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The relationship between Phoebe Halliwell and Cole Turner was the second longest running relationship throughout the Charmed series (Piper Halliwell and Leo Wyatt's being the longest) and another favorite among fans.

The relationship commenced in 2000 during the Season 3 premiere, The Honeymoon's Over and lasted until the Season 4 finale, Witch Way Now?.

Cole first met the Halliwell sisters while he was the legendary demonic soldier of fortune Belthazor. The Triad sent Belthazor to kill the Charmed Ones and tip the scales to evil.

However, his love for Phoebe reawakened his long-dormant human half, and he renounced evil for her love. The relationship progressed so much that they consummated their relationship a few months after meeting in Primrose Empath and then married in 2002.

The relationship ended when Cole was possessed by The Source of All Evil. Phoebe briefly joined him as Queen of the Underworld, but ultimately joined her sisters in vanquishing him.

After coming back from the Demonic Wasteland, Cole tried countless times to get Phoebe back, to no avail. His desperate attempts to win her back ultimately led him to being vanquished once and for all.

They eventually met again years later after Phoebe married Coop and conceived a daughter. The two slowly worked out their past problems and came to terms. Approximately one year later, Cole sacrificed himself to protect Coop, and Phoebe mourned her ex-husband.

History

Season 3

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Phoebe met Cole at a crime scene in late 2000 with her sister Prue. The sisters were there beforehand to help Darryl Morris, who was investigating a criminal who might be working with a demon. Phoebe was instantly attracted to Cole, the assistant district attorney working the case.

They would often flirt whenever they would come in contact with each other. Although unknown to her or her sisters, Prue and Piper, Cole was really Belthazor, a legendary demonic soldier of fortune.

He'd been sent by The Triad to get close to them before killing them. The Triad believed that since Cole/Belthazor was half-human, he could get closer to them than a full-blooded demon could.

He'd done extensive research on the Charmed Ones, and decided to feign romantic interest in Phoebe in order to get close to them. He believed that since she was the youngest, she was the most vulnerable.

He took at least one run at the Book of Shadows in hopes of rendering them powerless so he'll be able to kill all three of them. However, by this time the sisters had become so powerful that no evil being, even one as powerful as Cole, could touch it.

Prue actually caught Cole in a trap she'd set at the manor, leading her to suspect Cole might very well be a demon. However, Phoebe didn't believe her.

Later, Cole tried going back in time to stop the Halliwell line from even existing by helping an evil witch from colonial Virginia, Ruth Cobb, kidnap a baby Melinda Warren and raise her as evil.

At a festival held in honor of All Hallow's Eve, Phoebe was pulled aside and offered a chance to see her true love. She blew on an apple peal and it would show the first letter of her true love's name--it was C.

Even as Cole tries to kill the Charmed Ones, his human half falls deeply in love with Phoebe. Demons can't handle human emotions, and Cole's growing love for Phoebe slowly overwhelmed his demonic nature.

Under growing pressure from the Triad, Cole enlisted the help of the demon of rage, Andras, to sever the Charmed Ones' sisterly bond and render them powerless.

When a sobbing Phoebe came to Cole's apartment, he had his best chance to kill her, but couldn't bring himself to do so. Andras then possessed Cole and forced him to take another run at the Charmed Ones.

However, Piper was able to gash off a piece of his flesh to use in a vanquishing potion. Phoebe doesn't hear from Cole in a week and ultimately finds him in bed, bleeding from where Piper gashed him. Cole explains to her that some very bad people are after him and asks her to leave for her safety.

She refuses and calls Leo to heal him, but Leo is only able to heal his human half. Leo then tells Phoebe that he has been able to heal mortals fully, and that Cole is at least half-demon. Phoebe doesn't believe him and goes back inside. She finds Cole up and acting suspicious.

Across town, Prue and Piper have also found out that Cole is Belthazor, and go to his apartment with the demonic bounty hunter Krell to vanquish him. When they arrive, Cole morphs into Belthazor and shimmers away with Phoebe.

Just as Phoebe is about to vanquish him, Cole tells her that her love for him reawakened his human half. He then proves himself by killing Krell when he tries to kill Phoebe. Phoebe forgives him and fakes his vanquish, so that her sisters wouldn't go after him.

After a month, Phoebe's guilt overcomes her and she tells Leo, Piper and Prue that she didn't kill Cole and that he's in hiding. It wasn't until early 2001 that Cole returns and tells her that he's back for good, and intends to renounce his demonic legacy for her love. Phoebe isn't willing to trust him, but later enlists his help when Prue is kidnapped by a shapeshifting warlock, Zile.

Cole finds out that Zile is working with Dantalian, a Dark Priestess who wanted to get to the Book of Shadows. She helped kidnap Prue so she could bind them in unholy matrimony and thus turn Piper, Phoebe and the Book evil.

Although Phoebe uses this information to help save Prue, she is initially unwilling to renew their relationship, fearing the pull toward evil will be too strong. However, a week later Cole helps Prue go back in time to save a town from a time loop.

The time loop was set up when the townspeople were too afraid to help Bo Lightfeather, a powerful witch, from being killed. Bo and Phoebe were psychically linked, and Cole's willingness to help save him convinces Phoebe that Cole indeed loves her.

Cole becomes very close to the sisters, even attending Leo and Piper's wedding. He also helped thwart an effort by his former friends, the Brotherhood of the Thorn, to take over the world's Internet traffic. However, his old mentor, Raynor, kidnaps him to the underworld and deliberately tries to stir up his demonic side by destroying Phoebe's love for him.

Cole resists as much as he can, but Raynor ultimately magically goads him into killing Janna, a witch the sisters were protecting. In the end, he finally proves that is he good by contacting The Source of All Evil to get him to contact Tempus to turn back time to save Piper from dying. He also helps Phoebe escape from the Underworld, but too late to keep Shax from killing Prue.

Season 4

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At the start of Season 4, Cole comforted Phoebe when Prue died. Cole didn't want to attend Prue's funeral, fearing that the Source would be after him with a vengeance for helping Phoebe escape.

However, Phoebe insisted that Cole come; she felt she needed him there. By this time, Piper and Leo have finally gotten over their suspicions about Cole.

At the funeral, a young woman, Paige Matthews, offers her condolences to Phoebe. To her shock, Phoebe gets a premonition of Shax attacking Paige. Seconds later, they are attacked by Demonic Bounty Hunters and Phoebe and Cole work together to vanquish them.

Over Piper's objections, Phoebe and Cole track Paige down in hopes of warding off Shax. To their shock, they see Paige orbing out of the way of Shax's attack. Cole does some checking and finds out the Source sent Shax after Paige because he believes that she is a fourth Charmed One.

In November 2001, Cole proposed to Phoebe after vanquishing a demon. Phoebe then finds out from Emma, the fiance of the witch, Andrew who Cole's demon half, Belthazor killed before he met the sisters throws what she thought was a vanquishing potion at Cole, although it turns out to be a power-stripping potion to rid Cole of his demonic powers.

It took Cole and as well Phoebe to get used to Cole being human with no powers, at all but they eventually get through it. In Early 2002, Phoebe and Cole get possessed by two ghosts after Paige and Leo go back in time.

Although at first Piper thought that there unfinished business was to rob a jewelry shop, it later turned out to be marriage. They went to a church and held the minister at gun point. In the end, Darryl was forced to shoot Cole.

Leo came back just in time to heal him and Phoebe finally accepts his marriage proposal. Piper suggests Cole gives Phoebe Grams's Ring. It was unknown to both of them it was under a curse.

It forced Phoebe to turn into an old fashioned housewife and flash black and white, she turned back to normal after Paige orbed the ring to her.

A week later, The Source finally attacks the Charmed Ones by getting the Hollow to obtain their powers. Cole was summoned by the Seer, who opposed the Source tapping into the Hollow. The Seer suggested that Cole take in the Hollow so he can absorb the Source's powers.

This distracted the Source long enough that the sisters can chant the spell to vanquish him. Unknown to Cole or the sisters, the Seer had her own agenda—she intended for Cole to become the new Source. As it turned out, when the Seer and Phoebe sent the Hollow back to its ancient burial ground, the Source's essence remained in Cole, entering the void where Belthazor had once been.

Within a week of the Source's vanquish, he had almost completely taken over Cole. Much to the Source's chagrin, however, he discovered that the only thing keeping Cole's soul alive was his love for Phoebe and without it, he himself would cease to exist.

The Source decided to turn this situation to his advantage, believing he could permanently destroy the Power of Three by using Phoebe's love for Cole to turn her evil and make her the new Queen of the Underworld.

Phoebe senses something is wrong, especially after feeling a premonition about Cole blocked by an unseen force (later revealed to be the Source). Unsure of whether to go through with the wedding, she summoned her past and future selves to help her decide.

Her past self was immediately smitten by Cole, believing that he was the guy she'd always dreamed would sweep her off her feet. Her older self was initially reluctant to help, but later revealed to Cole that in her time, she'd gotten cold feet and it ultimately made Cole give in to the evil growing in him.

When Kurzon, a longtime rival of the Source, tried to kill Cole, old Phoebe jumped in front of him, proving that she still loved him. This convinced Phoebe to go through with the wedding.

Cole then sabotaged his own wedding, held in late March 2002, in order to trick Phoebe into a dark wedding officiated by a dark priest. This was done after the Seer told him she'd foreseen Cole and Phoebe giving birth to a son who would be the most powerful magical child in history.

He would have been born as a powerful good witch if Cole and Phoebe had been married in a normal way, which would have ended any chance of Cole being crowned. As a result of the dark wedding, however, the child would be pure demon.

A few weeks after the wedding, Paige sees Cole using demonic powers on an innocent the sisters are protecting. The innocent had been poisoned with a demonic power by a power broker, and Cole was trying to read her mind to know exactly what happened.

Cole sensed Paige was onto him, and had the power broker imbue Paige with a demonic power in order to drive her insane. While Paige was convinced Cole had somehow become a demon again, everyone else—especially Phoebe—chalks it up to jealousy over being the only Charmed One who is still single.

Even when Cole convinces Phoebe to move into their own place, no one else suspects anything is amiss until Cole is surprisingly unwilling to let Phoebe hunt down a clan of vampires who have made Paige one of them. This reawakens Piper's old suspicions about Cole, but even then she only thinks Cole is working with demons again.

In April 2002, on the night Cole is due to be crowned as the Source, Phoebe gets a premonition of Cole's recent activities and realizes Paige is telling the truth all along. She initially wants to vanquish him, especially after discovering that her newfound ability to throw fire is actually a demonic power. However, the Seer manipulates her into staying by him.

She had vehemently opposed the idea of a Charmed One as Queen of the Underworld. She'd even gone as far as to secretly encourage Kurzon to kill her, and later on recruited a female upper-level demon, Julie, to seduce Cole away from Phoebe.

Cole was on the verge of transferring his powers to an evil wizard in hopes of getting Phoebe back, but Phoebe killed the wizard under the Seer's coaching. The two are then duly crowned as the new rulers of the underworld.

Phoebe was initially torn between the conflicting evil and good natures in her, even under the influence of her baby. While her sisters and Leo were unwilling to have her work with them as long as she was Queen of the Underworld, Cole was concerned her playing both sides could undermine his own position.

With this in mind, he ordered the Seer to brew up prenatal tonic that would slowly kill off Phoebe's good side. Phoebe eventually finds out about the tonic, and also found out that Cole personally killed Greg Conroy, an innocent her sisters were protecting. Phoebe comes to her senses and joins her sisters in vanquishing Cole once and for all, or so they thought.

Phoebe starts to hear Cole's voice in the wind. He goes so far as to communicate to her through a TV psychic. Later on, she encounters Cole in the Demonic Wasteland, where he begs her to use an evil spell to bring him all the way back to life.

Phoebe is horrified; she is unwilling to ever use dark magic again and asks Cole to move on. He later returns from the Demonic Wasteland to save Phoebe from getting killed by a witch hunter. He tells Phoebe that he's not giving up on them.

Season 5

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By the fall of 2002, Phoebe is determined to move on with the rest of her life. With Cole nowhere to be found, she seeks a default divorce. However, literally seconds before she is about to sign the decree, Cole walks in.

He has acquired a massive arsenal of demonic powers, claiming that he needs them to help his effort to atone for his many crimes. However, Phoebe is unwilling to give Cole another chance, and angrily tells him it's over.

When he persists, Phoebe slashes him with a letter opener. To her horror, Cole's wound magically heals and drops of his blood start bubbling like acid. Phoebe runs off.

Meanwhile Phoebe meets a mermaid named Mylie, who needed her help to get in touch with her true love and get him to admit he loved him. Since she failed, the Sea Hag kidnapped her and took her back to her lair.

The sisters cast a spell to track the Sea Hag down, but it backfires when it taps into Phoebe's broken heart and turns her into a mermaid. Suspecting that deep down Phoebe still loves Cole, Paige tracks him down and convinces him to help save her.

Phoebe becomes human again when she admits she still loves Cole, but tells him they can't ever get together again.

Cole tries numerous times to prove he's good in hopes of winning Phoebe back. However, since Cole was now fully mortal (as he had been since Belthazor's vanquish), he couldn't handle having any magical powers at all, let alone the massive powers he'd absorbed.

Phoebe knew this, and was convinced that it was only a matter of time before he gave into the evil growing in him. Just when Phoebe thought she was being too hard on Cole, her fears are justified when he is seduced by a siren.

His demonic powers protect him from the deadly effects of the Siren's kiss, but they also cause the evil in him to overcome him and nearly strangle Phoebe to death.

Eventually, Cole's growing despair and his efforts to fight the evil growing in him drive him insane. Finally abandoning hope, he decides to end his own life. He sends a Tracker to kill Leo, Paige and Piper's half-Whitelighter baby (though the baby is saved due to its ability to protect Piper even in the womb).

In return, Cole promised to let the Tracker finish off Paige's father, Sam Wilder. However, just as the Tracker is about to kill Sam, Cole kills the Tracker instead so Sam can heal Paige. It turned out that he deliberately wanted to get the Charmed Ones angry enough that they'd come after him and kill him.

As he expects, the Charmed Ones storm the penthouse, armed with some of their strongest potions. However, Phoebe sees through the game; while determined to kill Cole, she isn't willing to help him commit suicide by witch. Cole flings Phoebe's potion at him, only to discover that he is now unvanquishable by any power, even the Power of Three.

Shortly after the start of 2003, Phoebe is kidnapped by Jeric, an ancient Egyptian demon who wants to use her body as a host for the spirit of his lover, an evil witch named Isis. Reluctantly, Piper and Paige seek Cole's help. Instead, Cole decides Jeric can help him get Phoebe back. He convinces Jeric to mummify Phoebe and transfer Isis' soul to Paige.

He then tries to trick Piper into expelling Paige's soul, since Isis is the only person who knows how to revive a mummy and won't do so as long as Paige is in her. Piper, however, turns the tables on the two demonic suitors and writes a spell that expels Isis instead.

Having learned the necessary spell from Isis, Paige then revives Phoebe. When Phoebe asks Cole how he could even think about working with a demon, Cole replies that he's gone mad. Phoebe realizes that Cole has turned completely evil again, just as she feared.

Undaunted, Cole vows to get Phoebe back by any means necessary. He even goes as far as to stir up legal difficulties for the Charmed Ones in hopes of tricking them into giving up the manor. In his twisted mind, Cole believes that Phoebe will turn back to him in desperation. He has another plan in mind — getting the Nexus, intending to use its' power to not only turn Phoebe evil, but reorganize the underworld under his leadership and take control of the city.

All this accomplishes is to make Phoebe hate him with a passion. When Cole manages to briefly get control of the manor, Phoebe bluffs her way into the basement. Cole is waiting for her, thinking that his plan has worked. However, with almost no emotion, Phoebe banishes the Woogyman just as Cole is taking him in, vanquishing every demon inside the Manor, Cole surviving only because of his invincibility. She then tells Cole to his face that he's nothing to her, and she won't feel a thing when they finally figure out how to vanquish him.

In a final effort to get Phoebe back, Cole accepts an offer to become an Avatar, a powerful being with the ability to warp the very fabric of reality. Cole uses his newly minted powers to create an alternate reality in which Paige was killed by Shax back in 2001.

Remembering that Paige never fully trusted Cole, especially after he was possessed by the Source, Cole believes that he and Phoebe would still be together without Paige in the picture. In this world, Cole and Phoebe rule the underworld activities in San Francisco from the manor.

He discovered that he has lost nearly all of the powers he picked up in the Demonic Wasteland. Instead, he is Belthazor in this world. Cole views this as an acceptable risk, as he now believes he and Phoebe were at their best when he was half-demon. However, to his shock, Cole discovers that in his new reality, Phoebe has long since fallen out of love with him. She's only still with him to keep Piper from being killed by Shax as well.

Meanwhile, Paige catches a cold; when she sneezes, she briefly orbs into a world outside of time and space where Avatars live. At the moment Cole alters reality, Paige sneezes and survives the change. She tracks down this world's Piper and Leo. Realizing that Cole isn't invincible in this world, she, Piper and Leo storm the manor, where Paige gashes off a portion of Cole's flesh.

Cole quickly realizes that Paige wants to vanquish him once and for all, but vows that Phoebe will die with him. Paige makes the original Belthazor vanquishing potion and slips back into the manor with Piper and Leo later that night. Cole blasts them to the ground with an energy ball and takes the potion, but Paige has Phoebe hold hands with an unconscious Piper, restoring the Power of Three.

Paige orbs the potion back to her hand and is about to throw it when Phoebe takes it from her. Cole doesn't think Phoebe could bring herself to throw it, but Phoebe does, vanquishing him once and for all and restoring the rightful timeline. The sisters go to Cole's apartment and find it abandoned. Phoebe stares at a picture of her and Cole from a happier time, and thinks that their relationship simply wasn't meant to happen.

Season 7

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Two years later, after getting attacked by the Thorn Demon and also being lovesick over Leo, Piper goes into a deep coma. When she notices her body is laying on the floor, she asks for help. Suddenly Cole appears across the room and tells Piper that he is the only one that can help her.

Meanwhile, Leo has been turned mortal as punishment for joining the Avatars and has had his mind erased. He ends up somewhere in the middle of Texas, helping a man who just had a crash. Phoebe, Paige and Drake come down the stairs to find Piper has collapsed.

Piper tries to signal them by attempting to break a lamp, but her hand goes right through it. Cole explains to her that they are in something called a Cosmic Void, between life and death. He has to spend eternity there to atone for his many crimes.

Cole tells Piper in order to get out of the Void, she has to let go. When Phoebe walks past the spot where Cole is standing, she walks backs and Cole stares back at her. She tells Paige it was nothing and walks off.

Cole tells Piper that even if someone is across the other side of the world, he still knows the exact moment when his loved one is hit by a car, it gives them a psychic shock. Piper, finally lets go and her soul floats back into her body. Paige and Phoebe orb to the Golden Gate Bridge and demand The Elders bring Leo back down.

They do and Leo explains to them that he doesn't know who Piper is. Across town Piper is almost dying, she calls out to Leo and slowly lets go. Leo finally hears her call. Knowing that the only way to save her is to clip his wings, he jumps off the bridge and lands on the platform below.

He is now mortal and is no longer an Elder. Paige orbs them back to the Manor, to find Drake next to Piper's body. He tells them that Wyatt, Piper and Leo's eldest son, has healed her. Piper is happy that Leo is back and says that she had a good a coach, an old friend.

The scene cuts to Phoebe and Drake in Magic School. They say their goodbyes, since it was his last day on earth, before he dies. He whispers in her ears and walks down the halls of Magic school, closing the door. Cole then appears.

Cole was the one who sent Drake up with the Demonic Sorcerers, so he'll be able to live for another year and also help Phoebe find love. Drake tells Cole that he fell in love with Phoebe also. They say goodbye, and Drake floats off and Cole disappears.

Season 9

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Cole and Phoebe finally reconcile.

Cole continued to look after Phoebe and her sisters after The Seven Year Witch. In The All or Nothing, Cole appears to Piper to help her reunite with her sisters when she is sent to another realm by Neena, the first witch to ever exist on Earth. He continuously tries to persuade Piper to eat a rotten apple, which will have the power to send her home.

But because of her lack of trust in the magic and Cole, the magic renders her unconscious instead. When she comes to, Phoebe casts a spell to contact Piper and Paige, whose soul had gone into the Ghostly Plane. Piper eventually decides to trust Cole's words and bites the apple one more time, which effectively sends her home.

In Cupid's Harrow, Cole tries to keep Coop from reuniting with his family in order to keep his and Phoebe's family safe, going as far as to unplug Phoebe's computer mid-research and keeping Coop out of the door where his family is. After everything is resolved, Cole watches Phoebe's family in bliss before Patty appears to him and orders him to resume looking for Prue.

In Family Shatters, Cole reappears to the sisters to explain a serious situation caused by Phoebe and Prue (now known as "Patience"), but only Piper would listen; Phoebe only wants him out of their lives. 

Later Cole apologizes to Phoebe for everything he had done and the things he did not do. Phoebe admitted that, though their relationship had not been perfect, she would be lying if she denied making her share of mistakes. They finally come to peace with each other.

In The Power of 300, Cole is given a chance at redemption by the Elders: to be Prue's assistant and help her in her new role as the Guardian of the Nexus of All. Phoebe admits they'll see each other because she plans to visit Prue a lot.

Season 10

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Cole dying in Phoebe's arms.

In Charmed Assault, Phoebe is preparing to go to bed when she spots Cole in the living room. They have a brief conversation, with Cole asking if she is happy, to which she says yes. He then tells her that he wonders every day if things could have worked out differently between them.

While battling Valen's army of zombies, Valen throws the Ancient Athame at Coop. Cole jumps in to protect Phoebe's husband and the blade plunges into his chest.

In Whatever Happened to the Demon with a Soul?, Cole's mind wanders into a void where he meets his former demonic form, Belthazor, who tries to make them whole again.

In the physical world, Phoebe and her sisters battle and vanquish Valen, then Phoebe calls out to Cole. Cole, upon hearing Phoebe's voice, remembers his past and refuses Belthazor, prompting him to wake up and die in Phoebe's arms. That night, Piper and Leo make a toast in Cole's honor while Coop comforts Phoebe.

When Cole's father, Benjamin Turner, is resurrected in Cole's body, he finds himself remembering Cole's life, including his love for Phoebe. He currently continues to inhabit Cole's body, and Phoebe and the rest of her family treat him as a dear friend.

Notes and Trivia

  • In 2006, Coop, a Cupid, took Phoebe back in time to see her past relationships. This included how Phoebe and Cole met at her college, and also his vanquishment, in "Centennial Charmed".
  • Cole and Phoebe's relationship was seen again after his vanquishment in "Cat House" at Piper and Leo's wedding.
  • Phoebe saw Cole's vanquish as the Source when she had a premonition of all the losses the sisters had endured over the years in "Charmageddon".
  • When the sisters mulled taking in the Hollow to stop the Triad and the Jenkins sisters in "Kill Billie: Vol. 2", Phoebe was initially reluctant, remembering what it did to Cole four years earlier.
  • Phoebe was still somehow connected to Cole. She was seemingly able to sense Cole's presence in "The Seven Year Witch" even when she couldn't see him.
  • Interestingly, the "C" that the apple peal formed in the episode "All Halliwell's Eve"—though at the moment thought to reference to Cole—turned out to be truthful in the end, as she ended up finding love with the cupid Coop. Though this may have just been a coincidence.
  • In the rebooted Charmed series, Maggie Vera and Parker Caine are the demon-witch couple. They were together until Parker left to find a way to control his demonic side. A few months later, they rekindled their relationship but he turned violent and tried to force her to his will. Maggie affirmed her decision to end their relationship. Parker ultimately gave up his powers, but Maggie still refused him, so he ventured off to lead a normal life.
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