Phoebe Halliwell
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| Phoebe Halliwell | |||||||||||||||||
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 Alyssa Milano as Phoebe Halliwell |
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Phoebe Halliwell is a fictional character on the WB television series Charmed.
She is played by Alyssa Milano, who became a producer of the series.
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[edit] Background
Phoebe Halliwell was born in her family manor at 1329 Prescott Street, San Francisco, California on November 2, 1975 to the Charmed Ones mother Patricia Halliwell and mortal Victor Bennett. Phoebe had two older sisters, Prudence Halliwell and Piper Halliwell and a younger half-sister Paige Matthews. Phoebe was named after the favorite aunt of her mother.
Although Phoebe was born with the power of premonition, her maternal grandmother Penelope Halliwell bound the powers of her granddaughters to keep Nicholas from killing them and taking their powers.
Her father and maternal grandmother argued about Victor being merely human and thus unable to protect his own children from the supernatural. A disgruntled Victor eventually left his family. On February 28, 1978, Patricia was drowned fighting the water demon. Phoebe and her two older sisters were effectively orphaned and were raised by their maternal grandmother Penelope.
Phoebe was a good student, and once earned an award for student of the month. At the age of 10 Phoebe was transported by a spell cast by her future self to the year 2002, where she met two older versions of herself, her sister Piper, Piper's husband Leo Wyatt, and Phoebe's future ex-husband Cole Turner. Cole protected her from the demon Kurzon and then she visited the realm of Whitelighters with Leo. After she helped the older Phoebe listen to her heart about marrying Cole, she returned to her own time, where Penny quickly erased her memory of the time travel.
After completing high school, Piper and Prue moved into an apartment together in North Beach where they stayed until their grandmother Penelope became ill and they moved back in with her. Prue became engaged to a man named Roger and she asked Piper to be her maid of honor.
Unfortunately, Roger began to hit on Phoebe at her bartending job and sent her flowers. When Prue found out, she accused Phoebe of coming onto him. Devastated at the accusation, Phoebe left for New York City. She also did this because she had evidence that her father, Victor, was living there. Around this time, Penny took a picture of the three. Seeing how disconnected the sisters were, Penny planned to use a potion to bind the girls' powers forever, but she died before she could use it.
[edit] Revelation as a Charmed One
Six months after her grandmother’s death, having fallen on hard times, Phoebe returned to San Francisco and moved back in with her sisters. Prue was not at all welcoming to Phoebe, because she still believed she ruined her engagement. It was then that Phoebe discovered the Book of Shadows in their attic and learned that she and her sisters were members of a long line of good witches.
Phoebe has the power of premonition, a passive power. She triggers this power when she touches or is in presence of something that has to do with what her premonition is about. This power was initially uncontrollable, but in later seasons if she wants or pleads for a premonition, she usually got it. Her flashes of future and past appear black and white to her. As her power grew, her premonitions become more vivid to where they become slightly colored and she can hear and feel what is going on and to hold her premonition longer. (Phoebe's premonition increases in "The Eyes Have It" episode to include astral projection into her visions and also in "Hulkus Pocus" episode when she is able to interact and communicate with her future self in her premonitions).
Her premonitions are triggered by objects or strong psychic auras, making them a form of psychometry. This originally only encompassed precognition, to see the future, but grew to include retrocognition, to see the past, too. Phoebe also developed the power to trigger a vision in somebody else with similar powers, "sharing" visions with Elders and knowing how to trigger a specific "trap" premonition in somebody who stole her powers. Kira, a powerful demonic seer, told Phoebe her powers were once limited to pscyhometry but they grew, like Phoebe's will in time.
At first Phoebe was unhappy with only her passive power of premonition, so she took classes in self-defense. However she realized how useful her power is when her premonition helped to revive Prue from death after a dragon warlock killed her.
Later on Phoebe obtained her first active power of levitation, to defy gravity and float in the air (but not fly). This power was uncontrollable when she first obtained it but she later gained complete control over it. She cannot usually move horizontally, and in "Once upon a Time" Prue has to use her telekinesis to move Phoebe over to another side of a cave while she was levitating. Phoebe usually mixed her martial arts and kick boxing with her levitating power to knock out her enemies. In Season 4, she was able to glide short distances with this power.
Season two episode Morality Bites led fans to believe Phoebe's third power was supposed to be electrokinesis or the ability to generate electricity. In season six she developed the power of empathy. Being an empath allows Phoebe to channel others' feelings. Since powers are tied with emotions and Phoebe can feel others' emotions, she could sometimes tap into their powers. It was possible that an advanced empathy power meant Phoebe could channel the powers of someone else in a larger radius of her or that perhaps electricity was the conduit through which Phoebe could pass harmful emotions to another.
Phoebe's powers were stripped by the Tribunal because she was misusing her powers. She received back her premonition power, but still has to show the Tribunal that she isn't misusing her powers to get her other powers back. Like the other Charmed Ones, Phoebe can also brew magical potions and recite/write spells. Even in the flashforward in the season finale, Forever Charmed, it was never made clear if Phoebe ever did get her powers of levitation and empathy back. This could be because the power of empathy was quite unpopular with fans [1] and because the harness required to make Phoebe levitate, as well as the cost to insure Milano for such stunts, was very expensive.
[edit] Romantic Life
Phoebe has had the most tumultuous love life of all the sisters. Early in the show, Phoebe's former boyfriend Clay came into town after helping steal a cursed urn in Egypt. He tried to have Prue auction it off, but when she learned it was stolen she had it removed from the auction. The guardian of the urn attacked Clay, and the sisters saved him. Their relationship was not exactly successful, since Clay essentially tried to give them a curse.
She started a romance with district attorney Cole Turner, who turned out to be a half-demon named Belthazor, sent to kill the Charmed Ones. Although Cole had started out using her to get close to the sisters, they fell in love. When Cole's demon half was revealed to the Charmed Ones, Phoebe helped him fake his own death and then let everyone, including her sisters, believe he was dead. Phoebe then spent time researching Cole's past, confiding only in Leo that she did not really vanquish Cole.
While Cole started getting nightmares of becoming the new Source, Phoebe started to get a bad feeling about her upcoming marriage, so Piper suggested she use magic to find out what her heart felt. Phoebe cast the spell to hear her heart's desire, which ended up summoning her future and past selves. Older Phoebe refused to tell Phoebe about the events of the future for fear of changing things for the worse. Learning a young and vulnerable Phoebe was in the present, Kurzon attacked young Phoebe, but Cole protected her. Leo took little Phoebe to the realm of Whitelighters for protection. Kurzon attacked again, wounding older Phoebe. He was vanquished by the Charmed Ones, but not before older Phoebe told Phoebe to marry Cole. This returned the older and younger Phoebes to their own time.
Phoebe and Cole married, and Phoebe became pregnant. With the pregnancy, she began manifesting the ability to shoot flames from her hands and to teleport. Cole attempted to give up his position of Source of All Evil to an evil wizard, but failed when Phoebe used her baby's powers to kill the Wizard. She then joined Cole as his queen. Phoebe tried to live the life of evil, as a combination of hormones and demonic potions made her so cranky, she ended up vanquishing a good number of Cole's demons. She tried to play both sides of good and evil, but realizing she could not, Phoebe rejoined her sisters in opposing Cole. Together they cast a spell which used the power of their ancestors to vanquish Cole.
After Cole died, he ended up in the demonic Wasteland, where all demons go after being vanquished. His powers as the Source were absorbed by the creature there, but he survived by clinging to his love for Phoebe. Although he tried to get Phoebe to help bring him back to life, she refused and asked him to move on. When Cole learned he could absorb the powers of other demons when they were killed in the Wasteland, he collected an impressive array of abilities and escaped, just in time to save Phoebe's life.
Phoebe was transformed into a mermaid by a spell, but was turned back when she admitted her love for Cole. Phoebe told Cole that their relationship was completely over and pushed through with trying to obtain a divorce. Despite Cole's efforts to pursue her, Phoebe realized how dangerous their relationship could be and tried to move on with her life, beginning to date other men.
In one final effort to win Phoebe back, Cole cast a spell which altered reality, making it so that the Power of Three had never been reconstituted after Prue's death which meant they would never have met their long lost half-sister Paige. He was disappointed to find that in this other reality, he was trapped in a loveless marriage with Phoebe, who only remained his wife to protect Piper from being killed. By altering reality in this way, Cole resumed his former identity of Belthazor, making him vulnerable to being vanquished. Because Paige also crossed realities, she was able to unite with her sisters to vanquish Cole once and for all and reversed the effects of his spell.
Phoebe then dated the new owner of the paper she writes for, Jason Dean (played by Eric Dane).
Much later, Phoebe decided to take a sabbatical from work. Her editor Elise Rothman, instead of just rerunning Phoebe's column for two months, hired a ghostwriter, Leslie St. Claire (played by Nick Lachey). Phoebe later fell in love with him, though she did not want her column to be written by a male writer. Phoebe eventually got her column back as well as her power of premonitions. Leslie eventually left, feeling that Phoebe has too much to hide for his taste (Phoebe kept on standing him up at their dates, and never explained it--she was always doing witch-related activities).
Phoebe gained a romantic interest in the new literature teacher at Magic School, Drake. Unfortunately his only problem was that he was destined to die after two weeks. However, he managed to fulfill his mission; he was sent by none other than Cole, to restore Phoebe's faith in love.
In season 8, Phoebe falls in love with a Cupid named Coop. It was revealed in the series finale, "Forever Charmed", that the elders sent Coop to Phoebe hoping that she would fall in love with him to make up for a little of what she had lost through the years. Although it is "against the rules" for a Cupid to find love, the Elders lifted this restriction for Phoebe. "Forever Charmed" shows that in the future Coop and Phoebe are married by the Angel of Destiny in Magic School and that they will have three girls. As it turns out that in the second season episode "Heartbreak City" Phoebe fell in love with another Cupid who had to leave her to keep his job.
[edit] Professional Life
After graduating from college with a B.A in Psychology, Phoebe lands a steady and successful job as an advice columnist for the newspaper, "The Bay Mirror". Her column is titled "Ask Phoebe." She attends graduate school to further her studies in Psychology while working for the newspaper, but it is not known whether or not she earned any post-graduate degrees. In the future, she publishes a best-selling book.
Prior to her work at "The Bay Mirror", Phoebe had been a bartender, a hotel lounge psychic, and had worked at a company called SWA Properties.
[edit] Charmed Life
Phoebe and her older sisters Prue and Piper were collectively called the "Charmed Ones". They served as powerful good witches who protected the innocent as best as they could.
Out of all the sisters, Phoebe is seen to be the master of spell-writing. Phoebe authored a spell for vanquishing The Source that used the power of the Halliwell's witch ancestors. She also helped The Seer to put the Hollow back in its crypt.
After the death of her sister Prue, Phoebe met a woman named Paige Matthews at the funeral. It turned out that Paige was her younger half-sister. Phoebe and Cole witnessed Paige inadverdantly orb out from a demonic attack, and realized that she was half Whitelighter. Phoebe and Piper helped convince Paige to join them and recreate the Charmed Ones, and subsequently vanquished Prue's demonic killer, Shax.
We often see Phoebe being the first to discover facts: Phoebe was the one who first discovered that Leo was a Whitelighter, catching him while levitating to replace a light bulb. Leo made Phoebe swear not to tell her sisters about him. She revealed the truth to her sisters, but they thought she was just joking around. Phoebe followed a wolf that she saw in the hallway of the Magic School. The wolf lead Phoebe to Enola the shaman, a student at the school, who sent Phoebe on a vision quest to help her see her own future more clearly. On her quest, Phoebe finally managed to reach the portal that took her to the future. There she saw Piper, an older Wyatt, and a younger boy that turns out to be Piper's second son. Paige had become a teacher at the school, Phoebe is pregnant with a little girl, and they are living a life without demons. Wyatt's brother approaches her, saying, "Aunt Phoebe, we need your help," and she is returned to the present to hear Chris asking, "Phoebe, can you help us?" Phoebe thus becomes the first one to know that Chris Perry is actually Chris Halliwell, her nephew and Piper and Leo's second son.
Chris tried to enlist Phoebe's help to get his parents back together, but Phoebe felt that meddling with Piper and Leo's relationship would be wrong. As Chris tried to persuade his aunt to join his cause, Phoebe gets a premonition and they go to a Middle Eastern desert where they rescue a female genie named Jinny from her demonic master. Jinny says that she wrote to Phoebe because her former master, Bosk, is trying to raise an ancient demonic city – the lost city of Zanbar – and she thought that if Phoebe became her master, Phoebe would wish her free so that Bosk could not use her to re-erect the city.
Bosk soon enough attacked the manor, and because of his protective amulet that blocked her vanquishing potion, Phoebe wished Jinny free. Apparently, Jinny was actually a demon, and she could only be freed only at the expense of the one who freed her, so now Phoebe would have to pay the price: she had become a genie herself, with Chris as her new master. Chris accidentally wished for Leo to get over his issues with Chris, and Phoebe made Leo become very friendly toward Chris. Chris decided to take advantage of the situation and wished for Piper and Leo to sleep together and it worked, just not as he planned: Piper and Leo fall asleep on the floor. Richard takes the genie bottle, with Phoebe in it, and attempts to use it to have Paige love him forever. To make up for his mistake, Richard wishes Phoebe free, and Phoebe and Paige manage to get Jinny back in the bottle.
Later, the Charmed Ones go on to trail against Barbas the demon. He admits to meditating a plan to trick them out of their powers, but argued that he still had a point – the Charmed Ones are risky with their magic. He turns the bulk of his accusation against Phoebe, who had recently been using potions to force premonitions; an action Paige believed might have led to Inspector Sheridan catching them. The Tribunal reversed their decision to kill their ally Darryl Morris, but they decided Phoebe must suffer the consequences for using her powers for personal gain. She lost her powers of premonitions, levitation, and empathy. This was a "temporary" punishment, and she had the possibility of earning them back if she used her magic correctly.
Phoebe and her sisters destroyed Zankou and the Nexus. Everyone, both normal and supernatural, believed they were dead. This was their chance to finally get a normal life. Phoebe's new alias was Julie Bennet and everyone else but her loved ones could only see her "new look". They soon realized that hiding from their identities was a mistake however, so after consulting the CIA, Phoebe and her sisters returned to their normal lives.
Phoebe got her old job back and was dating a guy named Dex Lawson, who she had a premontion of marrying. She did marry Dex while under a spell from her ward Billie Jenkins. The marriage was annulled since both participants were not in their right state of mind. Phoebe was no longer romancing Dex. Phoebe lost her faith in her gift, until she had another premontion of the future. She was talking to her older self 6 years from now, and she was still supposed to have a daughter.
Phoebe soon moved out of the manor. She got her own apartment in the city.
When Phoebe found out that Billie was the Ultimate Power, she was reluctant to vanquish her and she and Piper were at a disagreement until a spell was cast on her because of Billie. She and her sisters had to hide out in the Underworld, as the magical community had turned their backs on them.
Phoebe married Coop the Cupid in the series finale. They will have three daughters. She will also get her powers, levitation and empathy, back in the future. Phoebe has turned into a warlock, a banshee, the Queen of the Underworld, a mermaid, a superhero, a Greek goddess (of Love), a genie, a ghost, a mummy, a witch beast that came out during a blue moon (along with Piper and Paige) and was trapped in the body of a evil sorceress.
[edit] Deaths Count
During the run of the series and her life as a Charmed One, Phoebe died 9 times.
| Episode | Episode Name | Cause Of Death | Revival |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1x22 | Deja Vú All Over Again | Killed by an energy ball thrown by demon Rodriguez. | Time was reset. |
| 1x22 | Deja Vú All Over Again | Killed by an energy ball thrown by demon Rodriguez a second time after time was reset by Tempus. | Time was reset. |
| 2x02 | Morality Bites | Her future self is burned at the stake. | By taking the future in a different direction, this course of events never came to pass. |
| 5x08 | A Witch In Time | Killed by a fire ball thrown by the warlock Bacarra. | Piper, with the help of Leo, went back in time to save her. |
| 6x8 | Sword and the City | Killed being struck down by a lighting bolt thrown by a Demon. | Leo healed her before her spirit could move on. |
| 6x15 | I Dream of Phoebe | An evil genie wished for her death. | Richard wished for The Charmed Ones to be alive. |
| 7x07 | Someone to Witch Over Me | Killed by a Celerity Demon. | Leo revived her after he became an Avatar. |
| 7x19 | Freaky Phoebe | Piper and Paige killed her while she was trapped inside an evil witch's body. | Piper and Paige expelled the evil witch's spirit from Phoebe's body, and her soul returned. |
| 8x21 | Kill Billie Vol. 2 | Killed after the manor exploded. | Piper, with the help of Leo, went back in time to save her. |
[edit] Notable Occurrences
- Phoebe briefly swapped powers with her sister Prue, and gained the ability to move objects with her mind. She also swapped bodies with Paige.
- Phoebe once received hot flashes that were linked to the Succubus, which led the sisters to cast a spell to transform Prue into a man.
- Phoebe once was granted the power of flight by a Genie, who stole the power from a Dragon warlock, but that power was returned.
- Phoebe was turned into a Banshee.
- Phoebe was once turned evil by the Woogyman, and was granted the power to make objects out of shadow.
- Phoebe was once shrunk to a few inches tall by Gammil's magic wand.
- She once killed demons using the Power-Sucking Athame and stole their powers to become all-mighty.
- Phoebe had befriended Kira the Seer, as Kira showed her her future daughter, thanks to the Avatars. Only a short time before she was going to help Kira lead a normal, mortal life, Kira was unfortunately vanquished by the demon Zankou.
- Cole put Grams' ring on Phoebe once, without knowing that it had a curse on it. Phoebe temporarily became the 1950's housewife that she feared she might turn into by marrying anyone.
- Phoebe is mentioned briefly in the movie "Big Fat Liar" where Amanda Bynes said "I was watching Charmed on the WB last night and Right when Alyssa Milano was about to cast a spell on her super cute Demon boyfriend..."
| Charmed |
|---|
| Main: Season summaries | Episode guide | Broadcasters and DVD releases | Terms | Trivia |
| Locations and Artifacts: San Francisco Bay Area | Magic School | The Nexus | Book of Shadows |
| Good beings: Charmed Ones | Close friends | Family and friends | Whitelighters | Elders |
| Neutral: Avatars | The Hollow | Firestarters |
