The original Charmed series still had two more seasons, despite being canceled in 2006. Charmed first premiered in 1998 and ran on the WB Network for a total of eight seasons before ending due to a network merger and budget constraints. The show starred Shannen Doherty as Prue Halliwell, Holly Marie Combs as Piper, Alyssa Milano as Phoebe, and later Rose McGowan as Paige Matthews, and followed in the footsteps of similar genre shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Charmed followed the adventures of the Halliwell sisters as they embraced their Wiccan powers and their destinies as the “Charmed Ones.” Set in San Francisco, the Halliwell sisters juggled their duties as witches with their professional ambitions and personal lives. By mixing the magical with relatable realism, the show garnered a huge following and created a legacy and premise that was so successful that the CW network even ordered a reboot of Charmed in 2018, which ran for four seasons.
Despite its popularity, the original Charmed still ended after season 8, and each of the remaining sisters had been given a happy ending. Phoebe found love with a Cupid, Piper and Leo were free to raise their sons Wyatt and Chris, Paige got married, and the “Ultimate Power” was defeated. What was left for the Halliwell sisters but to live their lives? Plenty, as it turns out. After Charmed ended, two officially licensed Charmed comic book series were published by Zenescope Entertainment, cleverly titled Charmed: Season 9 and Charmed: Season 10. Season 9 had a total of 24 issues, and season 10 contained a total of 20 issues, reflecting the way the show had been structured while it was still on TV.
Charmed: Season 9 picked up where the show left off. Charmed's Halliwell sisters believed that they had earned the right to a quiet life. They began to settle into a new routine until the death of the very first “innocent” they ever saved marked the start of something more sinister than the “Charmed Ones” had ever faced before. Trying to balance their lives with this new threat, the Halliwell sisters were forced to revisit the past and protect their former “innocents” from the evil that was hunting them down.
Charmed: Season 10, on the other hand, answered an important question that the show never fully addressed. Shannen Doherty’s character Prue died at the end of Charmed’s third season, following rumored difficulties on set with her co-stars. Despite numerous characters in Charmed returning from the dead as ghosts, Prue’s fate after her death was never confirmed, and she was only mentioned intermittently throughout the show’s five remaining seasons. Charmed: Season 10 explained what happened to her and brought her back into the fold, though without Shannen Doherty’s likeness.
Tie-in novels and comics are a dependable way of keeping a franchise alive. Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed a similar path after it ended, and big franchises like Star Wars have printed books and comics galore to fill in the gaps of its extensive timeline. Charmed's post-cancellation season 9 and season 10 were proof of the show’s sustained popularity. The continued adventures of the Halliwells provided a compelling narrative and kept the show’s legacy alive even years after it was supposed to end.