmeralda]

I love your headcanon, Yinsoul - it makes a lot of sense.

There's also the point that since Gideon was Leo (and, we assume, Natalie's) mentor, he must've been pretty high up in the Elder chain, besides the fact that a lot of the Elders were murdered by the Titans, so they wouldn't be around. All of those ones with white orbs are probably like Leo - whitelighters who became Elders and whose powers went to their head. In Gideon's case, it wasn't his powers, just his ideas. And he was *SO* right, but rather than murdering Wyatt, he should've just taken away Wyatt's powers. So if Gideon was evil for wanting to kill Wyatt due to his powers, so were the Charmed Ones in wanting to kill Billie and Christy for their powers.

I think that like the Avatars, Gideon wasn't evil, just had a different idea of what's right and what's wrong - and who's to say who's correct and who isn't?

BUT I also think your headcanon is giving the writers MUCH too much credit

[Darkhorse Christian]

Dec 17, 2015 18:39:50 GMT -5 Esmeralda said:

I think that like the Avatars, Gideon wasn't evil, just had a different idea of what's right and what's wrong - and who's to say who's correct and who isn't?

Disagree on the Avatars part, simply because "who's to say who's correct and who isn't" should've been a completely ironic question when it came to what they wanted to do. They were the embodiment of what happens when the concept of a "Tyranny of Nice" takes power—anyone who got the least bit confrontational about anything that went wrong was promptly and unceremoniously unpersoned with a hand wave.

[fallingsnow6136]

Christy was evil. Wyatt was a baby who became evil because of Gideon's attack. Gideon screwed up the future. He is an awesome bad guy though.

[Sadrick]

Purple is customarily seen as being a moral equidistant; not quite good but not quite evil. It's a mixture of red and blue hues after all.

For Gideon, he was an ideologically misguided extremist who thought that what he was doing would help to benefit everyone. What was unbeknownst to him is that somehow his actions inadvertently wrought the very thing he was so feverishly trying to prevent. However, if you remove the extreme methodologies and look at the fundamental grievance he has, does it not hold merit to itself? Wyatt was a supercharged aberration that was laying waste to city wide populations with a materialised dragon when he was still an infant. Were I in the Elders' shoes I would be very concerned as it's so easy to mentally distort the thought processes of these agents of theirs.

In my opinion, the Gideon conflict should have been built up much sooner than it was; perhaps having the foundation laid out as soon as the second or third episode of the season. Rather than kill Wyatt, I feel like his initial aim should have been to express the seriousness of Wyatt's powers and what allowing them to continue growing with little counteractive abation could engender to the sisters. Obviously their biased desire to not allow any precautions to get set up would set them firmly against what Gideon fears could eventually happen. As a reaction, his motivation could be to separate the sisters from Wyatt -- not for the purposes of killing the kid, but extracting most of his power. His aim would be to leave just enough so that he can still eventually come into his own as a protector of the innocent while still being manageable by Chris or any of the cousins, should he ever turn. 

Here's where I feel the ethics of Gideon's alternative plan would start to become hazy but in an interesting way. Rather than confine the extracted magical power to a single location or in some extravagantly convoluted magical safe, Gideon would instead choose to find a means to distribute the magical power to all of the witches and whitelighters of the world. His reasoning would be that the power should be collectively used to serve the greater good throughout the world. The Charmed Ones are the protectors of a single city in a single country in a world that has 193 countries with a staggering 4416 cities (with populations over 150,000) altogether. Such an enormous concentration of power that's capable of bringing the world to its knees should not be unilaterally handled by a single person. Moreover, there's probably large gaps in the Elders' defence strategy for protecting innocents on the various continents where humans reside. Granting the power of someone such as Wyatt to the agents they do have in those locations would enable them to fight more efficiently and proactively, thus hopefully saving more lives in the process. 

Sensible though it may sound, the Charmed Ones and Leo would be at a point of contention with Gideon and perhaps some other Elders who may have come around to the idea. They would insist that it's a violation of ethics and that they have no right to remove the natural power of someone who had no control over what they were born with. It could perhaps even spiral into open hostilities where the Charmed Ones disavowing any allegiances to the Elders and Whitelighters they once had -- choosing to become their own self-motivated faction instead. With Leo choosing to side with the Charmed Ones, it would cause him to lose his powers, making him mortal as a result. You could have any number of outcomes and narrational possibilities there.  

[Esmeralda]

Mar 8, 2018 0:52:20 GMT -5 Sadrick said:

Purple is customarily seen as being a moral equidistant; not quite good but not quite evil. It's a mixture of red and blue hues after all.

For Gideon, he was an ideologically misguided extremist who thought that what he was doing would help to benefit everyone. What was unbeknownst to him is that somehow his actions inadvertently wrought the very thing he was so feverishly trying to prevent. However, if you remove the extreme methodologies and look at the fundamental grievance he has, does it not hold merit to itself? Wyatt was a supercharged aberration that was laying waste to city wide populations with a materialised dragon when he was still an infant. Were I in the Elders' shoes I would be very concerned as it's so easy to mentally distort the thought processes of these agents of theirs.

In my opinion, the Gideon conflict should have been built up much sooner than it was; perhaps having the foundation laid out as soon as the second or third episode of the season. Rather than kill Wyatt, I feel like his initial aim should have been to express the seriousness of Wyatt's powers and what allowing them to continue growing with little counteractive abation could engender to the sisters. Obviously their biased desire to not allow any precautions to get set up would set them firmly against what Gideon fears could eventually happen. As a reaction, his motivation could be to separate the sisters from Wyatt -- not for the purposes of killing the kid, but extracting most of his power. His aim would be to leave just enough so that he can still eventually come into his own as a protector of the innocent while still being manageable by Chris or any of the cousins, should he ever turn. 

Here's where I feel the ethics of Gideon's alternative plan would start to become hazy but in an interesting way. Rather than confine the extracted magical power to a single location or in some extravagantly convoluted magical safe, Gideon would instead choose to find a means to distribute the magical power to all of the witches and whitelighters of the world. His reasoning would be that the power should be collectively used to serve the greater good throughout the world. The Charmed Ones are the protectors of a single city in a single country in a world that has 193 countries with a staggering 4416 cities (with populations over 150,000) altogether. Such an enormous concentration of power that's capable of bringing the world to its knees should not be unilaterally handled by a single person. Moreover, there's probably large gaps in the Elders' defence strategy for protecting innocents on the various continents where humans reside. Granting the power of someone such as Wyatt to the agents they do have in those locations would enable them to fight more efficiently and proactively, thus hopefully saving more lives in the process. 

Sensible though it may sound, the Charmed Ones and Leo would be at a point of contention with Gideon and perhaps some other Elders who may have come around to the idea. They would insist that it's a violation of ethics and that they have no right to remove the natural power of someone who had no control over what they were born with. It could perhaps even spiral into open hostilities where the Charmed Ones disavowing any allegiances to the Elders and Whitelighters they once had -- choosing to become their own self-motivated faction instead. With Leo choosing to side with the Charmed Ones, it would cause him to lose his powers, making him mortal as a result. You could have any number of outcomes and narrational possibilities there.  

*nods* I agree totally. I'd never considered the fact that purple is both blue (which is used for whitelighters) and red (which is used for demons), but that makes perfect sense, as does the rest of it.

I find it funny that the Charmed Ones did exactly what Gideon did when they helped the Avatars take away the world's free will just so the Charmed Ones could have their own little utopia. If they had auras, theirs would probably be a very dark reddish-purple.

[sky1]

Maybe it was a reference for Star Wars lightsaber colors....

[ljones]

I thought the color purple was associated with royalty.

I think that like the Avatars, Gideon wasn't evil, just had a different idea of what's right and what's wrong - and who's to say who's correct and who isn't?

A lot of people who have committed evil tend to believe that their actions are not evil. Even the Charmed Ones have gone down this road.