Charmed's first
season is marked by a vast diversity of plot and series
canon trial
balloons as the series backplot and cast relationships evolved from expressing the impact of sudden witch powers on the lives of three nubile, attractive, young, twenties-something women just now trying to establish careers and began to jell around magic and its complications casting a shadow into those situations leading to show plots that have a very different flavor from the seven following seasons. Series long love interest Leo Wyatt was not yet a billed repeating co-star (not until second half of the second year), but merely an occasional repeating
guest star that occurred more often as the shows' season developed. Early writing and series roles and writing is very much focused on showcasing Shannen Doherty as Prue and most powerful sister, so that most writing centered around her powers— with her sisters in strictly a supporting role though experiencing powers related issues of their own who mainly provide soap opera interludes, companionship services, and humor in plotlines only occasionally needing the three to combine their talents or to use the Power of Three—the backplot element which alledgedly makes the three into the Charmed Ones, and
special indeed as the "most powerful good witches in history", as figures prominently in the writings of later years. Consequently, in re-runs, the witch sisters Prue, Piper, and Phoebe, as well as the series's writers and production staff are obviously feeling their way into their powers and how powers impacted new lives (or should be written about and presented on film)......