The Wendigo
Piper has a flat tire and has called Prue and Phoebe for help. Piper decides to call the auto club instead, but her cell phone runs out of power. She spots a telephone booth. While walking to the telephone booth, she hears someone in the woods. She runs for the booth and shuts herself inside. A hairy beast attacks and breaks in. A man appears and fires a flare gun at the beast, which then flees. Piper is scratched on her left arm.
Phoebe talks Prue into hiring her at Buckland's.
Phoebe and Prue find a gold charm bracelet among goods to be auctioned. Phoebe picks up the bracelet and has a vision of a car accident. The bracelet bears the initials TL. Piper is in the hospital being bandaged. The man with the flare gun identifies himself as Billy Waters. Andy introduces FBI Agent Fallon, who tells him about the creature. Billy tells the sisters about the creature; it had killed his fiancée, Laura, by ripping her heart out. Andy wonders why Billy had a flare gun; Billy mentions that it appears to be afraid of fire. Piper consults the Book of Shadows and finds out it is called a Wendigo.
Piper tells Billy of the first known Wendigo. The first Wendigo had been betrayed by his lover, and cut her heart out. Piper stands up, has a dizzy spell, and begins to feel tired.
Andy has found more information on the Wendigo. It kills before, on or after a full moon; and chooses only AB-negative blood type victims. He thinks the creature is merely a serial killer.
Phoebe has tracks down the car from the accident and finds the owner of the bracelet, Teri Lane. Phoebe is unwilling to let the bracelet be sold. Billy goes to Fallon and they talk in a parking garage. He tells her what Piper told him. He lights a cigarette and Fallon freaks. Billy recoils, realizing that Fallon might well be the Wendigo. Fallon snaps his neck, killing him.
A health inspector, Laurence Beck, appears at Quake. Piper is evidently ill and sweating. The inspector orders Piper to go home or he will close Quake.
The bracelet comes up for auction. Several bidders raise their paddles, but Prue uses her power to fling them away. The bracelet goes unsold.
Piper dreams of meeting Andy at the manor, turning into a Wendigo, and attacking him. She awakens and finds Andy at the door. She states she feels ill and tries to wave him off. He tells her what happened to Billy, and Fallon also appears at the manor. Fallon suggests that Piper might have been infected from the attack on her. Piper pulls the bandage off her arm and finds that her arm has become hairy.
Phoebe visits Harriet Lane and presents the bracelet. Harriet does not recognize the bracelet. Phoebe asks Harriet what her daughter's name is. Prue is in the hall with Teri, and mother and daughter have a tearful reunion.
Andy and Fallon meet in a park near where Piper was attacked. She flirts with him, and tells him of her fiancé who had walked out on her, saying she took steps to make sure she could never be hurt like that again. Andy blows her off, saying that they're only partners on the case.
Prue and Phoebe return to the manor and find Piper sweating, frightened and occasionally snapping at them. Phoebe picks up Fallon's business card and has a vision: Fallon is the Wendigo. The sisters consult the Book of Shadows. They find nothing direct, but determine that they must kill Fallon to save Piper. They need to restrain Piper, however. Phoebe produces a pair of handcuffs, to a bit of embarrassment, and she and Prue cuff Piper to a pipe. Prue and Phoebe go to an Army surplus store to get a flare gun.
Night falls, and Piper transforms into a Wendigo with the transformation ripping off her clothes. She pulls free of the pipe and the handcuffs. Fallon also transforms and attacks Andy. She scratches his chest, but just as she's about to cut his heart out, Prue and Phoebe arrive. Prue fires the flare gun. She misses twice. They find Andy, and Prue misses again. Piper arrives, and Prue and Phoebe don't know which Wendigo to shoot. Phoebe shoots this time, aiming at the Wendigo on the left. Suddenly, the flare freezes in flight—and so does the Wendigo on the right, proving that she's Fallon. Prue then moves the flare toward Fallon, killing her. Piper is restored to normal leaving her naked and freezing. Andy's chest wound then heals as Prue checks up on him.
Phoebe quits her job, because working around so much old stuff at Buckland's will give her premonitions everywhere and she can't handle it, and she needs to find a world of her own.
Tropes
- AB Negative: The Wendigo only attacks people with this blood type, which unfortunately Piper and Andy both have.
- Agent Mulder: While Andy always thought there was some kind of supernatural element around him, he really buys into the wendigo thing with little question, much to Ashley's surprise.
- Badass Normal: Billy is a normal human who nonetheless is capable of fighting off a supernatural wendigo, and has been hunting it down for months.
- Big Damn Heroes: Billy comes to Piper's rescue during her initial attack by the wendigo with a flare gun.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Ashley Fallon masquerades as a helpful empathetic FBI agent when in reality she is the wendigo herself.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The innocents of the episode's B-plot get this. The missing Teri Lane is reunited with her mother Harriet thanks to Phoebe and Prue.
- Forced Transformation: Piper gets turned into a wendigo, and she's unable to combat the transformation. This is the first time a Charmed one is transformed into something else against her will.
- He Knows Too Much: Billy is killed seconds after realizing that Fallon is the Wendigo.
- Hired to Hunt Yourself: Ashley Fallon is the Wendigo the FBI agent tasked her with tracking down.
- Identical Stranger: The transformed Piper and Ashley look indistinguishable from one another, leaving Prue and Phoebe stuck with having to shoot at one and pray for the best.
- Kill It with Fire: The wendigo does not like fire, and is eventually killed by a flare gun to the chest.
- Law of Conservation of Detail: At the hospital Billy tries to light up a cigarette and is quickly reprimanded by Prue. It's a seemingly pointless scene which only makes sense later, when he lights up in front of Fallon, she recoils from the flame, and he realizes that she's the Wendigo just before he's killed.
- Lunacy: As with any depiction of a werewolf-like creature, the transformation revolves around the full moon, the day before, and the day after.
- Magic A Is Magic A: Piper couldn't just freeze the wendigo when it attacked her because she was in a phone booth and her powers can't extend beyond whatever room she's in.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Downplayed. The transformation into the wendigo also causes numerous changes to the actual person's personality, but there are clear signs that Ashley and Piper still have semblances of who they originally are.
- Ashley's personality doesn't change at all between her transformation. Her behavior as a human matches her behavior as a wendigo, just with the pragmatic behavioral differences that allow to blend in better as a human.
- Piper initially seems to be a feral beast, but she still retains her Wiccan powers, and also seems to recognize the situation she's in after she inadvertently freezes Phoebe's flare and the transformed Ashley.
- Missing Child: Teri Lane was kidnapped by her father in 1989, and her mother never reunited with her. The investigator she hired found Teri but died in a car crash before he could bring her back to her mother.
- Muggles Do It Better: Magic is not necessary to defeat a wendigo, only something hot enough to melt their icy hearts. Billy was able to scare the transformed Ashley away with a flaming log. He, and later Prue and Phoebe, make good use of flare guns to do the job.
- No Ontological Inertia: Killing the original wendigo reverses the transformation of wounded victims. It also heals the wounds of any current living victims.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: The wendigo functions more like a werewolf. It transforms at the full moon and it can spread its curse through its attacks (scratches in this case). The only real differences are an aversion to fire instead of silver, it eats its victim's heart, and it only feasts on a specific blood type.
- Partial Transformation: Ashley Fallon's hand transforms into a wendigo hand before the rest of her body. Similarly, as Piper's transformation takes hold, her wounds grows a lot of hair, and when the moon triggers her transformation entirely, her eyes shift first.
- Personal Horror: The effects of Piper's transformation on her personality are very distressing to her. She repeatedly apologizes for her behavior towards her sisters.
- Power Incontinence: Phoebe quits her job at the auction house because nearly every object she touched was giving her visions on its history. She claimed it was too emotional for her.
- Rule of Three: The wendigo transforms on three days: the day before, the day of, and the day after the full moon.
- Samus Is a Girl: The wendigo is thought to be male but turns out to be female.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing:
- Piper loses her clothes when transforming and is naked once she assumes human form after Fallon is killed.
- Likewise, Fallon's clothes tear off her body as she transforms into a wendigo.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: Wendigos have these. Piper sports them just before she transforms, as seen in the page image above.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: As the wendigo begins taking hold of Piper, she begins acting much meaner, verbally snapping at her sisters.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The wendigo plot mixed in with the Phoebe auction house plot.
- Viral Transformation: Being wounded by a wendigo causes the victim to become one over time. The transformation even resembles actual illness, with a fever and sweating.
- Wendigo: The only thing in common with the traditional mythical wendigo is partial cannibalism - this one tears out its victims hearts and eats them.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Harriet Lane is very displeased with Phoebe's apparent intrusion into her life, asking her a bunch of questions that are obviously opening up old wounds. This changes once they bring her daughter back to her.
