Marry-Go-Round

Marry-Go-Round is the 81st episode of Charmed.

Summary
Phoebe marries Cole, not knowing it is an evil occasion.

Plot
The sisters plan Cole's wedding to Phoebe, who is hoping for a demon-free day. Cole, meanwhile, has been completely taken over by the Source. However, the Seer tells him that he could lose everything if he marries Phoebe in a holy, white wedding; he'll never be crowned. However, Cole is determined to have Phoebe as his bride. The Seer then tells him she has foreseen them having a son, who will be the most powerful magical child of all time. The child will be born as a powerful good witch if Cole and Phoebe are married in a white wedding. If a dark priest performs the ceremony at night in a cemetery and Cole is somehow able to drink Phoebe's blood, however, the child will be pure demon. Cole plans to sabotage the wedding and trick Phoebe into a dark wedding. As part of his plan, he wants to sow dissention between Phoebe and Paige.

The sisters, Leo, Cole, Victor and Darryl are at the rehearsal dinner. Cole gives engraved golf balls to his groomsmen, Leo and Darryl. Phoebe gives gift baskets to Piper and Paige. Paige does a tarot reading for Cole and Phoebe, and the cards are Lovers, Despair and Death. This concerns her.

The wedding dress is in the attic, and Cole flames to the attic to put his plan into motion. He changes the dress so it is several sizes too big, and changes the name on the tag to "Millie Platt." Paige is about to do another tarot reading when Cole comes back to say goodbye; he's spending the night in a hotel. Meanwhile, the Seer goes to a dark priest to unearth a Lazarus demon. The Seer then lets the dark priest in on her plan--to kill Phoebe after the baby is conceived and become Cole's queen in her place.

Cole is mixing a potion when Phoebe calls; she wanted to hear his voice one more time before the wedding. She has noticed Paige has acted a bit concerned. Just as Cole hangs up, Leo, Victor and Darryl show up for a bachelor party.

Paige tells Piper about the tarot reading; she thinks the cards may be a warning of bad karma from Cole's days as Belthazor. Just then, Phoebe finds the dress and thinks that Paige got the wrong one. Paige offers to alter the dress. The Lazarus demon smokes in and flings Piper across the room. Phoebe kicks him, and Paige orbs a sword into his stomach, seemingly vanquishing him.

Cole arrives back at the manor to check on Phoebe and help identify the demon. Piper finds the Lazarus demon in the Book of Shadows. Cole asks if he has resurrected yet--and as if on cue, the Lazarus resurrects from the pile of dust and flings Piper and Leo across the room. Paige orbs a sofa to break their fall. The Lazarus drops a chandelier on Phoebe's head and smokes away. Leo heals Phoebe. Piper reads up more on the Lazarus, and finds that he grows stronger the longer he's out of the cemetery. Cole says that the only way to stop him is to rebury him. Phoebe realizes someone deliberately unearthed him to wreck the wedding, and Paige is convinced this is a manifestation of her earlier tarot reading. Piper and Paige offer to stay on demon watch in case he comes back again.

Cole is very angry at the Lazarus for attacking Phoebe, but the Lazarus replies he was only obeying the Seer. Cole calls this idea reckless, and tells the Lazarus to obey only him. Cole blasts the Lazarus into dust with a fireball, then turns his anger on the Seer. He didn't like the idea of unearthing a Lazarus in the first place; he knows how unreliable they are. The Seer claims she needed the Lazarus to lure Phoebe to the cemetery, and also wanted to make the sisters think they were being attacked. Cole, however, is adamant that Phoebe not be harmed; he hopes to use his love for her to turn her evil.

Paige tries to calm Phoebe by offering her a natural face cream. Piper tells Phoebe that she wanted her own wedding to Leo to be perfect, but she barely remembers the ceremony despite all the hurdles they had to jump. To Piper's mind, it was still perfect because she married the guy she loved. Later that night, Cole flames into Phoebe's room and chants a spell to jinx the cream. Paige hears a noise, and Cole quickly glamours into Piper. Paige wonders what was going on, but "Piper" says she noticed Paige was in the bathroom, and cautions her that she can't afford to take bathroom breaks while on demon watch. "Piper" also tells Paige she can't afford to go to sleep--and promptly casts a spell on Paige to put her to sleep. "Piper" then slips into the real Piper's room, casts the same sleep spell over her, and flames out.

The next morning, the sisters all wake up late. Phoebe tries to wash off the cream, but it only makes her face break out in acne. She blames Paige for this, and thinks deep down she doesn't like Cole. Paige casts the same spell that she cast on Carolyn to fix her injured face. The pimples disappear--but only a second later, Phoebe goes invisible. The wedding is about to start, so the sisters desperately try to make Phoebe visible again. They send everyone ahead to the church. Paige thinks that evil magic is somehow trying to sabotage the wedding.

The sisters try several spells to make Phoebe visible again, with no luck. Cole comes in to check on Phoebe. He's about to call it off, but the sisters decide to shift the invisibility to Paige.

The Seer shows up and Cole tells her to unleash the Lazarus again. Phoebe, now visible again, walks down the aisle. The Lazarus smokes in outside the sanctuary. Paige spots him, cracks him over the head with a candle holder and shoves him back out the door. Before she can close it, the Lazarus sends her flying across the room. Piper goes to check, and finds the Lazarus still tussling with Paige. The Lazarus grabs Paige and throws her across the room. Leo goes to help, but the Lazarus still has the upper hand.

While all this is going on, the priest is trying to get the ceremony going. Finally, after another loud crash, Phoebe and Cole rush out to check. They find Piper on the floor. The Lazarus telekinetically pushes Leo into Phoebe, and grabs a chair. He's about to throw it at her when Cole distracts him long enough for Piper to blast him into dust. They can't find Paige, but Cole spots a pool of blood on the floor and realizes it's her. He tells everyone and Leo rushes over to heal her. The sight of Paige nearly dying is more than Phoebe can take, and she calls off the wedding.

Phoebe is determined to find out who tried to wreck the wedding. Piper has frozen the Lazarus' dust until they can rebury him. The sisters, Leo and Cole go to the cemetery. Just as they're about to rebury the Lazarus, Paige suggests grilling him. Cole doesn't like this idea, and Phoebe can't understand why. The sisters dump the Lazarus' dust on the ground, and Piper unfreezes it. The Lazarus resurrects, and claims Cole ordered him to attack. Cole adamantly denies it--but then blasts the Lazarus into dust with a fireball, frightening Phoebe. Suddenly, Cole turns into the Seer. Piper wants to vanquish the "Seer" on the spot, but Phoebe wants to grill her as well. The "Seer" says she had to stop the wedding because Phoebe would have grown powerful enough to upset the balance between good and evil. She also says that Cole is unconscious in the mausoleum and flames there.

In the mausoleum, the "Seer" changes back into Cole; it turns out he glamoured into the Seer to throw the sisters off the scent. Cole feigns unconsciousness. The sisters go to Cole while Leo finishes burying the Lazarus demon. After Leo rejoins the others, the five find a chapel in the mausoleum and decide to have their wedding there. They don't know it's being officiated by the dark priest. Phoebe pricks her finger on a rose she's pinning on Cole's shirt, and Cole puts her bleeding finger in his mouth, completing the dark wedding. Unknown to the sisters, the Seer looks on with great satisfaction.

Trivia
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 * The title is a reference to the children's carnival ride, "Merry-Go-Round".
 * The WB used the promo title "Phoebe's Wedding" for this episode.
 * For the second year the episode 15 marks an important event in the life of the Charmed One. It will become a tradition until the end of the show. This is due to Brad Kern's system of the "Beginning, middle, end" story line. For him, the 15th episode always marks a special event in the plot.
 * This is the first time that the Charmed Ones face a Lazarus Demon. Piper will hunt another one in Cole's alternative reality of Centennial Charmed.
 * This is the second time one of the sisters is married to evil in a dark wedding. In the season three episode Bride and Gloom, Prue marries Zile in a dark wedding conducted by a Dark Priestess. Although the ritual is different, probably because Prue was an unwilling bride, and Phoebe wasn't, though Phoebe didn't know she was in a dark wedding.
 * Phoebe is the second sister to call off her wedding and then still get married later the same day like Piper and Leo did in Just Harried.
 * Phoebe also remember astral Prue interrupting the ceremony escaping on motorcycle during Leo and Piper's wedding, always in Just Harried.
 * This is the first appearance of Tony Amendola as a Dark Priest. He will be back in Womb Raider.
 * The church seen in this episode will be used again in the season 5 episode House Call for Glen's wedding.
 * This is the first time that Phoebe marries on the show even if it's the second tine of her wearing a wedding dress (A Paige From The Past). She will marry again in Rewitched and for the last time in Forever Charmed.
 * This episode scored 4.5 million viewers.

Glitches

 * When posing as the Seer, Cole flames out out like the source rather than glistens this goes unnoticed by the girls even though they have seen the different ways the two demons teleport.
 * Paige manages to fix Phoebe's wedding dress despite her having been asleep all night.
 * When Paige shows the tarot card of Death Piper replies with "Oh, please, this looks nothing like Death. Prue met him, I know." referring to events of Death Takes A Halliwell. Although Piper seems to know how Death really looks like, due to Prue's description, she did not recognize him in Styx Feet Under.
 * At the wedding, Leo is heard yelling "Piper watch out!", but in the next scene, it shows Leo entering the room for the first time.

International Titles

 * French: Un Couple d'Enfer