AVATAR ROOTS

[Scott]

There are two sources to the Avatar story arc. The first can be found in Season 5 "Sam, I Am" when Cole first meets the Avatars, a powerful group of "god-like" entities who are neither good nor evil. The Avatars seek to recruit Cole to join their group in order to increase their own powers and to provide Cole for a way out of the dilemma into which he is increasingly being jammed into. Preferring not to engage in evil acts, but incapable of being purely good, Cole cannot avoid the temptation to use his "demonically" rooted powers to avenge bad acts. He vanquishes to would-be robbers at the biker bar after they have interrupted his drinking binge by unleashing a bullet barrage across the bar that shatters Cole's whiskey glass, penetrates his body and exposes him as a strange entity who can self-heal.

The Avatars return in Centennial Charmed when Cole agrees to join them in return for the power he needs to create an alternative reality, one in which Paige does not survive to reconstitute the Charmed Ones and Cole cum Belthazor has not been stripped of his powers after the vanquishing of Belthazor.

The other source of the Avatar story arc lies in Season 6. In "The Legend of Sleepy Halliwell" Phoebe goes on a vision quest at Magic School. There, she not only gains an important clue as to the true identity of Chris and a promise of a daughter, but she also sees a world free of demons, just the kind of world that the Avatars will promise to usher in during Season 7.

[Xenith]

In Legend of Sleepy Halliwell, I don't really get where Phoebe got "a life without demons" when she saw less than 5 minutes of the future in which no one said anything about being demon free? Sure everything looked normal and everyone seemed happy and all, but they've always had occassional "down" times of days, weeks, and I think possibly even months without a major demon attack. So how from those 5 minutes does Phoebe know she will be demon free in the future... Uh-uh she wants to be demon free, and when she sees a happy future just assumes it is without evidens, so although this "vision quest" would later lead Phoebe down the path that would shred the last bit of love that many people had for her character, I don't see it in any way related to the avatar's world.

[vandergraafk]

Well, one could equally argue that the scene in front of the school where Phoebe greets her daughter, as well as Piper's boys, convinces her that the Avatar world would be demon free, too. Exactly how that two minute vision convinces her is also quite incredible. Piper doesn't buy it in the least, not until the mortal who has absorbed Phoebe's vision relates the same dream in Ordinary Witches. Clearly, the scene in Sleepy Halliwell, although ostensibly leading to the outing of Chris, serves a secondary role, namely, to foreshadow the return of the Avatars. We didn't know it at the time, but I believe that we were already being set up.

[laiste]

I would think that its a given that phoebe gets information in her visions that we, the viewers, aren't privy to- like exactly what emotions she's feeling as well as a sense of "knowing" of things outside of the exact event described. Think of how we know whats going in in a dream even if we don't know how we know.

I have a question- (not sure if this is the best place for it) but how is it that Cole as an Avatar had enough power to change that much of the past? If the Avatars were that powerful then they surely would have had enough power to implement their plan?

Even though we never saw it, is it possible that the Avatars first approached Cole with thier floating head things thereby conributing to his madness?

[Scott]

I rather doubt they needed to terrorize Cole with the floating heads. Cole clearly knew that he could never ever be entirely good. And, he certainly did not wish to do evil. He recognized, though, that using his powers might ultimately corrupt him, despite whatever good intentions he might have. As a result, the Avatars did not have to persuade Cole that much. Yes, he did resist their initial offer, but he was intrigued enough to call upon them again. Of course, Cole wanted something out of the bargain, if he were to become an Avatar. He got his wish: an alternative world, one where he could be Belthazor once again.

Now, did the Avatars have enough power to create an alternative world? Certainly. If so, why shouldn't they have had enough power to alter this world? It's a fair question to ask. However, it's also misleading. Nothing in Cole's alternative world suggests independent actors creating their own fates through their own actions. Had Paige not orbed into this alternate plane of existence, no one would have risen to challenge Cole. It was only Paige's unfortunate presence that kept Cole from realizing his own nightmare scenario.

Cole's alternate reality is not even one that he is happy in. He isn't happy because the reality that he created was based on a fundamental misconception. He imagined that he and Phoebe had been happiest when Cole was still Belthazor. He surmised further that if only Paige hadn't reconstituted the Charmed Ones that he and Phoebe would have lived happily ever after. But neither of these assumptions is correct. Phoebe was at her happiest when Cole was human. In a demonically controlled manor, Phoebe succumbed to the cynical existence that Cole found when he entered into this alternate past.

The real world manipulation that the Avatar collective were trying to create would at least allow the semblance of independent action. True, dysfunctional individuals would be removed. Otherwise, life would go on as normal. Men and women would, however, be freed of conflict. To create this type of world more power was required.