Holly Marie Combs Makes a Good Point About Reboot Culture

Charmed fans have had mixed feelings about the reboot that’s headed to CW this fall, but none as vocal nor as strong as Holly Marie Combs’.

Combs, who played Piper Halliwell in the original iteration of the show, has been consistently vocal about her displeasure regarding the reboot, which has been ballyhooed in the press as a “feminist” revamp of a show that was arguably feminist enough for its time. The new witches—multiracial and woke—will be tearing down the patriarchy, one spell at a time, which tracks with reboot culture and television in 2018 but does not sit well with Combs, who has been quite aggrieved.

She’s been sparring with executive producer and director for the reboot on Twitter, publicly shooting down claims that a reboot starring the original cast was unable to find financial backing. This fact, whether true or not, has stuck in her craw. On Monday, Yahoo published a story that quoted a brief interview Combs did with Huffington Post on the occasion of the trailer for the reboot’s release. This story apparently misrepresented what Combs said, so she decided to set the record straight on Twitter.

“I will never understand what is fierce, funny or feminist in creating a show that basically says the original actresses are too old to do a job they did 12 years ago,” she wrote and then panned the show’s marketing, adding that, “Reboots fair better when they honor the original as opposed to taking shots at the original.”

While I am certainly here for Holly Marie Combs, who also played Aria’s mom on Pretty Little Liars, standing up for the integrity of a show she clearly loved and continuing to do so for the duration, she’s making a valid point about reboots and reboot culture that should not be ignored. The original material is the referent, after all, so to sully the name of something beloved by making it a weird shadow of its former self does a disservice to the art that paved the way for your empowerment reboot. Honor your ancestors.