Tempus (Charmed)

Tempus is a fictional character on the WB television series Charmed.

Tempus (played by David Carradine) is an upper-level demon who can manipulate time in any way he chooses to. Hence the name Tempus, a Latin word meaning time. He is also known as "The Devil's Sorcerer". He also has the ability to create time loops, and to reset time. One way to stop Tempus is to take him out of the time that he is in. It is very difficult to contact Tempus, since he is a powerful demon who is well insulated.

In his first and only appearance, Tempus is sent to help the demon, whose human name is "Rodriguez", to defeat the Charmed Ones. So, every time Rodriguez fails to kill them and gets vanquished, Tempus resets time, allowing Rodriguez to learn from his mistakes and get another chance. Tempus and Rodriguez are the only ones who know about this, until Phoebe begins to feel that they are in a time loop because of her power of premonition and later Prue and Piper began to realize it too, repeating the same day over and over again. Rodriguez kills Andy Trudeau. Once the sisters figure out what has been happening, they cast a spell to accelerate time, therefore breaking the time loop and taking Tempus out of his time. Tempus, defeated by the Charmed Ones, flees back to the underworld and Rodriguez is vanquished by Prue. However, Trudeau remained dead.

In season 3, the Charmed Ones and the demonic world are exposed on live television. The sisters figure they need to contact Tempus to reset time to before they were exposed, but none of them know how. Their Whitelighter, Leo, decides to go to the Underworld, and asks Cole to contact Tempus. Cole says he does not have that kind of power. Phoebe suggests for him to go to The Source Of All Evil, ruler of the Underworld, and ask him to contact Tempus to reset time, as exposure is also a problem for The Source. Once Cole asks The Source, The Source states that Tempus is still weakened from his last encounter with The Charmed Ones, and doing so again could destroy him. But later on, The Source accepts their offer, after making a deal with Phoebe for her to stay in the Underworld, and uses Tempus to reset time.

In season 8, the demon Tam asks a Possessor Demon, who she is trying to bring back from the dead. Tam guesses, and asks if it is Tempus, Barbas, Zankou or the Seer. The Possessor Demon later says that it is The Source. From this conversation, it appears that Tempus is dead, probably as a consequence of resetting time in season 3.

Behind the scenes

 * Although referred to in three different episodes of different seasons, Tempus only appears on-screen once, in season 1.