Return to Halloweentown

Return to Halloweentown (also known as Halloweentown 4) is a Disney Channel Original Movie that premiered on Friday October 20, 2006, and is the fourth and final film in the Halloweentown series. The story follows Marnie Piper (Sara Paxton) going to college at Witch University in Halloweentown, where dark forces try to control her magic. This is the only film in the Halloweentown series not to feature Kimberly J. Brown as Marnie, although Joey Zimmerman, Debbie Reynolds, Judith Hoag, and Lucas Grabeel reprise their roles. Sophie Piper, played by Emily Roeske in the previous films, is mentioned but does not appear. This film also marks the first Disney Channel Original Movie franchise to produce a fourth installment. The premiere scored 7.5 million viewers. The DVD was released on August 28, 2007. Plot One year after the events of the last film, a now eighteen-year-old Marnie is offered a full scholarship to Halloweentown's Witch University for her good deeds and help in the previous years. Much to her mother Gwen's dismay, Marnie decides to forgo her original college plans and instead attends the Halloweentown school. Gwen forces Marnie's brother Dylan to accompany and keep an eye on her. The school is not what it seems, as witches and warlocks cannot use magic; instead their curriculum seems to be no different than a mortal college curriculum: Shakespeare analysis, with old magic history. Marnie had thought she would learn how to use her magic and is now crestfallen. Marnie runs into her old friend Ethan and makes a new friend named Aneesa the Genie. She also makes three new enemies in the Sinister Sisters: Scarlett, Sapphire and Sage, a triad of malevolent, extremely snobby, spoiled, and manipulative witches who are the daughters of Silas Sinister and with whom Dylan is immediately infatuated. Marnie learns that she is responsible for the university's restriction of magic. The university was originally established exclusively for warlocks and witches to learn how to use magic. But when the portal between Halloweentown and the human world was opened permanently instead of just on Halloween, most of them went to college in the mortal realm. Since then, Witch University has allowed other magical creatures to attend. Magic was banned on campus grounds to level the academic playing field. The classes are boring for Marnie until she uncovers within the dungeon of the college, a box, with the name "S.