A version of this post originally appeared on Ten Daily.

The show follows Latinx sisters Mel (Melonie Diaz) and Maggie Vera (Sarah Jeffery) and Macy Vaughn (Madeleine Mantock) as they simultaneously discover their familial ties and their witchy powers.

There was some consternation about the modern reimagining when it was announced early last year by original stars Ayssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs. 

“… [D]on’t even think of capitalizing on our hard work. Charmed belongs to the 4 [sic] of us, our vast amount of writers, crews and predominantly the fans. FYI you will not fool them by owning a title/stamp. So bye,” Combs tweeted at the time.

“I think that [the remake] ruined the possibility of [having the original stars cameo] by the way in which the reboot came down. Like, the fact that we weren’t included from the very beginning. It just felt really disrespectful, you know?” Milano told US Weekly. Rose McGowan gave the remake her blessing while Shannon Doherty is enjoying a renaissance of her own on the recent 90210 reboot.

I am a big fan of the original Charmed, owning all seasons on DVD box set and having rewatched them multiple times. I can even remember some of the spells verbatim and the outrageous outfits hold a special place in my heart.

But the remake, which centres witches of colour and deals with things such as identity politics and the #MeToo movement, is for these reasons low-key better than the original.

For example, Mel is a lesbian while Macy isbegins the series as a rare older virgin. These sexual identities are important to each sisters’ storyline and character, but they don’t define them. When Macy has sex for the first time with her boyfriend, Galvin (Ser’Darius Blain), Charmed doesn’t dwell on it, nor does Macy herself. It’s just a thing that happened.

Each sister works at the university in their college town: Macy as a research fellow, Mel is a gender studies lecturer and Maggie is a student. It is for this reason thatTherefore many of the storylines focus on campus sexual assault and predatory professors. 

There’s also storyline in season one where Maggie, who grew up believing she was Mel’s fully biological sister, discovers that it’s actually she and Macy, who was raised separately from her sisters and only connects with them in the pilot, who have the same biological parents. Maggie is forced to reckon with her new-found African American heritage and struggles with whether she’s “black enough” to join the black student union.

Though there was controversy over the casting of non-Latinx actresses (Mantock is Afro-Carribean and Jeffery is African American), the original Charmed could never delve into the issues that the remake does because the only non-white cast member was Darryl, the Charmed Ones’ cop friend who covered for them when their supernatural cases intersected with criminal ones. This time around Darryl’s equivalent is Mel’s ex Niko (Ellen Tamaki), who is also a queer woman of colour. Many of theCharmed 1.0’s guest characters were white, too, limiting the problems Charmed 1.0it could address through magic.

Additionally, the new version was reimagined by Jane the Virgin creator Jennie Snyder Urman, who has chops when it comes to accurate representation of Latinx families on screen. (It is worth mentioning that Snyder Urman is white.)Nostalgia is a powerful force: one only has to look at the copious reboots gracing our screens in the last couple of years. The new Charmed has a lot to live up to, but while the original introduced a generation of mostly white girls to witchcraft and kick-ass heroines, the modern reimagining empowers today’s queer girls and girls of colour to see themselves represented.