From Samantha Stephens on “Bewitched” to Sabrina Spellman on “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” the idea of a TV present about witches is an previous (pointed) hat. And it’s not a pattern that may quickly disappear, if there’s any indication from buzzy reveals just like the upcoming “Harry Potter” TV sequence on HBO and the second season of Netflix’s “Wednesday.”

However our historic depictions of witches and interpretations of the pagan beliefs are each steeped in arts and tradition. And this implies they arrive with good, unhealthy and even conflicting tropes. When creating a TV present, it’s typically as much as the creators and their inventive groups to resolve which approach one thing wiccan is coming for his or her initiatives.

Agatha All Alongside

Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness acts as if she doesn’t want a coven within the Disney+ sequence, solely as a result of she desperately desires to be a part of one. Equally, sequence creator and showrunner Jac Schaeffer says she loves “the allegory” that comes with tales of the supernatural, however they’ll additionally “be so reductive.” This units the tone for a present the place characters can have powers and fly on brooms, however solely in an ironic approach. 

The writers had conversations about precise Wicca and made certain to not embody any actual spells. However in addition they had one other main entity to battle with: how all of this match into the difficult but exact canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“I had the pleasure and the privilege of making witchlore, witch guidelines and witch identification inside a preexisting universe,” Schaeffer says. “Due to that, I felt we had been allowed to be a mishmash of all issues.”

Mayfair Witches

Esta Spalding, co-creator and showrunner of the AMC drama, says that her sequence is influenced by a lot of creator Anne Rice’s supply materials — and never simply the books within the “Lives of the Mayfair Witches” sequence. Rice was “constructing an entire universe of magical characters,” says Spalding, and “any variety of these powers … could be thought of witchy.”

She continues, “We additionally felt free to discover witchcraft all around the world and to search for completely different features of witchcraft. Now we have a personality named Arjuna [played by Suleka Mathew] and she or he’s drawing on witchcraft from South Asia.”

The Wheel of Time

In most different reveals, witches are girls who’re “disempowered of their society” who flip to “earthly or pure powers” in remoted areas, says creator and showrunner Rafe Judkins. Within the Amazon present, primarily based on the Robert Jordan ebook sequence, some girls have talents to manifest magical powers. However, additionally, Judkins says, girls as an entire “are in energy in society.”

He says that, as a result of girls “are the queens and the generals of the armies and the folks in energy,” issues like magic “have a centered place inside society.”

Wizards Past Waverly Place

“The unique present crossed over with vampires and monster tropes … so the concept is how can we commerce on a few of these tropes for enjoyable,” says Jed Elinoff says of his “Wizards of Waverly Place” spinoff for Disney+. “That’s our universe; we’re making a household sitcom that occurs to be about wizards.”

These wizards use wands and may solid spells, but in addition, “pagan issues [like the] historical past of Halloween and drawing from a few of these older traditions do bleed a bit of bit into this mythology,” provides co-showrunner Scott Thomas.

He says that once we see the alternate wizard universe, it’s “a bit of bit darker” and “a bit of bit spookier.” In the meantime, Janice LeAnn Brown’s Billie, a younger wizard becoming a member of the mortal world, “is meant to be type of a troublemaker … so it’s leather-based jackets and it’s darker colours,” says Thomas. Conveniently for Billie, these are inclined to mix in higher at human center faculties than pointy hats and black cats.