Grief, Guilt and the Cost of Power: How Charmed Devastates with 2-Parter 'Awakened' and 'Astral Monkey'

Season 2 of Charmed found its groove in the back half—and nowhere is that more clear (or more devastating) than in Awakened (S2E12) and Astral Monkey (S2E20). On paper, they don’t look like a pair. One’s about illness. The other’s about monkeys with powers. But watched together? They ask the same painful question: what happens when you try to save someone—and break everything else in the process?

Awakened: Love, Rules, and the Line You’re Not Supposed to Cross

Piper contracts a rare virus after handling fruit from South America (yes, really). She ends up in ICU. Nothing’s working. She’s dying. So Prue and Phoebe do what any of us would do if we had magic—they break the rules. They use their powers to save her.

And it works. But only for a moment.

Piper survives, but the cost is immediate. The sisters are cursed with insomnia. Worse: Piper’s virus mutates and becomes an epidemic. Saving her meant endangering the city.

The sisters are forced to undo the magic, but when Piper is about to die again, Leo steps in and heals her. Against all the rules and warnings, he saves her. And is stripped of his powers.

This episode hurts because it’s so human. Who wouldn’t break the rules to save someone they love? But in the world of Charmed, love doesn’t protect you from consequences—it just makes them more personal.

Astral Monkey: When Power Isn’t Yours to Hold

Eight episodes later, that choice comes back to haunt them.

The doctor who treated Piper is still obsessed with her miraculous recovery, and the subsequent miraculous recovery of all the people who caught the virus from Piper. When the sisters can’t or won’t explain, he starts experimenting. And he accidentally ends up with their powers.

What follows is a story about corruption and obsession. He starts “saving” people—by harvesting organs from criminals. He thinks he’s doing good. But the show makes it clear: just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Astral Monkey is a dark echo of Awakened. Where the sisters used power to save family, the doctor uses it to enforce justice. But Charmed doesn’t let either slide. “The wrong thing done for the right reason is still the wrong thing.” That line from Morality Bites (S2E2) echoes through both episodes.

No Neat Bows. Just Cold, Hard Consequences.

What makes these episodes land so hard is that nothing is resolved. Piper lives, but it costs them. Leo doesn’t get his powers or his job back. The doctor dies. No one walks away unscathed.

These aren’t feel-good episodes. They’re emotional landmines. There’s no demon vanquish, no freeze-frame celebration. Just guilt. Fallout. The quiet realisation that power, magical or otherwise, can’t always save the people you love.

Awakened is about fear. Astral Monkey is about corruption. And together, they’re about the cost of trying too hard to control an outcome that was never yours to shape. If Morality Bites was the lesson, Awakened and Astral Monkey are the consequences. And honestly? They still haunt me.