The Wedding from Hell is the sixth episode of Charmed, and it features quite literally a wedding from hell.
This episode has a little bit of everything: a demon bride, a possible demon pregnancy, Piper stressing over catering, Prue getting pulled into supernatural drama, Andy and Darryl investigating yet another suspicious death, and more evidence that Rex and Hannah are definitely up to no good.
The episode begins with Piper taking a pregnancy test and throwing it away. When Phoebe finds it, she immediately gets a premonition of a demon baby being born.
Naturally, Phoebe puts two and two together and comes to one conclusion: Piper is pregnant with Jeremy’s demon baby.
So now Phoebe is keeping an extra-close eye on Piper because, in her mind, her sister could potentially be carrying the child of a warlock.
What I find really interesting about this storyline is the foreshadowing. If you’ve already seen Charmed, then you know Phoebe eventually finds herself in a strangely similar situation later in the series. The fact that Phoebe is the sister who receives this particular vision makes the whole thing even more interesting on a rewatch. But thankfully for Piper, the demon baby has absolutely nothing to do with her.
Piper has been thrown into catering the wealthy Spencer wedding by her boss, with Phoebe helping her out. Meanwhile, Prue isn’t involved with the wedding at all—at least not initially—but, because this is Charmed, she eventually finds herself right in the middle of everything. The first major red flag is the bride.
Elliot was originally supposed to marry Allison, the woman he actually loves. Instead, Allison has mysteriously been pushed aside and Jade—who is actually the demon Hecate—is preparing to marry him.
Hecate’s entire plan is to marry a mortal man and conceive a child with him. The baby would appear human but would actually be pure demon, allowing evil to spread through the mortal world. You know, just normal wedding stuff.
There is also a priest running around desperately trying to warn everyone that the bride is evil. He repeatedly tells Piper that she is dealing with a demon, and Piper basically reacts like, Okay, sir, I have a wedding to cater.
Unfortunately, the priest eventually confronts Hecate and gets thrown out of a window. And that means it’s time for Andy and Darryl to enter the chat.
A man has just been murdered in the middle of a wealthy family’s wedding festivities, so naturally Andy and Darryl start investigating.
Andy eventually brings the priest’s dagger to Prue so she can examine it—which I’m sure has absolutely nothing to do with wanting another excuse to see his on-again, off-again love interest.
Sure, Andy.
The dagger turns out to be exactly what the sisters need to defeat Hecate and her demons. Once again, Andy unknowingly hands the Charmed Ones something extremely important to their supernatural investigation without realizing exactly what is happening.
And once again, Andy and Darryl figure out the truth about the killer approximately five minutes too late. At this point, it’s becoming tradition.
We also finally get more of Rex and Hannah, and this episode makes it much clearer that these two are on the evil side of things.
They want to attend the wedding and have helped secure an artifact Hecate needs for her plans—the same artifact that Prue is cataloging at Buckland’s.
This is basically the episode where the show starts waving a giant red flag over Rex and Hannah.
THESE PEOPLE ARE EVIL, PRUE. And yet, when Prue later sees the museum artifact at the bachelorette party, she doesn’t immediately connect the dots.
Why would the random artifact you were cataloging at work suddenly be sitting inside the demon bride’s house?! The answer is literally staring her in the face.
One of my favorite parts of the episode is when Prue, Piper, and Phoebe investigate the bachelorette party.
Piper is still far more concerned about successfully catering the wedding than she is about the possibility of demons being involved. She’s worried about food, trays, and making sure everything goes perfectly while her sisters are trying to figure out whether the bride is evil.
Priorities.
Then a stripper arrives, and for a moment everyone thinks he might have something to do with the artifact.
Nope.
He’s basically demon food.
Once Hecate’s group attacks him, the sisters finally have their confirmation: these women are definitely demons.
Imagine accepting a stripping job at a bachelorette party and discovering you’re actually the catering.
One thing I really liked about this episode is that it feels like the first time we truly see the formula that will eventually become such an important part of Charmed: the sisters protecting a specific innocent from a supernatural threat.
We’ve obviously seen them help people already. Brittany needed saving from Javna, and other villains have targeted groups of people. We’ve also seen villains directly target the sisters themselves.
But Allison feels different. She’s one specific innocent being targeted because Hecate needs Elliot for her plan, and the Charmed Ones actively bring Allison into the situation and tell her, essentially, we’re going to help you.
Prue especially takes the lead with Allison and helps her fight for Elliot and stop the wedding.
I really enjoyed seeing this because protecting innocents becomes such a major part of the Charmed Ones’ purpose. Sometimes the demon isn’t coming after them. Sometimes their job is simply to protect somebody else who has found themselves in the middle of the supernatural world.
This episode feels like an early version of that classic Charmed storyline.
Then we have Elliot’s mother. She essentially made a deal with Hecate for wealth and success, knowing that eventually her son would have to fulfill her side of the bargain.
I understand that she’s terrified of Hecate, but there were several moments where I needed her to do a little more.
Get that marriage certificate. Help these women stop the demon. DO SOMETHING.
When the Charmed Ones finally try to help her, she practically alerts the demons that they’re interfering. I understand that fear can make people do questionable things, especially when you’ve spent years dealing with demons, but ma’am…
I’m going to need you to work with us here.
Thankfully, the Charmed Ones are able to stop Hecate before her plan is completed.
Using the priest’s dagger, Prue is able to defeat Hecate and the other demons. Allison gets Elliot back, and the two finally get the wedding they were supposed to have in the first place.
True love wins. Demon bride loses. And Piper successfully survives catering the wedding from hell. I’d call that a successful day.
Overall, I thought The Wedding from Hell was a good episode, especially because it introduces several things that feel important to the larger structure of Charmed.
We get one of the first clear examples of the sisters protecting a specific innocent and bringing that person into their plan. We get more confirmation that Rex and Hannah aren’t simply Prue’s slightly strange coworkers—they’re villains, and there is clearly more coming from them. They really seem to be developing into the larger ongoing threat of the season while individual demons continue to appear each week.
We also get plenty of comedy, especially with Piper caring more about successfully catering this wedding than investigating demons, and some interesting foreshadowing with Phoebe’s vision of the demon baby.
And, of course, Andy and Prue continue their What exactly are we doing with this relationship? routine.