After the death of the character of Prue Halliwell, in the finale of season 3 of Charmed, the character played by Shannen Doherty disappeared completely from the series. Find out the reasons for this absence.
On October 7, 1998, the American channel WB launched the broadcast of Charmed, a fantastic series of a new genre whose story was centered on the Halliwell sisters, camped by Alyssa Milano, Holly Marie Combs and Shannen Doherty, as they discovered that they were the descendants of a powerful family of witches.
For 8 seasons, viewers have seen them learn to master the Power of Three in order to fight against evil and the demons who wanted to destroy them to claim their powers.
A turbulent start
If the series created by Constance M. Burge and produced by Aaron Spelling, quickly aroused the enthusiasm of the public, it was not exempt from its share of scandals. The most notorious being of course the ousting of Shannen Doherty, alias Prue Halliwell, at the end of season 3.
A turbulent start which would be the result of tensions between the actress and her co-star Alyssa Milano. At the time, Shannen Doherty confided in an interview with Entertainment Tonight that she left the series because there was “too much drama on set, and not enough passion for the job. You know, I’m 30 and I don’t have time for this kind of story in my life anymore..”
Why did Prue completely disappear from the show?
While Prue’s death in the Season 3 finale of Charmed broke the hearts of many fans, the loss of one of their favorite character wasn’t the only reason for their upset.
The most seasoned viewers will indeed have noticed that following the death of Prue all traces of the character had disappeared from the series. The iconic photo of the three sisters taken in front of the mansion, which in previous seasons were always prominent, had evaporated from the series.
Shannen Doherty also never appeared in the flashbacks that there may have been in the following seasons, unlike the character of Andy (Ted King), who died in season 1.
In 2016, during an interview with TV Linethe producer and showrunner of Charmed, Brad Kern, explained the reasons for this strange disappearance: “I tried like mad to get her to appear in flashbacks and hang pictures of her on the walls, but the studio told me – and I later learned that wasn’t really true – that we would have to pay her a per-episode fee just to use a picture of her. We didn’t have the means. Well that’s what I was told.”
In this same interview, Brad Kern also explained that he blamed himself for not having included Shannen Doherty in the finale of Charmed. “We just didn’t think that one could be done – that she would want to do it or that the channel was okay with bringing her back. We may have been wrong.”
The showrunner would have liked to be able to include at least a photo of Prue in the final cut of the last episode of Charmed but that could not be done either. “Can’t complete Charmed without honoring Prue“, he thus admitted.
“But the leaders made it clear to us that it was almost impossible to achieve, and that it was going to cost us a lot of money. So I had to make a choice: use the money to pay for a single photo or rather take it to bring Patty Halliwell, Penny Halliwell or even Leo back?“Charmed therefore ended on May 21, 2006, after 8 seasons, without any mention of the character of Prue Halliwell…
Charmed airs every night Monday through Friday from 4:20 p.m. on 6ter. The series is also available in full on Prime Video.