Photo courtesy of Netflix
OLLA MOKHTAR
campus editor
olla.mokhtar@my.tccd.edu
As some of us know, The Winx Club Saga was a cartoon, but now, Netflix has made a live action series and recently released season 2 of Fate: The Winx Saga.
Since 2019, this series has been in production and released the first season in January 2021. The series follows the protagonist Bloom Peters, a fire fairy that grew up with human parents and has believed her whole life that she was human as well. That is, until she accidentally burns her childhood home in a fit of rage.
She then meets Farah Dowling, a powerful fairy but also the Headmistress of Alfea College, a school for fairies and specialists. Season 1 explores her experience in her newfound home with the fairies and specialists. It also explores the school’s encounters with creatures named “The Burned Ones” as well as Peters’ acquaintance with the former headmistress Rosalind Hale. Hale was put under stasis, but the stasis was undone by Peters. As a result, Hale took over the school and murdered Dowling in cold blood because she believed she was best to rule over Alfea.
Before Rosalind was put into stasis, she was the headmistress of Alfea, but she encountered a village named Aster Dell. This is where Bloom is from and where she was captured from as a baby. “The Burned Ones” had infiltrated the city and since Rosalind didn’t think the citizens were worth the trouble of saving, she ordered her star pupils. They were Saul Silva, Ben Harvey, and Farah Dowling.
After Silva and Farah understand what is happening, they decide to defy Rosalind’s order and stop Ben from following Rosalind’s order, accidentally killing him in the process. Farah and Silva then put Rosalind in stasis for 16 years.
Season 2 explores another setback as creatures named scrapers drain fairies of their magic and transfer them to whomever summoned them, Sebastian Valtor. Here begins the real fight of Rosalind, Bloom and the school versus Sebastian, a bloodwitch.
To begin, the series felt like a knockoff version of Divergent, Riverdale and the cartoon version all combined into one. It was obvious that they tried to make it into a series that the generation that watched it, who are now teenagers, could watch for entertainment. However, they failed to realize that the cartoon created a staple for me, and I expected more resemblance to it.
They also made everyone from the “other world” have a British accent except for Bloom since she wasn’t raised in the realm. It was confusing since The Winx Club was an American show, but I digress.
The cartoon featured more PG-13 content while the Netflix version featured more explicit content. When I first heard of it coming out, I expected it to have the majority of the content focused on fantasy and magic but it had more romance than was expected. Why is it that there is a throuple when my 6-year-old self expected wings, and they didn’t even give us that. They also cursed every two seconds, which was weird and slightly annoying.
Bloom had only attended Alfea for a year and probably less, so it was confusing when she said “I just want Alfea back to the way it was.” It was hilarious as well because I knew she didn’t have the connection that her best friends had to Alfea. Regardless, she still called it “home” despite the year of fighting off weird monsters, fighting over her boyfriend that was her suitmate and best friend Stella’s boyfriend, and the staring because she was from the “First World.”
Even though the character of Bloom was a bit unsettling and disappointing, the plot of the series itself, the events that took place and what actually happened was surprisingly good.
First, Bloom loses control over her powers when she is at the height of her emotions. It was bound to happen. Not only did she have enemies, but she also had a once in a lifetime power named “The Dragon Flame”.. How well did anyone really think her life was going to be?
Secondly, some of Bloom’s “squad,” Stella, Aisha and Terra “transform,” finally which is the ancient magical ability to gain wings. Although the wings came later in the series, seeing them transform was magical, no pun intended. The graphics and animation team did a great job in visualizing and bringing the wings to life. They also had their eyes glow every time they used their powers, so it was nice to watch.
Overall, the characters were annoying and cursed every time they got annoyed. Netflix tried to create it into another Riverdale-like series and failed because the standard was set for me when I was a child for it to be a children’s show. I must say though, their editing and creative team did a great job with depicting their transformations but did a horrible job at reading the room.
