The Legend of Sleepy Halliwell
Piper has enrolled Wyatt in a preschool, but he is unwilling to play with the other children. As Piper speaks of her worries with Phoebe and Paige, Wyatt orbs back to the manor. The sisters orb after him and find that a door has appeared next to the manor's stairs. The door opens and a man calls for help; the Headless Horseman appears behind him and chops off his head. His head can still speak.
The head says his name is Sigmund and explains that the rest of him at Magic School. He says Gideon needs help. Leo orbs in and Sigmund recognizes him. Leo says that Magic School is supposed to be protected from evil. The sisters and Leo go through the door, with Sigmund's head with them. Leo says that Gideon was his mentor and had advocated his and Piper's marriage before the rest of the Elders. The sisters, Leo and Sigmund's head meet with Gideon, who says the students had been pulling pranks and finally one conjured the Headless Horseman, who is cutting off teachers' heads. He believes the guilty student is influenced by a demon. Gideon tells the sisters that they can find what they are looking for on the grounds of Magic School.
Paige takes over one of Sigmund's classes and find one of the students levitating another against his will. She finds her new students to be very disrespectful. She suspects that one of her students conjured the Headless Horseman.
Phoebe follows a wolf, which leads her to a camp-fire. The wolf morphs into a Shaman, a woman who notes that Phoebe's premonitions are unreliable lately and offers to help her see her future more clearly. She tells Phoebe she is conflicted, questioning her future; Phoebe uses her empathic power, but cannot tell if the Shaman is telling the truth.
Piper and Leo are watching Wyatt, who is being much more sociable here than at the non-magical preschool. A mother comes in and describes her near-miss with the Headless Horseman. An alarm sounds, and the Headless Horseman appears and cuts off Piper's head.
Leo and Paige walk into the nursery and find Chris there with a demon using some kind of power on Wyatt. Chris claims that he can explain, but an angry Leo orders him out. Leo orbs Wyatt "up there."
The Shaman offers Phoebe a potion, which she drinks. She has a vision of herself before a portal and beset by demons. On awakening, she finds herself fighting demons. Paige orbs in and tells Phoebe what happened to Piper, but Phoebe decides to stay to seek answers.
Paige orders her students out the door and into the manor. She says that one of them is responsible for the Headless Horseman. The students argue among themselves. The door opens and the Horseman rides out. It cuts off no one's head, but runs out the conservatory door. Gideon offers to help Paige find the Horseman; no one outside would be protected and would be killed if beheaded. They find him and Gideon opens a door, returning the Horseman to Magic School, but a mortal killer has been killed.
Chris claims that the demon was able to scan for evil and could possibly find out who was going to turn Wyatt. Gideon says that he had promised that Magic School would never cause harm and that he now must close it. Paige talks him into changing his mind. The students in the manor suddenly freeze and an unseen figure grabs Piper's head. Paige and Gideon conclude that one of the students did this and is not actually frozen.
Phoebe has tried her vision quest again, without much success. The Shaman advises her not to use her powers to get through, but to "want it more than anything". She takes another potion, but this time, the demons pass through her without harm and she reaches the portal. On the other side, she sees Wyatt at about six years old and he has a brother; Phoebe then notices that she is pregnant when Paige, Headmistress of Magic School, needs to pawn off taking her to a doctor appointment on Piper. Wyatt's brother asks for Phoebe's help and it morphs into Chris asking for her help in the present. The Shaman encourages her to embrace her powers and her path.
Back at the manor, Phoebe uses her empathic power to examine the students and finds Zachary to be angry, and to be astral projecting. His projection fades, and the sisters and Gideon realize that he's tapping into other people's powers. He had frozen the room with Piper's power.
Inside Magic School, the Horseman attacks again, and cuts off the heads of Paige and Phoebe.In the manor, "Paige" comes out of the door and urges Leo to orb the other students away. Once Gideon is alone, "Paige" morphs into Zachary and attacks Gideon. Zachary feels that he's being held at magic school against his will and being kept from his family and friends.
The Charmed Ones' heads say a spell and vanquish the Horseman. When he explodes, the sisters are made whole again. They convince Zachary to let Gideon go by explaining the similarities of their having to deal with magic in their lives and his.
Zachary is back with his family at the end of the episode. Paige is contemplating binding Richard's powers. Phoebe talks vaguely about what she saw on her vision quest. Phoebe asks Chris if he is Wyatt's brother. He says he will be, if Piper and Leo get back together soon enough.
Tropes
- Armor-Piercing Question: With everyone else turning against him, Chris expects Phoebe to kick him out next. However, she just has a simple question for him that she wants a simple answer for.Phoebe: Are you Wyatt's little brother?
- Be Yourself: Zachary did all this because he hated being a telepath because it ripped him away from his family and made him different from everyone else. The sisters are sympathetic towards this motivation, but they talk to him about accepting who he is and all that comes with it. Paige offers to bind his powers if that's what he really wants, but he ultimately refuses.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: The put-upon Zachary is the mastermind, using his telepathy to access greater power and run circles around the far more experienced adults.
- Brick Joke: Having to look after the students while just a head, Piper warns the troublesome Slick that she could still turn him into a frog with a simple spell. When Paige and Gideon later return to the manor, they suddenly hear an unmistakable ribbit noise.Piper: [to the other students] Anybody else wanna try me?
- Foreshadowing: Chris tells Paige he's running out of time, but doesn't get any more specific.
- Phoebe's vision shows she'll have children in the future. Attempts to ensure this happens will drive her actions for the remainder of the series.
- In Phoebe's vision, Wyatt's younger brother suddenly asks Phoebe for help. The vision fades back to reality, where it's Chris asking Phoebe for help. This allows Phoebe to put the pieces together on Chris's identity.
- Get Out!: Leo's exact words to Chris after catching Chris allowing a demon to do some kind of scan on Wyatt.
- Godzilla Threshold: When explaining to Paige why he brought in a demon, Chris says he was desperate to make progress on saving Wyatt and that he's running out of time. The Wham Line in Phoebe's vision explains the latter.
- Headless Horseman: But of course, and he prowls Magic School. Zachary is revealed to be the one responsible, saying he designed him solely to attack evil. Zachary meant the teachers that he felt were keeping him from his home and family, but when the Horseman gets into the real world, he took the head of a violent, fully mortal criminal.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Zachary's telepathy is dismissed early on by Slick as a useless power compared to his own shape-shifting or the other featured abilities. It turns out a skilled telepath can tap into other people's powers and make use of them, and Zachary is far more skilled than it would appear.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Piper bristles about sending Wyatt to the school because of this.
- Innocuously Important Episode: Gideon won't be another in the line of one-off Elders; he's going to be the season's Big Bad.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Upon learning Zachary is the culprit, Gideon kicks himself for focusing on nurturing the powers rather than trying to help the individual.
- After Phoebe and Paige lose their heads, Zachary is said to have done this off-screen. He hates the school and the teachers, but he regrets having to go after the sisters, as well as a mortal getting killed. It's how Phoebe knows he's not the vicious villain he's pretending to be.
- Never My Fault: After he's outed for causing all this, Zachary insists that Gideon and the teachers gave him no choice and are the ones truly responsible. Phoebe says she can sense a great deal of personal sorrow in him driving this attitude.
- "Not So Different" Remark: The sisters talk Zachary down by talking about how magic interferes with their lives, too, and that they had to accept it's part of who they are.
- Off with His Head!: Oh, what do you think?
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: While on the table, the sisters are readying a spell to stop the Horseman and restore themselves. Phoebe absentmindedly suggests they put their heads together, much to Piper's irritation.
- Poor Communication Kills: Gideon points out Zachary could've just expressed his frustrations over being at the school to him or the other teachers rather than go through all this Horseman business. Zachary insists his resentment was obvious from all the times he tried to sneak out and got into trouble.
- Power Copying: Zack is using his telepathy to duplicate other students' powers, keeping anyone from realizing that he is responsible for conjuring the Headless Horseman.
- Red Herring: Sigmund's class is made of up students who each have powers that could be behind all this. Slick (the shape-shifter) in particular is outwardly obnoxious and a bully.
- The Reveal: Chris is Wyatt's younger brother, and if Piper and Leo don't get together soon enough, he'll cease to exist.
- Sadist: Zachary could've gone after Gideon much earlier, but he wanted to dismantle the school because he knew how much that would hurt the Elder.
- Sympathy for the Devil: The Horseman's one actual casualty was a violent criminal. Gideon nonetheless considers it regrettable, as this guy was strictly mortal and thus should've have been punished with magic.
- Telepathy: Zachary's power, which allows him to tap into other people's powers and do things beyond his age and experience.
- Vision Quest: Phoebe is sent on one by a Shaman studying at Magic School. It shows her a vision of the future where Piper has a second son (Chris), Paige is Headmistress at the school and Phoebe herself is now pregnant.
- Wham Line: In Phoebe's vision of the future, she sees an older Wyatt, accompanied by another little boy.Piper: Wyatt, let your little brother play with the game, please.
- Wizarding School: The Magic School run by Gideon as a place for young magic-users to learn the craft and their powers without fear of expsoure. In a twist on the usual depiction of this trope, Zachary is deeply unhappy about being at the school and separated from his family. Gideon didn't take Zachary's previous attempts to explain how miserable he was seriously, assuming the boy just needed time to adjust, which led to him acting out and summoning the Horseman.
