Background

Paige Matthews is the fourth child of Patricia Halliwell, a good witch who lived in San Francisco. Unlike the first three daughters Patty had with her husband Victor Bennett, Paige was fathered by Patty's protector, a whitelighter named Sam Wilder. Victor had left Patty and their children and never knew of Paige. On August 2, 1977 Patty and Sam left the newborn baby to a nun, Sister Agnes, at a local church, fearing repercussions if the forbidden affair between a witch and a Whitelighter was ever discovered. They left the baby with a blanket and asked that her name start with a P, like all women of her immediate family. She is a Leo.

The baby was named Paige, and adopted by the Matthews family. In her teen years, Paige was rebellious - staying out all night, partying with friends, skipping classes, talking back to her parents. In this, she shows a strong resemblance to Phoebe, who was also rebellious as a teenager, though Paige did not go as far as shoplifting. When Paige was around fifteen, she and her parents were involved in a car crash. Her parents died, but she unconsciously saved herself by orbing out of the car. Not knowing what happened or how she survived, Paige blamed herself for what had happened and turned her life around in order to make amends. She stopped drinking and started to do well in school.

After graduating high school in 1996, she got into Berkeley due to good test scores and a strong essay on the death of her parents to study Social Work. When she finished college, she started working for South Bay Social Services, helping the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. A few years later, Paige attempted to track down her biological family. She went to the police and learned what happened the night she was left at the church. Paige checked around and suspected she was related to the Halliwell sisters, but never approached them about it because Patricia had already died.

In 2000 Paige started going to Piper Halliwell's club, P3, because she felt like she belonged with the Halliwell sisters. One year later, when Prue died, she felt "magically" drawn to the funeral. While giving respect for Prue, Paige spoke to Phoebe and shook her hand, giving Phoebe a premonition of Shax (the demon that killed Prue) killing Paige. Prior to this encounter, Piper and Phoebe had never known Paige even existed, let alone she was their sister. Although Paige hears stories about and compares herself to Prue, the two never actually meet each other.

Revelation as a Charmed One

After the funeral, Paige and her boyfriend Shane went to P3 to dance, where Paige explained her family background to Shane. She then took him to the rooftop to make out, where they were attacked by Shax. Phoebe and Cole Turner observed the fight and saw that Paige unknowingly orbed out to avoid an attack by Shax. Sadly, Shane was not as lucky and was injured. Phoebe and Cole attacked Shax, but he and Paige both escaped. After checking on her boyfriend at the hospital and speaking to police, Paige went to the Halliwell Manor. She was together with her sisters and the Book of Shadows for the first time, thus reconstituting the Charmed Ones. This reunion was interrupted by Shax, but Piper and Phoebe were able to get Paige to assist them in saying the spell which would vanquish him. Freaked out by what she saw, Paige ran off. Hoping he could turn Paige evil before she cemented any bonds with her sisters, The Source possessed Shane in hopes of getting her to use her powers to kill a man accused of abusing his child, which was what Paige hated above all. Paige then went to meet the nun who she was given to as a baby, who told her angels left her at the church.`

Piper and Phoebe meet Paige for the first time in "Charmed Again, Part 1".

At the church, Paige was approached by Piper and Phoebe, who told her that, like Prue, she had the power to move objects with her mind: Telekinesis. Skeptically, Paige tried to move a candle by waving her hand at it, and failed. While saying that she must not be one of them if she could not make a candle move, she gestured at it again, and the candle disappeared from its stand and reappeared in her hand. Paige soon learned she could orb objects by calling for them verbally. She was then approached by a Source-possessed Shane, claiming someone was hunting him. She left with him, fleeing the sisters. The Source of All Evil then took Paige back to her place where he tempted her to use her powers to kill the man who she thought was abusing his child. Paige tried to kill the man by calling out his heart, but Phoebe and Piper were able to stop her and Leo orbed her to the Halliwell home. It was discovered that the man was innocent and it was his wife who was abusing the child. The Source of All Evil then dealt a mortal blow to Cole, leaving him to die slowly. Back at the manor Paige threw a fit, and The Source of All Evil attacked them. The Source of All Evil tried to tempt her into choosing evil, but she chose to be with her sisters when The Source attacked Phoebe. The Source then boasted of killing Cole and tried to kill a police inspector who was spying on the sisters, but the inspector was saved by the healing powers of Leo Wyatt. The sisters and Leo then found Cole and were able to use the combined powers of Leo and Paige to heal him. Paige then reconciled with her sisters, but Shane, having jumbled memories of his possession, broke up with her. Phoebe and Piper then took her back to their home and used a spell to summon the spirit of Patricia Halliwell to reunite the long separated mother and daughter.

Powers

Like Prue, Paige has the power of telekinesis. However, it works differently due to her Whitelighter side: when she calls the name of an object or living being it will orb to her, or she can move it telekinetically. Telekinetic orbing obviously does not require a great deal of accuracy in calling an object, for Paige can orb demonic acid by saying "Icky stuff" or shuriken by saying "Weapon...thingy." She is the first person ever known in good magic to have this power, as she was the first whitelighter/witch. This was assumed until the sisters encountered another witch/whitelighter, Simon Marks. (Telekinetic orbing is also seen by Piper's children and the Good Guardian of the Hollow). Her power grew stronger over the years, allowing her to move things without verbally calling like for them, like when she orbed Excalibur to the attic without calling for it in a season six episode. However, this was one of only a few times she did this. When unable to speak, Paige was able to telekinetically orb Wyatt to herself as Piper and Phoebe interlocked arms with her and called out, "Wyatt". In season eight, she could orb the dollhouse to the attic without saying anything, and was able to make white lights swirl around her and Henry's heads when she told him that she was a witch, similar to Leo's conjuration of lights on his wedding day and in the sixties. It is also evident that Paige can now orb people and demons to any location by saying the location, for example, she orbed an innocent back to the manor by saying, "Home!". Also, in season 8 episode, she orbed a demon to Magic School by saying "Magic School!". Another orbing advancement through the years came in her ability to orb things away and seemingly making them disappear. Towards the end of season eight, Paige finally orbed demons and people with her powers and, like Prue, could throw demons. The most prominent example is when she orbed a member of the triad directly into a fireball thrown by a different member. She also orbed and threw two demons into a dumpster.

Her Whitelighter side allows her to use Whitelighter powers such as orbing, glamouring (changing one's appearance), sensing her charges and sisters,and healing. This is a major advancement because for a long time the show explained her inability to heal with being a "half-whitelighter." But due to the fact that she has started to work for the Elders as a Whitelighter, it is likely that that is the reason for the advancement, as we know at least the healing power is granted through the Elders. Due to her being a Charmed One, Paige can write and cast powerful spells as well as make potions. Paige's orbing ability is also roughly comparable to the usefulness of Prue's astral projection ability, largely refilling that lost niche in the sisters' powers. Due to her Whitelighter and Witch sides she has the most powers.

Charmed life

Early training

Paige was working as a social work secretary at the time of learning of her true charmed heritage. Unaware of the rules about personal gain, Paige thought she could use magic to make her workplace better. She borrowed the Book of Shadows, but found it difficult to control. She cured a co-worker of his acne and performed other minor spells. When she cursed a lecherous co-worker with unwanted attention from women, the spell backfired and made her breasts grow to enormous size, giving her the same unwanted attention. Phoebe was able to reverse the effects in time for the two of them to confront Piper, who was being turned into a Fury.

Paige started her witch training soon after meeting her sisters, as Phoebe and Piper wanted to make sure she was up to speed, both for their sake and hers. She learned potion basics under Piper, but when mixing a potion she accidentally created a spell that swapped her soul with Phoebe's. Although they tried to keep it a secret while they swapped souls back again, they had to confront the evil Zen student Yenlo trying to kill his former master. They traveled to limbo and defeated Yenlo after swapping souls back.

Having learned that magic and supernatural evil were real, Paige decided to investigate an old house that had always creeped her out. In doing so she learned it was really the home of the demon Gammill and that her friend Finn was Gammill's golem creation. She tried to protect Finn, but Gammill killed his creation for helping Paige. The demon was a collector of ceramic figurines made of shrunken women. He shrunk Phoebe and later got Piper and Paige too, but the three sisters were able to defeat and vanquish him, which returned them to their original size.

Paige then rekindled an on-again, off-again relationship with Glen, someone who was more than a friend but less than a boyfriend. She told him a story she thought she remembered from her childhood about an evil Enchantress who stole the love of a prince with magic. Meanwhile, a Shocker demon started hunting the Charmed Ones. When Paige looked the Evil Enchantress up in the Book of Shadows, she discovered an entry on her and the spell used to control the prince. Upon speaking the spell, the prince was called forward in time to be with Paige, who he thought was the Enchantress, and loved dearly because of the spell. Phoebe and Piper then reasoned that Paige was the Enchantress reincarnated. The Evil Enchantress then went forward in time, following her prince. She attacked the Charmed Ones and took the prince back to her time, but was followed by Phoebe and Piper. Phoebe and Piper were captured because they lacked powers in the past. Paige was able to craft a spell to bring herself and Leo back to their time. With a swashbuckling intervention, Leo freed Piper and Phoebe as Paige used the Enchantress's powers against her. The sisters then bound the Enchantress's powers and returned to their own time. After some internal struggle, as she was reluctant to give up her independence, Paige later moved into the Halliwell Manor.

At the end of the fourth season, Paige was helping a woman named Carolyn regain custody of her child after getting out of an abusive relationship. Paige used magic to help her and got promoted as a result. But she had to turn the promotion down for fear of using her magic for personal gain. Shortly after this, she started practicing orbing herself over distances, a task she would master in a few months time.

Full-time witch

During the series Paige naturalizes somewhat to being a witch, quits her full time career as a social worker and turns her attentions to full time witchcraft, determined to reach Prue's level quickly. In one episode, she manages to perform a spell that Prue wrote to create animals. Paige was briefly transformed into a super hero by a teenager with the power to make his drawings come to life. In this form she had super speed, strength, was able to stop bullets and had superior hearing. At one point in time Paige felt sympathy for Cole as he was getting delusional and couldn't tell if everyone was a demon.

The Elders decided to assign Paige her first "Charge", who was actually Sam Wilder, her biological father. Sam had returned to being a whitelighter after sacrificing himself to save Prue, Piper, and Phoebe from the demon which killed Patty, but he had lost another charge and had stopped using his powers. The Elders were using Paige because Sam had fallen off their radar, and the only way to find him was through a blood relative. Paige did not know of Sam's connection to her when she met him, and was ignorant until Phoebe told her who he really was. When a darklighter attacked Paige, nearly killing her, Sam had to embrace his whitelighter destiny once more in order to save his daughter. Although Paige felt some resentment toward Sam for leaving her at the church, she also hoped that she would see him again.

After Phoebe and Cole broke up, Paige tried to vanquish Cole to give Phoebe peace. But as Cole was invincible by this point, he easily deflected her attack and Paige wound up in the river with a cold. This meant that whenever she sneezed, she orbed out for a moment. When Cole managed to change reality by becoming a Avatar, Paige was caught in the warp, and was transported to an alternate world, in which she was born in 1975 (instead of 1977) and was killed by the Source, making it impossible to reconstitute the Charmed Ones after Prue's death. Piper had become obsessed with killing Shax while Phoebe was trapped in an unhappy marriage to Cole as Queen of the Underworld. Paige was in constant danger, as her death in this world meant she had no powers. She was able to reunite her sisters and they vanquished Cole for good. This meant that Paige returned to her reality, and she was able to inform her sisters that Cole was gone forever.

When the Halliwell home started to suffer from hauntings due to all the past evil killed there, Piper summoned a witch doctor to cleanse the home. Although the witch doctor did his job, he was worried about the power the sisters commanded and their susceptibility to all that is evil. The council of witch doctors decided it was best for the world if they got rid of the sisters, so they cast a voodoo spell on them, hoping their obsessions would destroy them. Paige became obsessed with marrying her old boyfriend Glen, going so far as to kidnap his bride-to-be and impersonating her.

Paige helped Piper deliver her nephew Wyatt Matthew Halliwell, with his middle name being taken from Paige after she went to great lengths to save him from a demonic attack.

Leo turned Paige into the Goddess of War, like Eris and Enyo, to battle the Titans. When she was a war goddess she displayed enhanced physical abilities, the ability to teleport, a trident that shot out lightning, near-invulnerability and a comprehensive knowledge of combat tactics. She also formed a strong bond with Chris Halliwell, her nephew who had travelled back from the future to prevent his older brother Wyatt from being turned to evil.

It was thanks to Paige that the Charmed Ones were resurrected during the last season, as she could not ignore the call of her charge, Billie Jenkins. Billie was Paige's first proper charge and they often butted heads, because Paige was learning to be a whitelighter as Billie was learning to be a witch. During the last season, Paige and her sisters had to hide in the Underworld as the magical community had turned their backs on them because of a spell cast by Billie and Christy. Paige was made to meditate on personal enlightenment, hovering on theGolden Gate Bridge. A leprachaun begged for help, but she orbed him into the bay. Paige and Phoebe were both killed in the battle with Christie and Billie, leaving Piper to reverse time in order to save them.

Paige has been turned into a vampire, a superhero, a mummy, a wood nymph, a Greek goddess (of War), An Evil Queen/Sorceress (one of her pastselves) a ghost and a witch beast that came out during a blue moon (along with Piper and Phoebe).

In The Show's Finale, Paige was shown to have had three children, twin girls and a boy named Henry Jr. She had also taken up her duties as a Whitelighter to guide young witches.

Professional life

Social worker

Paige earns a degree in social work at Berkeley and begins a career at the South Bay Social Service as an assistant. She is not an official social worker, but she worked hard in the hope that one day she would become one. However, on the day she was finally promoted, she decided to quit in order to focus more on witchcraft.

Temp worker

Paige eventually decided to stop being a full time witch and started taking on temp work. In this capacity she comes across innocents to help in most of her positions.

In one of her temp jobs, Paige is traumatized when her boss, Larry, is killed by demons. Her sisters try to assure her that they cannot save every innocent, but Paige is convinced that she failed to save someone she was meant to help. At Richard's suggestion, Paige summons Larry's soul. Larry reveals that he made a Faustian Deal with a demon named Zahn – Larry sold his soul to Zahn in exchange for Zahn giving him financial success. Larry insists that Paige return his soul to Zahn so that the demon does not harm his wife, but Paige is determined to save Larry. Because of lack of support from her sisters, Paige turns to Richard who encourages her to follow her instincts. Paige summons Zahn and offers him a deal: in exchange for Paige selling her soul, Zahn will release Larry into his afterlife. Before Zahn can sell Paige's soul, Richard tells Piper and Phoebe what Paige has done and they storm Zahn's auction. Piper manages to destroy Zahn's Faustian contracts which sets all of the souls he had acquired, including Paige's, free, and the sisters vanquish Zahn.

Headmistress of Magic School

Realizing that there is not much excitement in her life and that Magic School was about to be closed, Paige decided to dedicate her time to saving it, as well as teaching the students the values and responsibility of magic. In doing that, the Elders had made her the headmistress of Magic School. During this time Paige had a romantic interest in Agent Kyle Brody. She had allowed him to know much about the magical world as they would exchange information about what they know so far about the Avatars.

Agent Brody was killed, but Paige learned that he was okay and had become a Whitelighter when he travelled back to see her briefly.Since Paige was getting tired of being cooped up in Magic School and Leo was turned human, Piper and Phoebe thought it was a good idea that Leo took over Magic School After reclaiming it from the demon's and after doing just that the charmed ones lived happily ever after.

Whitelighter

From season 7 on, Paige took on regular Whitelighter duties. She was sent to save a future Whitelighter who proved to be herself and one of the Elders suggested that being a Whitelighter was the separate life she was looking for. One of Paige's first charges was one who had several Whitelighters and rejected them all. She had trouble with him until she went to Leo for help and he helped her realize that she needed to connect with him as a person and not just a charge. Once she did that, he accepted her as his Whitelighter and later helped the Charmed Ones out. She and her sisters destroyed Zankou and the Nexus. The sisters "glamoured," changing their appearances, names, and lives. Normal people and demons thought they were dead. Paige's alias was Josephine "Jo" Bennet and only her loved ones can see beyond her "new look." After several episodes, the Charmed Ones, as well as Leo, reverted back to their former names and lifestyles.

Paige has a charge named Billie Jenkins who is a witch with the power of telekinesis and projection (which came later). It was due to her love of Henry that she was able to access her Whitelighter healing power. After the series end, it is shown in flashforwards that Paige accepts her role as a Whitelighter, aiding many witches and future Whitelighters.

Romantic life

When Paige was first introduced in the series, she had an on-again, off-again relationship with her high school sweetheart Glen Belland. Their romantic relationship was inconsistent because Glen was constantly traveling around the world at his leisure, but they always remained good friends. Glen soon found out Paige had become a witch, and even after falling victim to a spell gone awry and a demon attack, he grew to accept Paige for who she is. A year later, Glen visits Paige one last time with a new fiance. Paige was initially shocked and very jealous, but when she realized how much they loved each other, she got over her feelings and gave Glen her blessing.

Paige then had a brief but passionate affair with Nate Parks. She believed the relationship was serious enough to tell him she was a witch, but she wasn't sure. So Paige cast the same truth spell on Nate that Prue cast on Andy years before. Although he reacted very positively to the news, the spell caused him to confess he had a wife and children. Paige was outraged, and as soon as the spell wore off the next day, she dumped him.

During a temp job, Paige met and began dating Richard Montana, a male witch who is related to the feuding family, the Montanas. Because Richard had a personal problem using his magic responsibly, he eventually had to bind them with a potion. Their relationship ended before it lasted a full year.

Paige once created her own Mr. Right to help her relax. Unbeknownst to her, by summoning Mr. Right, an evil duplicate, Vincent, emerged.He used female demonic warriors to do his bidding by using the Charmed Ones' potions. After Mr. Right was made real and Vincent was vanquished, Mr. Right and Paige said goodbye and he left to live in the real world.

Paige also had a serious relationship with FBI Agent Kyle Brody (Kerr Smith), who was obsessed with finding the Avatars and killing them for murdering his parents, a crime they evidently were innocent of. Piper and Phoebe didn't trust Kyle because of his mysterious intentions and questionable methods, but Paige became so intimate with Kyle, she sided with him on his views and went so far as to turn her back on her sisters for him. Turns out Kyle was right to mistrust the Avatars in the end. The relationship ended when Kyle was killed by the Avatar Beta, out of self-defense when he killed her. The Elders made Kyle a Whitelighter for his courage against the Avatars, and allowed him to say goodbye to Paige. After that, the pair could not be together again. If Kyle had stayed in San Francisco, mortals would know he was resurrected after his death. However, just before he left Paige, Kyle promised her that they would cross paths again someday.

A year later when Paige was trying to protect a future Whitelighter, she met Henry Mitchell, her charge's parole officer. At first they seemed to have nothing in common, until Paige learned they have similar backgrounds (Paige was adopted, Henry grew up in foster care). A romance soon blossomed between them, and their relationship progressed quickly but naturally. While in a hostage situation, Paige used her Whitelighter healing powers by herself for the first time in order to save Henry from a gunshot wound, insinuating Paige indeed loved Henry. She eventually told Henry that she was a witch. Henry seems to have accepted this, understanding Paige was doing good, important things with her magic. However, nothing runs smoothly in a Halliwell's love life: a male witch named Sir Simon Marks appeared and declared that Paige was destined to marry him. Paige refused his (many) offers of marriage, saying that she was in love with Henry.^[37] Simon and Henry fought over Paige in a "duel", and Henry won (through some good old-fashioned punching), and by successfully arguing that he was the one who truly knew and loved Paige, while Simon only wanted Paige for her power and reputation. Once Simon was gone, Henry realized he was the one who truly wanted to be Paige's husband. He proposed to Paige immediately, and she accepted. Soon after, Paige and Henry were married. Their marriage will bring them a son named Henry Jr. and twin daughters.

Paige's most notable relationships:

Death count

During the run of the series and her life as a Charmed One, Paige died 7 times.

Notable occurrences

• Paige inherited Prue's distrust of Cole after she learned of his previous identity as Belthazor. Later, after Cole became the new Source, Paige was the first to suspect that something was not right.
• Paige was turned into a vampire during a struggle for power between Cole and the Queen of the Vampires.
• Paige was transported to the 1960s by the Go-Go boots of her maternal grandmother Penelope Halliwell. She got to meet Penelope's younger self and her maternal grandfather.
• According to Allen Halliwell, her maternal grandfather, Paige bears a striking resemblance to his sister Janice Halliwell, so much so that when they first met, he thought she was actually his sister.
• On the other hand, Grams told Paige that she had the same eyes as her (Paige's) great-grandmother, P. Baxter (Piper's past life).
• Paige was turned into a nymph by two wood nymphs.
• Paige and Phoebe traveled to the parallel universe to retrieve their Chris and Leo, where they met their evil counterparts.
• Paige was once inadvertently transported to an alternate reality by Cole, in which she was killed by the Source so the Charmed Ones could not be reconstituted.
• Much is made of the similarities between Paige and Phoebe: like Phoebe, Paige went through a rebellious stage in her teens, though this was cut short by the death of her parents in a car accident. When Mason describes Paige as someone who will either "start her own agency or end up in jail", Phoebe as Paige murmurs that sounds like her when she was that age.
• In Oh My Goddess, Chris states that Paige was killed by the Titans, but later in Spin City, he comments that he would go to her for money, suggesting that he was either lying in the first instance, he learned or suspected somehow that that detail had changed from the future after he saved her from the Titans, or Paige was somehow revived. This could also imply that as the future slowly changed, so did Chris' memories.

Characterization

Paige is presented as the most conflicted of the four main characters in that she plays a dual role which resonated the show's consistent theme of good versus evil. Having been brought up an only sibling and lived on her own for many years, Paige not only had to adapt to having sisters, but to being the youngest and least experienced. In the beginning, she often clashed with Piper, which was due to Piper's naturally cautious nature versus Paige's impetuosity and reliance on instincts. Paige generally got on better with Phoebe, who mediated between Paige and Piper as the new middle sister, and who was more like Paige in character. However, Paige and Piper bonded over their concern for Phoebe once she married Cole and supported her when the marriage fell apart. In one respect, Paige is the ultimate caregiver, working as a social worker early on in her life, before leaving her job to better herself as a witch in order to work for good of those around her. This goodness can be partly attributed to her being half-Whitelighter in that it is in her nature to help others; it is, in fact, her destiny, as during the fifth season she begins to acquire charges of her own, starting with her alcoholic father Sam Wilder. During the course of the series, her whitelighter powers grow and her responsibilities increase, as she becomes headmistress of Magic School during the seventh season and takes responsibility for the neophyte witch Billie Jenkins in the eighth season. In contrast to this caring aspect of Paige's nature, she also has elements of darkness within her. She is the most rebellious and vulnerable Charmed One, a role which is personified by her past-life the Evil Enchantress from season four's "A Knight to Remember". This discovery came at the same time as she struggled to be as good a witch as Prue was, a feeling which she described as her not being as powerful and knowledgeable as the perceived "super witch" Prue. This caused problems which affected her life and her relationships: her desire to be the best at any cost was a kind of evil which nearly cost her the good side of her personality. When Paige fought the Evil Enchantress, the imagery was of Paige confronting the parallels within herself. Though this story arch concluded in the fifth season episode "Sympathy for the Demon", in which she conjured a dove in the same way Prue had once done, Paige underwent other story arcs in which her conflicting nature was dealt with, such as her mistrust for Cole when the rest of her family opposed this view. Ultimately, Paige's ongoing struggle to balance the different aspects of her personality, and her responsibilities as a witch and whitelighter with her desires as a human, serves as the metaphor for the battle between moderation and excess and, even, between good and evil, which the sisters have fought in many forms throughout the series.