Greg responds...

What are you basing your analysis of their characters on?

I've heard a lot of complaints about the Weird Sisters. At first they struck me as odd, but now I think I know where the confusion came from.

A. People took the way they presented themselves in "City of Stone" and in "High Noon" at face value.

B. When they saw the Sisters again in "Avalon" and "Ill Met by Moonlight", people didn't like the way they were behaving as much. The Sisters weren't as mysterious or powerful or something. So they rejected the "face value" version that was presented in those episodes.

C. People were less enamored of the Archmage than I was. When we first used the Archmage in "Long Way to Morning" I was phenominally impressed with David Warner, the actor who voiced the part. The character was just a cliched sorcerer, but I felt David added a level of menace that was irresistable. So even though we had killed off the character, I was determined to bring the Archmage back in a way that would let David go to town, and make the cliched Archmage into the near Satanic villain I envisioned he could be. That was what "Avalon, Part II" was supposed to accomplish. David didn't let me down. His dual performances as both versions of the Archmage was a true tour-de-force. But perhaps I failed David. The "Archmage-plus" was supposed to be all-but-omnipotent and all-but-omniscient. Once he had the Grimorum, the Eye and the Gate, he was supposed to be much more threatening than any villain we had encountered up to that point, including the Sisters. His fatal flaw (demonstrated in parts two and three) was his unwavering arrogance. He could have finished all his enemies off instantly. But at heart, he was still this cliched guy who had to toy with his enemies and make them suffer before he wiped them out. That gave the good guys time to rally and defeat him. I'm sure most of you basically got this, but you didn't FEEL it enough, so the Archmage didn't seem tough enough to boss the Sisters around. So everyone assumes that the Sisters are using HIM in some way.

D. Part of the reason for this is probably due to the fact that the final script for "Avalon, Part II" was WAY, WAY too long. We had to cut a lot of stuff before we shipped in order to get the show down to the correct length.
You didn't miss any important info, but I do think we lost a bit of the scope of the Archmage's plans, as well as some nice character moments and a bit of helpful expository stuff.

E. People didn't get the Sister's constraints vis-a-vis Oberon. Their hands were much more tied than people seemed to realize. They couldn't enter Avalon of their own volition. They were banished to the barge to guard it. The Archmage's commands gave them their excuse. And they wanted that excuse. So let me make something clear here: THEY ARE A VENGEFUL TRIO OF WITCHES. They wanted vengeance. But as immortals, they could afford to be patient. It didn't matter whether vengeance came in nine days or nine centuries. So, they were using the Archmage. Using him to extract their vengeance. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have eventually turned on the Archmage to get him off Avalon, but that would have been some fight, let me tell you.

F. Having said all that, don't imagine that helping the Archmage is the only thing they did for a millenium. They didn't follow Demona and Macbeth around every minute. They do have other things going on. Other plans. And I'm not saying that what they did for the Archmage doesn't dovetail with these other plans, but that doesn't mean they didn't sincerely want revenge on the Magus and his friends.

G. And they still do. The Magus may be largely beyond their reach, but Goliath and the others aren't. They still need to tread carefully because they can't risk Oberon or Titania's wrath, but believe me, they've got something up their sleeves.

I'm sure this "answer" raises a lot more questions. I can probably predict some of them, but it's much more fun to wait for you guys to ask them.