Character background
Penny Halliwell was born June 23, 1930 in a hotel room in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were Gordon Johnson and P. Baxter (the past lives of Dan Gordon and Piper Halliwell). Her maiden name is Johnson. She was a witch and a descendant of Melinda Warren. She was born with the power of telekinesis (which she passed on to her granddaughters Prue and Paige, and great-grandchildren Wyatt and Chris, and great-great-granddaughter Prudence).
She first married Allen Halliwell, and took that last name. She gave birth to Patty, the future mother of the Charmed Ones at age twenty.
Penny was once a peace lover until Allen was killed by her former best friend, Robyn, and Robyn's warlock boyfriend, Nigel. As a result, she became a fierce demon/warlock slayer. She learned to focus her telekinetic power and created spells and potions on her very own. She was known to be a very skilled and powerful witch, like her ancestor, Melinda Warren. Later in life, she started her own coven with non-magical witches and her closest friends as members, including the Charmed Ones' Aunt Gail (who died in the second season after trying to steal the girls' powers). Penny was part of a college sorority in San Francisco with Aunt Gail during the 1950s. A picture of Penny and Gail was taken outside of the sorority house.
As Penny became the matriarch of the Halliwell/Warren family, she fell in love with the Necromancer Demon. But she couldn't be with him because, though he truly did love her, he used her to get to the spirits of the Halliwell/Warren line. She later vanquished him in the 1970s and then banished his spirit forever in 2003. Penny's love for the Necromancer parallels her granddaughter Phoebe's love for half-demon and laterSource of All Evil Cole Turner (Piper and Leo's love is parallel to Patty's forbidden love for her Whitelighter, Sam).
Penny married a total of four times (including the first one with Allen), and was engaged for a total of six times, but none of her relationships worked out. As a matter of fact, Penny cursed her wedding ring so whenever she puts it on, it would remind her of what a pain is to be a housewife (later in the series, Cole Turner, [Phoebe's longest relationship before Coop] gave Phoebe this ring so they'd marry with it, and she became a perfect housewife. In "Gone with the Witches", the same happens to Piper, but because a demon cast it on her to distract her for a while). When Patty married Victor Bennett, Penny didn't allow her to take his last name. Penny witnessed the birth of her first three granddaughters Prue, Piper, and Phoebe Halliwell, later earning the nickname 'Grams'. When Patty was forced to give immunity to a warlock named Nicholas, Grams had no choice but to bind the girls' powers, until they were ready for them. Grams was forced to keep the secret about the birth of Patty's fourth daughter Paige, who was fathered by Patty'sWhitelighter, Sam Wilder, from everyone, even Paige's half-sisters. Penny helped Patty and Sam decide that it was best to give the baby up for adoption as relationships between witches and Whitelighters were forbidden by Elders, who oversaw all good magic. After Patty's death, Grams became surrogate mother to Patty's first three children, and would constantly argue with Victor about how the girls should be raised. Because of those arguments, the girls didn't see their father again for a very long time. Years later, Grams developed a heart condition. She wanted to keep the girls from receiving their powers permanently, so she created a potion to strip them of their powers. On March 5, 1998, she made the decision to give the sisters the potion, but before she could, she had a heart attack and fell down the attic stairs. She became a guardian spirit, keeping watch over her grandchildren.
As High Priestess, Grams performed the marriage ceremony uniting Leo Wyatt and Piper in spirit form. Later, she appeared in both spirit form and corporeal form (with a body). When the first child of Piper and Leo turned out to be a boy, Grams was initially upset, as she believed the family line should only be female, but eventually she came to accept and love her new great-grandson Wyatt. Ironically, Grams' belief that men couldn't be trusted with power, as it would ultimately corrupt them, turned out to be true in Wyatt's case (in a possible future). His brother Chris had to come back from the future to prevent Wyatt from turning evil and becoming a global tyrant. Graciously, Grams never said, "I told you so".
When Grams learned about Gideon's death at Leo's hands (because Gideon had tried to kill Wyatt), she was unsure if she could trust Leo to be around the girls. She's since learned to trust her family to make the right decisions without her input, but still provides them with assistance when needed.
It has also been implied that Grams is the force behind making the pages in the book turn when the girls hold their hands over it and ask for "a little help here."
She returns in the series finalie to help change the future. Piper travels through time to save Phoebe and Paige and after accidentally traveling to her mother's time Piper, Patty and Leo travel back to get Grams' help. She faints when she sees Patty (Patty's dead in her time) and is overwhelmed by what they tell her (she comments that she "needs a drink"). But once she learns her granddaughters are the Charmed Ones, she immediately demands to know what to do. She, Piper and Patty cast a spell in Piper's past to drive the Hollow out of the past Charmed Ones and Billie and Christy Jenkins, and change the future. She stays until the end, helping the girls make a vanquishing potion to use on the Triad spirits and Billie and Christy and at the end is saddened to learn from Future Chris that she can't keep her memory of the event.
