'Charmed': The Sisters Use Latinx-Inspired Magic in "Exorcise Your Demons"

Tonight's episode of Charmed saw the new Charmed Ones take on their biggest challenge to date -- and explore Latinx-inspired magic in the process.

Spoilers for tonight's episode of Charmed, "Exorcise Your Demons", below.

Last week, Mel, Macy, and Maggie discovered that their friend Angela had been possessed by the Harbinger, an extremely powerful evil that would require the assistance of the Elders to deal with. However, it turned out that the Elders only plan for dealing with the Harbinger involved killing Angela, something that Mel could not abide. This led her to discover that Angela's soul remained intact despite her demonic possession meaning there might be a chance to rid Angela of the Harbinger while also saving her life.

In order to do so, the sisters needed a special spell and it turns out their mother anticipated such an event. A spell revealed itself to the Charmed Ones on the pages of the Book of Shadows, written especially for them in Spanish and, according to Harry, drawing on the Afro-Cuban tradition of Santeria. The spell makes good on series executive producer Amy Rardin's comments earlier this year that the show would be influenced by Latinx magical traditions.

"We have a real Latinx witch in our writer's room," Rardin said at Paley Fall TV Preview in September. "Every culture has their own witchcraft traditions, and we really wanted to explore not just from a Salem witchcraft but all kinds of different witchcraft that happens all around the world."

This exploration of brujería is a bit of a departure from the original Charmed which generally leaned into more Western witchcraft traditions -- the show even sent the Halliwell sisters back to 1600s Salem in the Season 3 episode "All Halliwell's Eve" -- but it's one that makes sense and not just because the new Charmed Ones are themselves Latinx. The characters aren't simply copies of the original and even feature a new power for one of the sisters. The youngest sister Maggie, played by Sarah Jeffrey, has the ability to read minds instead of premonition as the youngest sister in the original, Phoebe, did.

"We didn't want to make it too easy for them to solve things with magic, so I think we pulled back a little, which doesn't mean that the power won't evolve," executive producer Jessica O'Toole said. "Based on the original, the powers do evolve so that's something we've had in the back of our minds as something we could get to."

With Latinx-inspired magic making its debut on Charmed, it will be interesting to see when and how it appears again, especially as the show continues to dig into current events and issues.

"[Charmed will] organically show the women handling current issues, without lecturing the audience," O'Toole said. "Even before the election, we always wanted to explore that link between strong women and witchcraft."

Charmed airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.