‘Practical Magic’ spends a lot of time showing us that love cannot be controlled. Whenever someone tries to use magic to avoid heartbreak or change another person’s feelings, things usually go wrong.
Maria Owens creates a family curse while trying to protect herself from pain. Frances and Jet secretly interfere with Sally’s love life. Even Sally eventually becomes angry when she learns that magic played a part in her relationship with Michael. However, the movie treats Sally’s own childhood love spell very differently.
Sally Tries to Protect Herself From Love
Sally grows up knowing that love is dangerous for the Owens women. Because of Maria’s curse, the men they truly love are doomed to die. Naturally, Sally becomes terrified of falling in love and losing someone.
As a child, she therefore comes up with a clever plan. Sally casts the Amas Veritas spell and asks for a man who seems impossible to find. She gives him very specific qualities. He must be kind, flip pancakes, love stars, and have one green eye and one blue eye. Sally believes that if such a man does not exist, she will never fall in love. As a result, she will never have to experience the heartbreak she fears.
At first, the scene feels sweet and innocent. However, Sally is actually trying to control her future through magic. She does not want to accept that love comes with uncertainty. Instead, she wants to create rules that will keep her safe.
Interestingly, Maria made a similar mistake generations earlier. After suffering heartbreak, Maria used magic because she never wanted to feel that kind of pain again. Unfortunately, her spell became the curse that followed the Owens women for generations. Sally’s spell comes from a similar fear. Both women use magic because they want to protect themselves from the painful side of love.
Gary’s Arrival Makes the Movie’s Message Confusing
Things become even more complicated when Gary enters Sally’s life. Suddenly, the supposedly impossible man from her childhood spell is standing right in front of her. He has the qualities she asked for, including one green eye and one blue eye.
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And, as expected, Sally immediately questions their connection. If she magically asked for Gary years earlier, how can she know that their feelings are real? Did they naturally fall for each other, or did Sally’s spell bring them together?
The movie briefly raises a really interesting question here, especially because Sally already knows how it feels when someone uses magic to interfere with her love life.
Earlier, Sally discovers that Frances and Jet secretly used magic to help her find love with Michael. Although Sally truly loved him and built a family with him, she is still furious when she discovers what they did. In fact, she becomes so uncomfortable with magic that she wants to keep her daughters away from it. Clearly, Sally believes that people should be able to make their own choices when it comes to love.
However, the movie does not fully explore the same problem with Gary. Instead, it gives Sally an easy answer. Gary reveals that he wished for her too. So the story suggests Sally didn’t force him to love her. Their wishes simply brought them together.
Of course, that explanation makes their romance sweeter. Still, it does not completely solve the problem. Gary remains almost exactly the man Sally described when she was a child. So, after spending much of the movie warning against controlling love with magic, ‘Practical Magic’ ultimately rewards Sally with the man she once tried to create.
Sally’s Real Lesson Never Needed A Perfect Soulmate
More importantly, Sally’s story already has a much stronger lesson. She does not need Gary to complete her journey. Instead, she needs to stop living in fear and finally accept the part of herself she has spent years trying to hide.
For years, Sally wants nothing more than a normal life. She tries to distance herself from magic, especially after Michael’s death. She also wants her daughters to grow up differently. However, running away from magic never truly protects Sally. Eventually, she has to face her family’s history instead of pretending it does not exist.
That becomes especially clear during the final fight to save Gillian. Sally does not win because the perfect man arrives to rescue her. Instead, she turns to Frances, Jet, and the women in town. Together, they form a coven and help free Gillian from Jimmy’s spirit. At the same time, Sally finally accepts her own magic instead of treating it like something she should fear.
Because of that, the movie’s strongest message is really about accepting uncertainty. Sally cannot guarantee that loving someone will never hurt. She cannot protect everyone she loves forever either. However, she can still choose to love them.
Gary could have made that message even stronger if he had been nothing like the man Sally imagined as a child. Imagine Sally realizing that the person she truly loves cannot be planned or magically designed. It would have shown that love arrives in ways we cannot predict.
Instead, ‘Practical Magic’ gives Sally the man from her childhood spell almost point by point. The ending is romantic, and it definitely works as a fairy-tale payoff. However, it also weakens the lesson the movie spends so much time building. Sally finally learns that she cannot control everything about love, only to discover that the universe has basically delivered the exact man she ordered years ago.
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