It’s hard to fault an episode that has somebody randomly burst into flames. A Halloween themed episode was inevitable for a series based on a group of witches (though it took 'Charmed' nearly 3 seasons to do one) but one thing I was curious about was how they would handle the obvious connotations. Thankfully the Secret Circle made allusions to it, filled the episode with fun spells while also making things even darker than they have gotten in the past few episodes. Oh, and they’ve also started to master the art of the ‘amaze-balls cliffhanger’. Not bad for 42 minutes.
In ‘Masked’ Cassie throws a Halloween party to get the circle’s mind off of recent events. After a run in with a local shop owner, Cassie tries to get him to open up about the town’s history, but Jake gets in the way.
Since witches are a major staple of the whole Halloween experience I was expecting an episode devoted to it right from the beginning but what ‘The Secret Circle’ did was remarkably clever in that, similar to what Bonnie did in ‘Diaries when she dressed as a witch, they just ran with it. It was also surprisingly fun seeing them have fun with their magic during the festivities, it was like a reminder that we’re dealing with teenagers who happen to be witches, so it's great to see them have fun with it for a change.
I remember mentioning in my earlier reviews of this that there didn’t seem like there was enough history and mythology to fuel a TV series long into its run like 'The Vampire Diaries' has done, it’s funny that now I think the opposite completely. There’s almost too much to get through now, but not at all in a bad way. On top of the story about what happened on the night of the fire, we have the history of the witch hunters, we also have Diana and Charles’ quest for the crystals and now we have Cassie’s family lineage and dark magic, which is probably the one thing I’m most excited to see explored. I’m pretty sure that we’ll eventually be given even more to digest after a while, if the rapidly growing pool of past information being divulged is anything to go by.
It’s slightly funny that this series is almost becoming a bit of a procedural at this point. The past 4 episodes have all revolved around someone coming after the circle, whether it’s a quest for power or simply out of revenge and while each of those episodes all seemed serious in their own right, I think this week’s was the darkest of all of them so far, especially with the whole gang being taken. I wasn’t particularly blown away by the big Luke reveal but seeing him spontaneously combust has to be one of the best moments so far in the series; both hilarious and creepy.
Jake was exactly what the series needed, and he came in at exactly the right time. A villain with enough charisma to be considered a long term player helps keeps thing both interesting and exciting even if Cassie is being a bit of a moron for not seeing what’s going on right in front of her eyes, but whatever. His best moment by far was his creepy attack on poor Mr Wilson, there was something very ‘Damon Salvatore’ about the whole exchange.
‘The Secret Circle’ is adopting a slightly repetitive, but notably great approach to things now and the show shows promise of becoming completely amazing down the line (if that great cliff-hanger is anything to go by), while also keeping us highly entertained in the meantime.
8.5/10
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