Charmed's first season is marked by a vast diversity of plot and series canon trial balloons as the series backplot and cast relationships evolved from expressing the impact of sudden witch powers on the lives of three nubile, attractive, young, twenties-something women just now trying to establish careers and began to jell around magic and its complications casting a shadow into those situations leading to show plots that have a very different flavor from the seven following seasons. Series long love interest Leo Wyatt was not yet a billed repeating co-star (not until second half of the second year), but merely an occasional repeating guest star that occurred more often as the shows' season developed.

Early writing and series roles and writing is very much focused on showcasing Shannen Doherty as Prue and most powerful sister, so that most writing centered around her powers— with her sisters in strictly a supporting role though experiencing powers related issues of their own who mainly provide soap opera interludes, companionship services, and humor in plotlines only occasionally needing the three to combine their talents or to use the Power of Three—the backplot element which alledgedly makes the three into the Charmed Ones, and special indeed as the "most powerful good witches in history", as figures prominently in the writings of later years. Consequently, in re-runs, the witch sisters Prue, Piper, and Phoebe, as well as the series's writers and production staff are obviously feeling their way into their powers and how powers impacted new lives (or should be written about and presented on film).

Recurring big threat villains spanning multiple episodes of behind the scenes conflict were quite unlike the last six years of the series, in that they were notably nearly totally absent. Only work-threats Rex Buckland and Hannah Webster (portrayed by Neil Roberts and Leigh-Allyn Baker) and near the end of the season, the few episodes involving the demon masquerading as SFPD internal affairs Inspector Rodriguez (portrayed by Carlos Gomez) pose any lurking evil plotting across several episodes.

The sister's magical opponents were instead a disparate group of unorganized magical opponents — in type and kind (demons and warlocks, evil humans) whose nature and canonical roles had yet to be clearly defined. As one example the Charmed Ones, directors, and writers had a lot of teething troubles with the later staple plot element of successfully delivering a vanquishing potion, which problem persisted even into the second season wherein using an unweildy water balloon was tried[1]; further issues such as whether such needed splashed, needed to break, and such details impacting how matters were filmed, characters reacted, the visual effects routinely needed and so forth had yet to be firmly established.