9.10 – Dates With Death
The night is just beginning at P3 with a completely booked out evening where tonight's live band- Evermore (guest stars as themselves)- is playing. The Charmed Ones and their men are enjoying themselves in the VIP lounge, talking and appreciating their surroundings. Paige (Rose McGowan) has been quite the happy woman since she learned of her pregnancy last week, and her husband Henry (Ivan Sergei) has been overwhelmed with excitement knowing he's now a father-to-be. Paige has also been a little anxious about the unborn baby because she's worried for its wellbeing while she's out fighting demons. Piper's (Holly Marie Combs) success with the club is going strong but her desire for her new restaurant is increasing, continually looking into buying the local restaurant she's been watching for a few months. Piper wants a change in her life because she's basically had the same routine and lifestyle for over eight years. Leo (Brian Krause), however, is rather pleased at this point in his life and thinks running Magic School was the right job for him after all. Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) has at last accepted her boyfriend's long absence, certain he'll return one day, and has been using her job as an advice columnist to keep her mind off the bad things that are happening in her life. As Evermore continues to play and the Charmed Ones are sitting around laughing, there's much darkness and gloom down below in the Underworld where five evil beings await. As these five cloaked figures begin to discuss, we learn that they are called the Constituent- a faction of upper-level demons who together make up the five Taoist elements; water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. They've been planning their best way to attack and ultimately kill the Charmed Ones for a long time and they've only just started putting their strategy into action.
The next morning at the Halliwell Manor, Piper is left at the house alone because Leo had to go to the school early and her sons spent the night with her father. While she cleans up her breakfast dishes and begins to tidy the home, she is visited by a very familiar face. As Piper scrubs the sink in the bathroom, she looks into the mirror to see the Angel Of Death (guest star Simon Templeman) is standing behind her. Panicking, afraid that it may be her time to die, Piper is quick to act when this neutral being appears exactly a year after she had last seen him. In spite of this, the Angel Of Death calmly tells Piper that he is not here to take anybody and instead he is back to teach her a valuable lesson. In moments, the pair is whisked away in a cloud of blue smoke to a place outside time and space. Meanwhile at the Bay Mirror, Phoebe is busy working on meeting a deadline when Paige visits her office. Paige has visited Phoebe to ask some advice about her pregnancy. Phoebe is confused as to why her sister is asking her and not Piper, but Paige claims that speaking about it to an actual advice columnist is better and after all Phoebe has been pregnant once. Soon, it becomes apparent to Phoebe that Paige is asking her these questions because she seems to be scared that her unborn baby won't make it out into the world alive and since Phoebe's been through a similar circumstance she wanted to hear it from someone who knows more about that kind of thing. But the sister's conversation is cut short when Phoebe's boss Elise (guest star Rebecca Balding) reminds them that a certain paper is due in a couple of hours.
The Angel Of Death and Piper re-appear at what seems to be Camp Skylark. There is nobody around at the moment so the Angel Of Death takes this time to tell Piper why he's returned. He informs her that she's been abusing death lately by secretly vanquishing demons because of her inner vengeance about the losses in her life and now enough is enough. If she continues to take the lives of beings, whether they're good or bad, she will disrupt the flow of death eternally. Instead of killing to find enlightenment, the Elders have requested the Angel Of Death to show Piper all the past deaths that have shaped her so that she can feel the loss and pain of them all at once to make her realize that fatality can affect more than just feelings. From the beginning, the events each take place once more. Piper's own mother, Patty, rushes onto the dock over a lake. Patty's Whitelighter, Sam, can be seen running towards her as she grabs a pair of power cables. Patty uses her power to freeze Sam and the lake suddenly rises as the Water Demon engulfs her, drowning Patty from the inside. Piper stays strong and tries to not think about that painful death. Then she appears in the Halliwell Manor's hallway when she can hear somebody locking the attic door followed by an agonizing scream. Piper's grandmother tumbles down the stairs after having a heart attack. Piper watches on as her past self hurries to her Grams.
In the present, Paige has made her way to Magic School where she is reading in the vast library. She can't help but overhear a conversation between some students about a new evil arising. One of the students claims to have seen the Charmed Ones battling five powerful demons in a Premonition, voicing this aloud unbeknownst that Paige is in the school. The girl tells her classmates that she believes the magical community is in for major chaos when these demons arrive because she also saw an apocalypse if the three sisters do not win. Paige doesn't think for a moment before stepping towards the girl and her friends. Paige asks to speak to the girl in private, which soon clarifies to Paige that a pending faction is reaching them in the coming weeks. She goes to the Halliwell Manor, looking for Piper, but searches the Book of Shadows instead.
Piper now witnesses the death of an old friend she'd met only weeks after becoming a witch. Mark Chao is walking in an alley when a mob of fellow Asians injure the young man and set him on fire. Piper cringes before being sent back to the Halliwell Manor to see the death of one of the family's closest friends, and her sister's boyfriend, Andy Trudeau at the hands of a demon. Piper sighs and wants to go back to the normal time but the Angel Of Death tells her that she hasn't finished her ride through memory lane. Turning around, Piper notices that she is in a dark monastery and three people suddenly Orb in. Piper is about to feel the heartache of the worst moment in her whole life, the death of her eldest sister affected Piper so much that it changed her completely. A past Leo and a past Paige are in the room as past Piper begins to shout and yell prior to crying over her sister's plaque. This scene brings present Piper to tears, crying uncontrollably. She demands to be taken home but is instead shown another incident when Piper herself is being killed by the ghosts of Leo's old friends from war. The Angel Of Death tells Piper that she has to get over the deaths of her loved ones as well as the countless times she's died too.
Phoebe meets Paige in the Halliwell Manor's attic where Paige has found who she is looking for in the Book of Shadows. She explains the details of the Constituent to her sister as they begin to look for Piper who can't be found anywhere. The sister's continue to discuss the Constituent as they become wary about this new threat which is stated in the Book of Shadows to be highly dangerous. Meanwhile, Piper has just finished watching both her two sister's die by being turned to dust by a past demon Bacarra. This leads onto the death of Phoebe's ex-husband Cole Turner in his penthouse some five years back, followed by the loss of her future son Chris with Leo by his side. Then, of-course, there was the time the Charmed Ones broke all the rules of death and faked their own demise by disguising themselves as cousins of the Halliwell sisters. The Angel Of Death shows Piper the most recent of deaths and, as he bids her farewell, he leaves her to watch the ultimate battle between the Power Of Three and sister's Billie and Christy last year. As she sees the Halliwell Manor explode again and she watches herself find past Phoebe dead in the debris, she is suddenly transported back to the present alongside her two siblings in absolute tears.
Late that night, the Charmed Ones are resting in the conservatory. Piper has shared her day and the meaning behind it to Phoebe and Paige, and Phoebe and Paige have explained their new risk- the Constituent- to Piper. Piper is now content with death and believes that she has the closure on it that she's really needed in the last few months. As the sisters begin to fall asleep in each other's embrace, Leo and Henry walk into the house after a night out. The two men adore the sleeping women before going into the kitchen to have a late-night snack. All of a sudden, a masked demon emerges from the shadows and kidnaps both Leo and Henry. Neither have any way of getting away from the demon as they are equally mortal. All this happens while the three sisters are napping in the other room.
