Charmed 1.12 'The Wendigo'

‘The Wendigo’ was one of the first episodes that featured one of the sisters going demonic on the others, and it was one of the best playing so cleverly on Piper’s sensitive caring demeanor. It also featured one of the more ‘Spelling’ moments of the series when Phoebe and Prue help reunite a mother and daughter.

Synopsis: After Piper is attacked and wounded by a creature known as a Wendigo, she begins to unravel as she herself transform into one herself. Andy teams up with an FBI agent to track the creature down. Phoebe starts work at the auction house with Prue, but her power of premonition causes some problems.

The four girls turned into many different creatures over the 8 years that Charmed ran for, but the Wendigo was one of the better ones. Piper, being the opposite of everything the Wendigo is, was the perfect candidate. Her becoming more and more evil as the transformation began was very disturbing to watch.

As a Spelling show, ‘Charmed’ was quite different and never really felt like it was in the same category, until this episode. Seeing Phoebe using her powers for something as simple as reuniting a long lost mother and daughter is easily something you might see in any of his other works (well, minus the premonition part), and it seemed to fit so well with the magical element that Charmed brings.

There was obviously a tremendous amount of effort put into making the Wendigo a scary looking creature, and it still remains of the more threatening looking creatures they’ve faced. One could laugh and criticise it for looking slightly cheesy, but I think it worked. The more human element to the wolf like creature that we would expect was quite clever, adding an extra element of fear to it.

‘The Wendigo’ was terrific hour and a personal favourite of this season.

9/10