TV series fans who hear of “witches” would probably remember the Charmed series, be it the Halliwell sisters of the Warner Bros. iteration, or the Vera sisters of The CW remake. Regardless, their sisterly love, unique set of powers, and dealings with vastly-different supernatural threats cemented their place as perhaps the most iconic witches in television history.
However, fans of the Charmed franchise who want to take a deep dive into the series would probably want to explore the lore further. And fans of their fictional match-ups might want to determine just who are the strongest witches in both the original Warner Bros. version and The CW remake.
10 Kaela Danso
Artist Kaela Danso is the newest of the Vera-Vaughn Charmed Ones, arriving to complete the triad after Macy’s unfortunate death. Thanks to Kaela, the Charmed Ones received a renewed sense of the world through her wild and unpredictable nature - adding a unique blend of impulse and fun to everything.
This manifests in her power of manifestation, allowing her to “conjure” her artworks into reality, be it in the form of objects or actual people. She begins training to evolve into other forms of projection, such as drawing objects to mimic their properties and powers and even replicating objects that she draws. While possessing vast potential, Kaela’s lack of training makes her weaker against other witches.
9 Maggie Vera
Characteristically of the youngest sister, Maggie Vera is extremely extroverted, kind-hearted, and bubbly. In fact, she exhibits a great degree of empathy even before her power manifestation but suffers from insecurities. She eventually grows out of this as she develops her powers, which mainly come in the form of foresight that lets her get psychic visions from touching anything and even in her sleep. This grows into letting her actively foresee things around her, helping her become an adept fighter.
Her powers expand into emotional inception, allowing her to project her emotions unto others. She can use this to help calm those experiencing berserk or even wake herself up from hypnotic trances.
8 Paige Matthews
Serving as the fourth Halliwell Charmed One, Paige Matthews is at first unaware of her legacy due to being separate from her half-sisters. Raised by herself, Paige grew up extremely independent and rebellious. Being the daughter of Whitelighter Sam Wilder, Paige inherited the Whitelighter’s altruistic nature and seeks to help people as much as she could. Most importantly, Paige’s tendency to go out of tradition has helped her and her sisters in more ways than one.
Due to her heritage, Paige’s abilities manifest in wildly different ways. Like a Whitelight, Paige can “orb” herself and teleport vast distances, but she can extend this to other people, objects, and even magical attacks. Her orbs can become a barrier to absorb attacks and repel enemies as well. What makes Paige powerful are her other abilities, all stemming from her Whitelighter heritage, such as hovering and healing, changing her appearance (glamouring), manipulating light (photokinesis), invisibility, and omnilingualism.
7 Phoebe Halliwell
The youngest of the Halliwell Charmed Ones, Phoebe Halliwell exhibits a remarkable rebellious streak highlighted with open-mindedness and free-spiritedness that gives her sisters a renewed look around the world. However, Phoebe also has a remarkable memory, creativity, and dedication, letting her use these to her advantage as a witch.
At first glance, Phoebe’s powers seem extremely passive, being that of premonition. However, this evolves into intuition that allows her to sense and dodge attacks, and even do astral premonitions - as in projecting herself into her own premonitions. Her premonition eventually becomes empathy, allowing her to psychically reflect memories and feelings, channel emotions to deflect attacks, and even “channel” the energies of other people - drawing from them not just memories and emotions, but even powers.
6 Macy Vaughn
Calculating and analytical to a fault, one might mistake Macy Vaughn to be as cold just as she is brilliant. However, Macy is extremely kind to people close to her and is willing to protect everyone she cares for, especially sisters Mel and Maggie. It’s this keen sense of logic and intellect that manifests into her power of telekinesis, allowing her to manipulate things with her mind and even deflect magical attacks. Such is her control over this power that she’s able to project energy beams and advanced telekinetic feats such as stopping and restarting someone’s heart.
Her powers eventually evolve into giving her pyrokinesis, allowing her to tap into her demon-nature to produce dangerous fires. It’s her nature that also gives her a degree of pain resistance, voice manipulation, demonic translation, and even the Evil Sight - allowing her to remotely see acts of evil in the past and present.
5 Mel Vera
Passionate and outspoken about things she cares about, Mel Vera will fiercely protect the things she loves - giving her a sense of responsibility. Born with a sense of leadership, she’s always assumed a leadership role among the Charmed Ones, which ties closely to her role as the middle child.
Serving as the counterpart to Piper Halliwell, Mel also starts with the power to “stop” things around her - but this first manifests via temporal stasis. Mel eventually evolves this into temporal manipulation entirely, being able to perform temporal acceleration and even outright time traveling. This ability eventually expands into molecular manipulation, first manifesting as molecular inhibition to stop the movement of things and then molecular acceleration to heat them up and explode. Although possessing the most flexible powers of the Vera Charmed Ones, her lack of active combat experience makes Mel not as powerful.
4 Piper Halliwell
Second-oldest to the original Halliwell Charmed Ones, Piper Halliwell is the epitome of the middle child - stabilizing, caring, and maternal, with her own unique brand of sarcasm and quick wit. She takes on a leadership role among the Charmed Ones upon Prue’s death, and it’s her stepping up despite her hatred of supernatural attacks ruining her day-to-day life that forced Piper to grow into one of the most powerful witches of all time.
Originally possessing the power of molecular immobilization, Piper eventually manages to learn molecular manipulation entirely - including molecular combustion, energy deflection, and molecular acceleration. It’s this evolution, alongside Piper’s combat experience, that makes her significantly more powerful compared to her sisters and her reboot counterparts.
3 Prue Halliwell
Eldest of the original Charmed Ones, Prue Halliwell is true to her namesake - prudent, as she is smart and extremely responsible. Having practically raised Piper and Phoebe when they were small, Prue has an unbridled sense of determination with an equal amount of caution. Her quick learning and adaptability let her live up to the prophecy - that the eldest of the Charmed Ones was the strongest, which was something Piper would fulfill upon Prue’s unfortunate demise. Such was Prue’s potential that her “resurrection” as Patience once led to her becoming the Nexus of the All, or all of the universe’s energy.
During her time as an active witch, Prue has telekinesis, allowing her to move objects. This eventually allows her to transport things through teleportation, and even deflect magical energies. Her telekinesis grows to such an advanced state that she can create powerful telekinetic blasts. Prue’s power evolution grows into astral projection, allowing her to project her astral self outside her body and across various places while still being able to cast spells.
2 Melinda Warren
When Charlotte Warren thought of giving up on her marriage, a witch named Isabel - who would turn out to be Neena - convinced her otherwise, directing her to another witch called Eva who could take care of her and her child, who would be Melinda Warren. She would turn out to be the one to start the Warren line of witches, which would eventually cultivate into the arrival of “the most powerful witches” - the Charmed Ones.
Even in her prime, Melinda was a force to reckon with. Aside from her spellcasting, Melinda possesses all the original powers of the Charmed Ones: telekinesis, premonition, and molecular immobilization. Given the scale of her powers, Melinda is arguably the most powerful witch in existence at her time.
1 Neena
One could say that the most powerful member of any supernatural cadre would be the first to possess its powers, and this is probably the position Neena would hold as the First Witch. Being the matriarch of entire lines of spellcasters such as witches, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, and shamans, Neena is easily the most influential among witches as well.
Neena wasn’t originally “just” a witch, however. Her real power came from her tapping into the Nexus, essentially making her immortal and invulnerable. Such was her newfound power that the world became at risk, and as such had to separate with her equally-empowered partner to preserve it. As a witch, Neena isn’t just resistant to magic but boasts elemental manipulation, power negation, and power absorption.