After the trailer for the new original series from Netflix came out I had thoughts. Fate: The Winx Saga is the newest installment in the Winx Club franchise and is an adaptation/live-action revoot of the original show and comic series. From the drop of new info, many fans who had the original as a childhood favourite were jumping in to see what it was like, and the changes have been disapointing so far. So will the show be taking a good direction for a mass audience, or will it end up like other adaptations that have been thrown away early?
Edit: Since writing this post I have watched and reviewed Fate: The Winx Saga. A lot of the questions I posed below (such as inclusion of witches) are included within this spoiler-free review.
Whitewashing Controversy
First up, I couldn’t talk about this series without bringing up the discourse online about the obvious whitewashing of two of the main cast. First would be Flora from the original series who was based on Jennifer Lopez, a Latina with Puerto Rican heritage who is not white. This character has been replaced by a character called Terra, played by white actress Eliot Salt.
Whilst this is a new character that is a replacement for the original, I believe the original casting call was for Flora and so this has been changed retroactively to fit the new white actress. This character also may be a merged character with another white character, Tecna, who is missing from the trailers. Flora also has a mention in the book tie-in (which has had a few pages available on apple books to try before purchasing) where Terra is her cousin, so hopefully she does appear later in the series. But the biggest question is definitely why isn’t Flora in Fate?
The other character that has been whitewashed is Musa, who is a fairy from the world of Melody in the original series that is based heavily on China. Throughout the series’ run there are multiple parts of her back story and even outfits which show off her Asian-styled heritage and culture. So casting Elisha Applebaum, who looks white is a kick in the teeth for a series that has historically been more diverse. Whilst Elisha Applebaum’s heritage is apparently 1/4 Singaporeon she’s , her features mostly fit with eurocentric ideals and so is white-passing.
Aesthetics
The Winx Club series art style is heavily based on model or high fashion design drawings which include elongated limbs and small proportions. They’re a product of their time back in 2004, and were originally created by an Italian company who have a lot of that fashion influence from luxury designers which you can see through the outfits and later on the change in art style.
However, there’s things about the fashion and the brightness of the colours which is what drew people into this show. Fate is very dark and more gritty, following in the steps of Shadowhunters, Sabrina and I’ve seen over and over again the comparisons to Riverdale. Coming from Brian Young, a writer from The Vampire Diaries, this isn’t surprising but it’s a heavy deviation from the source material.
Fashion
I wanted to briefly mention fashion as on off-shoot to the aesthetics of the show. In the original series, Winx Club was a group of girls who loved fashion and mostly had new and original outfits multiple times a season and often fell into trouble when shopping. The fashion was based on popular fashion in Europe at the time, and the fairy transformations took on elements from high fashion.
Fate contrasts strongly to the original in a few different ways. Firstly, they’ve done away with the colour schemes that were originally used. Changing Bloom from her blue colours to be all red, Aisha being in blue instead of green and Musa in purple instead of red has been a clear thumbs down from many fans. With Stella being the only one with the same colour, having an orange-yellow shirt on in one of the promo images but otherwise wearing mostly black. These colour schemes also seem to be only present in one of the promo images, showing that they’re updating each girl to wear more colours, but sticking to more muted colours too.
On top of the change away from the recognition power of the colour palettes, there’s a deviation from how fashionable the girls are. They’ve clearly updated the wardrobes from the 2000’s crop tops with everything, although Y2K fashion is slowly coming back into style which is a missed opportunity. The clothing is also just not on the cutting edge of style, even for characters like Stella who’s main hobby was shopping. This change for a series so based in fashion that the art style is based on designs feels like a big convergence away from the source material.
Magic
The magic element has changed for the series in multiple ways, and it makes the series feel potentially more boring. The magic is more fixed elemental from the looks of it, and so Bloom our main character is a fire fairy instead of having control of the Dragon Flame. In the original series, this power proved to make her stronger than the enemies they come up against, but also make her a target by enemies as they try to steal or control the power. Of course, this could still come up in the series, but for now we’ve not seen any hints of this higher power.
This is similar for other characters like Aisha, who in the original series could take control of magical substances called Morphix which was a bright pink water-like thing. In Fate it appears she’s a simple water-wielder. Stella is the fairy (and princess!) of the sun & moon, but in Fate she’s been stripped down to being a light fairy. These at the moment are mostly observations and may change once the series is out, but for the moment it doesn’t look quite as magical and original as the childhood series I was enamoured with.
The biggest change in magic is that they’ve done away with fairy wings and transformation (so probably not as many doll lines for the show!). The fairies not having wings is a bit disappointing because it’s unclear if there are witches still, and if there is a way to differentiate them.
Worldbuilding
They’ve condensed the three schools in Magix to be just Alfea where you can specialise in different types of magical being. The school is no longer within Magix eithers, it’s within Solaria which is the place Stella is the Princess of. In the original Solaria was a planet, with other cast members being from many different realms and planets (and teleportation as well as ships were a core part of the world!). In Fate, there’s an “Otherworld” which has all these places as countries like Solaria and Eraklyon. I understand why this change has happened and it’s probably budget related, but it makes the worldbuilding instantly feel smaller.
A good change I think has been made in that they’ve ensured that men can be fairies and women can be specialists if they train in that specialism. Whilst the original series was loose with it’s lore, and you can argue that all of them have and can use magic but channel it through different specialisms – there was a clear divide of all the boys went to the boys school and girls can be witches or fairies. This seems to make it more equal, but we’re not clear at this moment if there’s a main cast member who will be a female specialist or a male fairy.
Another piece of world-building which could be missing is linked to Tecna also being missing. Winx Club was not just about magic and fantasy, it also had an emphasis on technology being a part of their everyday lives. Technology was far advanced from Earth, and there were whole realms focused on improving it, with the Winx Club often needing help from tech gadgets of Tecna or the Specialists to help save the day. Fate seems to be focusing mostly on the fantasy and none of the sci-fi elements the show had.
Themes
A key theme from the original series was Bloom finding out who she is. From the brief information we have about Fate, this may still be the case but it seems to be a very different path for her. In the original series she goes to school as soon as she finds out she’s a fairy, after her powers appear to help save Stella. In Fate she’s found her powers and is fearful and can’t control them and will possibly hurt her family after already setting alight their home. She’s then recruited by the headmistress to learn to control her powers, and is impatient when she’s told this is a slow process. I find her beginning to be so vastly different, that I’m unsure if the same bravery, loyalty and friendliness will be throughout her story.
On top of this beginning for the story, I’m wondering how much of Bloom’s backstory from the original is going to transition across to be shown in Fate. With her lost family, her human parents, and the other mysteries that are based on the Dragon Flame magic she seems to be less than what she was before.
Another key theme is about friendship and working together. From the little we know of this series the friendship doesn’t look to be as unified as the original series. Stella doesn’t find and get saved by Bloom and she seems annoyed that she has to be her mentor at school (although did anyone ever like being buddied up with a stranger in school?). Plus, in the book extract there seems to be tension or at least an unwillingness to become close friends despite the girls living together.
Overall, I don’t think Fate is supposed to be a faithful adaptation of the original series and I’m sure there will be changes for the better. For example, the later seasons of the original do cater for much younger children,so this new series is targeting the nostalgic 20+ year olds who like the characters and worlds but need a more complex or mature storyline. However from the looks of it, it will be a re-imagining but taking elements from the original rather than a live-action version. Let’s just hope it lives up to the expectations fans have for it, the controversy is addressed and improved upon and the changes can be enjoyed.