The Weird Sisters

"In effect, however, those three were sisters as well as mothers, just as there are three Muses, three Graces, three Fates, and three Furies."

—The Three Mothers, Inferno (1980)

Supernatural women often form teams of three. The most common variant types are witches, fairy godmothers, and female seers. They may or may not be actual sisters.

The Trope Codifier for the modern era are the three prophetic witches of Macbeth, who have also supplied or reinforced other classic witch stereotypes like warty noses, bubbling cauldrons, and animal familiars. Shakespeare's magical trio, however, is itself based in folklore with roots in pre-Christian mythology, namely, the belief in a trinity of goddesses whose job in the greater order of things is to assign fate to us mortals. This notion can be traced back to the Moirai or "Fates" of Greek Mythology (though probably not much further).

The women of fate were not categorically friendly nor hostile, as they distributed both the good and the bad things in life. When Christianity did away with the goddesses of old, the trio lived on in fairy tales and folklore under new labels, although they now were more likely to be limited to either a harmful or a helpful role—either as Wicked Witches who make bad things happen to people just because, or benign Fairy Godmothers who aid and protect. What has remained is that whenever such magical women appear in groups, there tend to be three of them.

A third reincarnation of the three women of fate is a trio of seers who predict fate, but do not interfere with it directly. When the Weird Sisters are more specifically embodying or invoking the goddesses of fate, they will be equipped with spinning or weaving tools, working the Threads of Fate.

Generally, a mortal is most likely to encounter the Weird Sisters at the important times in life—birth, coming-of-age, death, any major turning point or crisis between these times.

The Trope Namer is not strictly Macbeth, but its direct source, the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland by Raphael Holinshed, which opines that the three prophetic ladies who met Macbeth

"were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries, indued with knowledge of prophesie by their necromanticall science."

In the Macbeth print of 1623, the three witches are referred to as "weyward" respectively "weyard Sisters". This is variously rendered as "wayward" or "weird" by modern editions, and suggests that Shakespeare's contemporaries were uncertain about the meaning and spelling of the phrase. In reality, "weird" is a Scots derivative from Old English wyrd, which means "fate". As the word was not widely known then, it were the very "Weird Sisters" of Holinshed and Shakespeare that led to the word being re-interpreted as "uncanny", "supernatural". This was the primary meaning of "weird" until relatively recently.

In most instances from genuine mythology or folklore, the Weird Sisters are either all of the same or similar age, or one of them is distinctly older or younger than the other two. Only when each of the three has their own distinct profile, they may be the The Hecate Sisters. The Three Faces of Eve usually does not apply, because a Weird Sister may be a maiden, a mother, or a crone, but almost never a child. May be a Power Trio, a Terrible Trio, or The Dividual.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Little Witch Academia (2017) has this as part of its setting. All the witches-in-training at the Wizarding School are divided into 3-girl covens who do almost everything together.
• Texhnolyze has Kano's three mothers. There are no explanations about their nature in the anime, but their look and behavior are heavily inspired by the Moirai. The surreal character of the anime, and its multiple links to Classical Mythology, don't help.
• Tweeny Witches:
  • Arusu, Sheila, and Eva are three apprentice witches who live together in Dragon House. They have no name as a group until 'Magical Girl Squad', where they form the Magical Girl Squad at Arusu's suggestion.
  • The Three Sages are secondary leaders of witches.
  • The special task force are a trio of combat-oriented witches sent by Atelia to recapture the fairies Arusu has released back to the wild.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! (first anime series) has the villainous Kageyama Sisters, witch triplets who duel with a Hecate-themed deck and often quote Macbeth.

Arts

• Parcas by Gabriel Grün features nude, red-headed triplets handing a singular thread of gold in a manner that evokes The Fates from Classical Mythology.

Comic Books

• In the Vertigo Comics joint universe, the Three are the powerful women goddesses of various aspects of reality, and have many incarnations, including as the Moirae, goddesses of fate, and the Furies, goddesses of revenge. They appear often in the The Sandman (1989), in which Dream often consults with them when he is in doubt. Female characters in general often fall into groups of three, which may or may not indicate that they're becoming an aspect of the Three.
• In Marvel Comics' limited series Witches, Doctor Strange recruits the three youthful witches Jennifer Kale, Satana Hellstrom and Topaz to combat an Ancient Evil.
• Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia, The Erinyes ^note  The Furies are present throughout the story and later revealed to have instigated the events that led to the plot.
• Wonder Woman: Black and Gold: In "The Wager", it's revealed in this story that Diana forged the Lasso of Truth with help from the Fates (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos).

Films — Animated

• The Black Cauldron: The witches of Morva, a trio of neutral witches who possess the titular artifact.
• Hercules: The three Fates visit Hades at the beginning of the movie and warn him about Hercules's destiny to defeat him should he attempt to start a coup on Olympus.
• Shrek: The Three Fairies from Sleeping Beauty appear as fairytale characters banished to Shrek's swamp.
• Sleeping Beauty: The three good fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather attend princess Aurora's baptismal celebration to confer blessings on Aurora, and after take Aurora in their care in order to protect her from Maleficent's curse.

Films — Live-Action

• The Craft has Nancy, Bonnie and Rochelle who - although searching for a fourth witch to create a Classical Elements Ensemble to round out their air, water, and fire trio - are still separate from Sarah. They become the film's antagonists in the third act.
• Hocus Pocus revolves around the Evil Plan of three witches, the Sanderson sisters, to suck out the souls of the children of Salem, Massachusetts. Sarah is a ditzy young blond, Mary is a fat goofball, and Winifred is the scheming leader who takes herself too seriously.
• Maleficent: In a perspective flip of Disney's Sleeping Beauty, princess Aurora is given into the care of the three female pixies Knotgrass, Flittle and Thistlewit, who however are rather incompetent at the task of raising and protecting their ward.
• Oz the Great and Powerful follows the same tradition, with three witch characters; Glinda, Evanora and Theodora.
• Pointedly averted in Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa's Japanese-language jidaigeki adaptation of Macbeth. This trope doesn't really exist in witch folklore in Japan, so the three witches of the play were combined into a single character, visually coded to be more in line with the Japanese idea of what a witch (or rather, onibaba) is.
• The Witches of Eastwick revolves around a trio of single women who, by their weekly get-togethers, unknowingly form a witches' coven and discover they have the power to make wishes come true when all three of them make the same wish together.
• The Wizard of Oz combines two witches from the book into one - so there are now three instead of four: The Wicked Witch if the West, her sister the Wicked Witch of the East, and Glinda the Good Witch of the North.

Literature

• Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577) relates how the Scottish nobles Macbeth and Banquo, returning from a victorious battle and riding through "woods and fields" without companions, meet "three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of [an] elder world" in a forest clearing. Of these the first greets Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, the second as Thane of Cawdor, and the third as "Macbeth that hereafter shall be king of Scotland". When Banquo inquires whether they have prophecies for him too, the women predict that Banquo's descendants will be kings, whereas Macbeth will leave no heir. The prophecy that he will be king eventually encourages Macbeth (with Banquo's help) to kill King Duncan and usurp the kingdom.
  [T]he common opinion was, that these women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destinie, or else some nymphs or feiries, indued with knowledge of prophesie by their necromanticall science, bicause euerie thing came to passe as they had spoken.
• The Chronicles of Prydain: Orwen, Orddu, and Orgoch, three sisters who live in the Marshes of Morva, are hundreds (if not thousands) of years old and masters of magic. All of them appear as young beauties at night and old crones in daylight. Each of them has their distinct personality, but oddly they also seem to take turns at being each sister and are able to swap their identities between them. When Taran visits them in The Black Cauldron, they are just weaving a magical tapestry. They will never give anything for free, but are willing to bargain, or to offer advice if they like you. Word of God has it that they're also the Fates, the Furies, the Morrigan, and probably a lot more that they don't feel inclined to share.
• Creature of Havoc has a Dark Is Not Evil example with the Daughters of Dree, a trio of witch sisters who despite looking like stereotypical Wicked Witches, are on the side of good and uses their magic to help the titular protagonist.
• Discworld: Wyrd Sisters introduces the "coven" of the Lancre Witches, formed by Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick (from Maskerade onwards replaced by Agnes Nitt). Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum explain why three witches are required for a coven: Two witches get on each other's nerves; the third one can get them to make up, so they can all get on the nerves of everyone else. If you go beyond three, the result is "a bloody great row, usually".
• Dracula: Invoked when Jonathan Harker in his journal refers to the three Brides of Dracula as "those weird sisters". Though otherwise fit the bill, they're powered by dark magic, have displayed some slight magical abilities (flying, hypnosis, etc), are otherwordly beings and likely thousands of years old but still look beautiful.
• Dresden Files: The villains in Blood Rites are a trio of evil ex-wives attempting to use a ritual curse to murder their ex-husband's possible suitors, to protect their alimonies. A magical ritual requires at least three participants to work properly, and Dresden notes that this is where the Weird Sisters "three witches cackling around a cauldron" stereotype comes from.
• When her boys were young, Agape from The Faerie Queene went to see the three Fates to learn their future. They appear pretty much as described in Greek and Roman myths. They go by the names Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos and spend their days pulling, spinning, and cutting the threads of life.
• In the "History of Troilus and Zellandine", an episode from the chivalric romance Perceforest (France, 14th century), three goddesses attend the birth celebration of princess Zellandine. Lucina (the goddess of childbirth) confers health on Zellandine, the second, Themis (the goddess of divine law), curses her to prick her finger on a distaff and fall in a magical sleep; the third, Venus (goddess of love), promises that she will be released from Themis' curse.
• Night World: Rowan, Kestrel and Jade Redfern (the title characters of the second book Daughters of Darkness) are a trio of vampire sisters (lamia, specifically). They're not seen as particularly weird on the lamia enclave where they were raised, save for the fact they're a bit more independent and free-thinking than their family would like, but they definitely stand out in rural small-town Oregon, where they're some of the only Night People for miles. They also have witch ancestry, which their father blames for their rebellious ways (witches in Night World are matriarchal).
• Pale: Lucy, Verona, and Avery are three teenaged witches who are magically stronger when they stand together, due to the circumstancs of their awakening, and ceremonially garb themselves in wooden animal masks, pointy hats, and capes.
• Retired Witches Mysteries: Covens in this series are traditionally made up of three witches, though they're not usually related. However, Molly, Elsie and Olivia do think of one another as sisters.
• A Tale of...:
  • The Odd Sisters are the main antagonists of the series and appear in every book. They're witches that are involved with numerous wrongdoings in the Disney 'verse. They're a trio of identical triplets who are distant cousins of Snow White's father.
  • Discussed with Gothel and her two sisters. They're fraternal sisters but it's mentioned that identical triplet witches are considered special. As it turns out, Hazel and Primrose aren't Gothel's biological sisters. They're not even related to one another either. Their mother Manea stole them as infants to keep her daughter Gothel company.
• Warren the 13th: The villains are three witches named Annaconda, Scalene, and Isosceles who plot to find the magical All-Seeing Eye and use it for their own wicked purposes.
• In The Worst Witch from the second book onwards, Mildred is in a Power Trio with Maud and Enid. All three are apprentice witches. In the TV series they're in a Five-Man Band instead.

Live-Action TV

• Are You Afraid of the Dark?: "The Tale of Watcher's Woods" features a trio of Wicked Witches haunting the titular woods.
• Blackadder: Since the first season is basically a parody of Shakespeare's historical plays, the three crones a la Macbeth turn up at the end of the first episode, prophesying that Edmund shall be king. The Stinger reveals that they meant to give the prophecy to Henry Tudor, who had ridden by just before but didn't stop to chat. The prophecy still came true though, for about 30 seconds at the end of the series.
• Charmed (1998):
  • The Charmed Ones are a group of three sisters (or half-sisters), Piper, Prue and Phoebe, who are the most powerful witches of their day. While there are actually four of them, only three are ever the Charmed Ones at any given time. Paige was brought in after Prue's death.
  • "The Power of Three Blondes" introduced the Stillman Sisters, evil sisters who want to steal the Halliwells' powers.
  • "Repo Manor" also had a trio of demons who were emulating the sisters in the hopes of stealing their powers to vanquish an enemy.
• Chilling Adventures of Sabrina:
  • Prudence, Agatha, and Dorcas are the Alpha Bitch/Girl Posse version of this. They're even called the Weird Sisters by the other characters.
  • Sabrina and her aunts Zelda and Hilda are a more heroic example.
• Doctor Who: In "The Shakespeare Code", there is a trio of witches consisting of one maiden and two crones. They are a Shout-Out to Macbeth.
• Winnie in Free Spirit (1989) is the central of three witch sisters. Only one of them appears in the show though; the major one Cassandra.
• Iron Fist (2017). Davos uses the Crane sisters (who appear to be a Family of Choice as they're a black-white-asian trio) for a ritual to steal the Iron Fist from Danny Rand. In a subversion, they turn out to be tattoo artists who were paid to do a job in the way Davos dictated. They don't know anything about how the supernatural aspects work.
• Kamen Rider Gotchard: The series features the Three Dark Sisters who serve as important antagonists. In this case, they are a trio of powerful alchemists who are even named after the three Fates.
• Legends of Tomorrow: Season 5 features the Three Fates. The Legends are surprised to learn that their Shapeshifter crewmate Charlie is actually Clotho, who rebelled against the other two centuries earlier and broke the Loom of Fate, because she believed humans should be allowed to shape their own destiny. Atropos and Lachesis, who are determined to rebuild it and restore what they see as the natural order, with none of this dangerous free will nonsense, form the Big Bad Duumvirate for the season.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The Dweller, The Nomad and The Ascetic are a trio of ambiguously aged, mysterious women capable of wielding magic, with the goal of searching for Sauron. Their characters were inspired by the old crones from Macbeth.
• Motherland: Fort Salem is set in a world where witches serve in a special branch of the United States Military. Upon arriving at basic they are grouped together in three-person units. They refer to the members of their units as sisters, the series follows the Bellweather Unit made up of Abigail, Raelle, and Tally.
• Once Upon a Time:
  • Season 4 features Ursula, Maleficent and Cruella De Ville teaming up to form the Queens of Darkness.
  • The Snow Queen arc involves a spell that requires three participants to represent Ingrid's sisters. Ingrid enchants Emma and Elsa to be immune to the Shattered Sight's effects.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch had the Fates showing up in Season 7 - annoyed that Sabrina helped a friend cheat death.
• Supernatural had one of the Fates show up. With a minor research flub, the one that showed up was Atropos, and she claimed that "her two sisters are bigger and badder than [Atropos] in every way."
• Witches of East End (book and TV show) revolves around a family of witches constituted by Joanna Beauchamp and her two grown-up daughters Ingrid and Freya. The show introduces a fourth witch, Wendy Beauchamp, who is Joanna's estranged sister.
• The Worst Witch: In the TV series Agatha Cackle (who had loads of accomplices in the book) is given two partners in Betty Bindweed and Millicent Coldstone.

Mythology

• Classical Mythology:
  • In Theogony, there are three Moirai or goddesses of fate: Clotho ("spinner") spins the thread of life at the birth of a human being, Lachesis ("allotter") measures it, and Atropos ("inevitable"), also called Aisa ("destiny"), cuts it when life is at its end. The Moirai are sometimes described as ugly old women, but are also depicted as young women in works of art. Their parentage varies between sources, but they are always sisters. Atropos is usually given as the oldest. The notion of three Moirai was codified by Theogony; in traditions predating Hesiod there are two Moirai or only one Moira. The basic meaning of moira is "lot" or "share".
  • The Roman equivalent of the Moirai are the Parcae, later also Fata "Fates", whose names are Nona, Decuma and Morta.
  • Hecate, the goddess of magic, necromancy, and crossroads, is often depicted as "triplicate" in Ancient Greek art, i.e. as three young and beautiful women standing back to back to each other or against a column. Paradoxically, all three women are Hecate.
• The Matrons (matronae, also matres "mothers", or matrae) were female deities worshipped by a syncretic cult practiced by Romans, Gauls and Germani in the provinces of the Western Roman Empire, chiefly in Gaul and the Rhine area, from the first to the third century CE. The matrons are exclusively known from stone images and inscriptions, which suggest that every tribe and place had its own matrons. While these matrons have no individual names that we know of, there are always three of them depicted together, usually one young unmarried woman and two elder married women.
• Irish Mythology: The goddess of war and fate known as the Morrígan is sometimes described as just one of three sisters collectively called 'the Morrígna'. The names of the three Morrígna, who are the "daughters of Ernmas", are variously given as Badb, Macha and Morrígan; Badb, Macha and Nemain; Badb, Macha and Anand; Fea, Erinn and Anand, and others. Both Badb and Anand are sometimes equated with the Morrígan.
• Sami Mythology: The three sisters Sáhráhkká, Uksáhkká and Juoksáhkka together govern childhood and in addition serve as goddesses for their separate areas of expertice. Uksáhkká (Door Goddess) governs and guards all entrances and exits. Juoksáhkká (Bow Goddess) decides that a child shall become a boy instead of a girl, and governs hunting and skiing. They are led by Sáhráhkká (the meaning of the word "Sáhr" is lost) who is the main goddess of birth, the protector of girl-children, and goddess of the hearth.
• Norse Mythology:
  • According to "Voluspa" in the Poetic Edda, the sacred Well of Urd is guarded by three Norns (goddesses of fate) by the names of Urd ("fate"), Verdandi ("happening") and Skuld ("destiny"). The guardians of the Well of Urd are consistently referred to as "maidens", although Prose Edda (in "Gylfaginning") specifies that Skuld is the youngest of the three.
  • Gesta Danorum: In Book 6, King Fridleif consults "the oracles of the Fates" to ask for how the life of his newborn son Olvar will turn out. He goes to "the house of the gods" where he finds three maidens who are sisters, of which the first two grant beauty, popularity and generosity; but the third one is malicious and rules that Olvar will be considered a miser. The text leaves ambiguous whether the three women are three seers, or the Fates themselves.
  • "The Tale of Norna-Gest": At Nornagest's birth, his father invites three seeresses to foretell Nornagest's fate; of these the two elder ones make good predictions but the youngest curses the baby. The three women are introduced as seers, but the youngest one is then referred to as a Norn, and she pronounces a curse (not a prophecy).
  • Valkyries, the supernatural women who determine who is going to die in a battle, are distinct from but related to Norns, insofar they too govern a (very specific) kind of fate. Valkyries frequently come in groups of three or multiples of three:
    • Poetic Edda: There is a list of six valkyries in "Voluspa" and a list of twelve in "Grimnismal". The young Helgi Hjorvardsson sees nine valkyries riding by, and the giantess Hrimgred mentions she has seen Helgi being followed by twenty-seven valkyries who protect him. Volund and his two brothers encounter three valkyries spinning flax on the shore of a lake, and by taking their swan garments prevent them from turning into birds and flying away.
    • Prose Edda: There is a list of three valkyries in "Gylfaginning" and a list of nine in "Skaldskaparmal".
    • Njal's Saga: On the day of the Battle of Clontarf, a Scottish clairvoyant watches twelve valkyries weaving on a loom made of weapons and human body parts, singing a song that predicts the outcome of the battle.

Theatre

• Hadestown has the Fates, who act to ensure that the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice must end in tragedy, however much Hermes and the audience might wish otherwise. They're described as three old women all dressed the same when they're young, dressed anywhere from asymmetrically to radically different from each other, and aren't always played by women. This is done deliberately to show them as otherworldly voices-in-the-head as much as characters.
• Macbeth:
  • Macbeth's descent into villainy is triggered by his encounter with three old and freakishly ugly witches who predict that he is destined to be king of Scotland, which prompts Macbeth to murder King Duncan. In act IV, Macbeth seeks out the witches again and receives three more prophecies which lull him into a false sense of security. While the witches manipulate Macbeth, their prophecies are truthful, just worded in ways apt to be misinterpreted by Macbeth, and they do not interfere with fate directly.
  • There are also three more witches who form the company of Heccat (Hecate), and who do not have any speaking lines.
• The Ring of the Nibelung:
  • In The Rhine-Gold, the Rhine-Maidens are three water-women who guard the magical Rhine-Gold, but lose it to Alberich who forges it into a magical ring. In Act 3 of Gotterdämmerung, Siegfried, the present owner of Alberich's ring, accidentally encounters the Rhine-Maidens who warn him about the curse of the ring and urge him to return it to the river. When Siegfried dismisses the warning, they predict Siegfried's death, which comes to pass.
  • In the beginning of Gotterdämmerung, the three Norns are seen weaving the thread of Destiny, and sing a song which predicts the burning of Valhalla and the end of the gods. The thread snaps suddenly, foreshadowing that their prophecy will come true by the end of the opera.

Video Games

• Final Fantasy X-2 - if you put all three characters in the Black Mage Dressphere (which evokes classic witch imagery) then you get this.
• God of War:
  • The Fates appear in God of War II as a six-foot tall warrior valkyrie with one breast visible, a giant, grotesquely fat woman with many arms and breasts and a stick-thin woman that seems to be partially made of darkness. The three are a dark representation of the Greek Moirai.
  • God of War Ragnarök has the Norns: Urð is an old crone who walks with a stick and reveals some pretty Awful Truths to Kratos, Freya and Mimir about their characters and the fates they write for themselves; Verðandi is a tall, slender matron who speaks like a narrator who's describing present events; and Skuld is a young woman who reads the protagonists' lines out loud along with them, which quickly drives them mad with frustration, which she will also mimic.
• Loom: The three Elders of the Guild of Weavers are named Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos like the Moirai of Greek Mythology. The Weavers have mastered the art of weaving "subtle patterns of influence into the very fabric of reality" and are the keepers of the Great Loom, a device that is able to predict the future as well as to manipulate reality.
• The Shin Megami Tensei games include the Fates - Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos - as separate demons that can be recruited. In some games, the three can be fused together in a special process to produce Norn, which is depicted as three goddesses united around a clock.
• Gruntilda and her sisters, Mingella and Blobbelda, in Banjo-Tooie.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: The Three Crones of Crookback Bog, witches and daughters of a woodland spirit who went insane, protect the wilderness of Velen from their mother and offer other services while demanding reverence and tribute, including human sacrifice (which they use to maintain illusions of eternal youth and beauty).
• A subtle example in World of Warcraft before the Cataclysm expansion overhauled Orgrimmar (and preserved in World of Warcraft: Classic). In the city, the troll mage trainers Deino, Enyo and Pephredo, all blindfolded and standing in a circle, seem to be designed to evoke this trope.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: SCP-1765 are three sisters that look like ghosts who have Reality Warping abilities. One day, they appeared at Area-37 and took control of the whole place, claiming that they were going to help the Foundation with their own research, with the whole place being transformed to accomodate their experiments and everyone inside used as test subjects. There were attempts to reclaim the area but they failed, so the Foundation just hopes the sisters stay there.
  • The first sister, SCP-1765-1, seems to be the leader of the group; her experiment is making people measure a bunch of pipes, but then she rearranges the pipes and they have to do everything again.
  • The second sister, SCP-1765-2, has a scottish accent, and her experiment is forcing people through a deadly game in a stadium, where fireballs are hurled at the contestants, and when someone dies, they respawn and have to try again. If they reach the end, they are still killed by a giant hammer
  • The third sister, SCP-1765-3, looks like an innocent child, and she uses the site director to pick ice cream flavors; it's implied he had to eat over 200,000 different flavors and many of them may be gross.

Western Animation

• Gargoyles: The Weird Sisters from Macbeth are recurring characters, though they're members of the Third Race rather than witches. They usually look like young women, identical except for their hair color, but can also appear as children, old women or gargoyles; sometimes Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder. Word of God says that they're the In-Universe inspiration for the Furies, Graces and Fates: each represents one of those roles, but they act in concert to bring about all three at once.
• The Simpsons:
  • In the segment "Easy-Bake Coven" of episode "Treehouse of Horror VIII", set in 1649 Springfield, Marge and her two elder twin sisters Patty and Selma are witches who intend to eat the children of the Springfieldians.
  • "Rednecks and Broomsticks": Lisa gets lost in the forest and runs into three teenage girls who are performing a Wiccan ritual. The way the three are first seen—three cowled figures around a cauldron—alludes to the witches of Macbeth. Eventually the three invite Lisa to be the fourth member of their "coven", but the induction is not complete when Chief Wiggum arrests the girls for witchcraft.
• Steven Universe: The Diamonds are supernatural Gem rulers that go by female pronouns. They're technically a quartet, but are usually shown in one trio that excludes White Diamond (in terms of interpersonal dynamics) or another that excludes Pink Diamond (in terms of Homeworld's current rulership).
• Winx Club has the recurring villainesses the Trix coven, made up of triplet witch sisters: Icy, Darcy, and Stormy. There are also their ancestors, the First Witches of the Magic Dimension, the Ancestral Witches Belladonna, Lyslis, and Tharma.

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