“Fate: The Winx Saga” landed on Netflix on 22 January 2021 with a pitch that sounded like a sure thing: take the animated series “Winx Club,” strip out the sparkle, and rebuild it as a moody live-action teen drama about fairies at a boarding school. The show ran two seasons and 13 episodes, the last of them landing on 16 September 2022. It ends at 4 of 10.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Bloom Burns Through Alfea’s First Semester
The premise is lean. Bloom, played by Abigail Cowen, is a fairy with fire powers who grew up in the First World and did not know what she was. She enrolls at Alfea, a magical boarding school in the Otherworld, and moves into a suite with four other fairies: Stella (Hannah van der Westhuysen), a light fairy; Aisha (Precious Mustapha), a water fairy; Terra (Eliot Salt), an earth fairy; and Musa (Elisha Applebaum), a mind fairy.
Cowen described the setup in plain terms. “Bloom is a fire fairy who grew up in the first world, so she did not grow up in the other world. And she finds out, kind of by accident, that she has these powers,” she said.
The school year has a monster problem. Ancient creatures called the Burned Ones return to the Otherworld and threaten everyone at Alfea. Bloom also wants to learn what happened to her past, and the show treats that question as its spine.
Six Episodes, Then a Second Season, Then Nothing
The first season is six episodes. It debuted on 22 January 2021 and was watched by 57 million subscribers in its first 28 days, a number Netflix reported and one that says more about the Winx name than about the show’s quality. A second season followed, bringing the total to 13 episodes. The finale aired 16 September 2022.
| Season | Episodes | First aired | Last aired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | 6 | 22 January 2021 | 22 January 2021 |
| Season 2 | Not stated | 2022 | 16 September 2022 |
The source gives no per-season episode count for season two, only the total of 13 across the run and the date the last episode aired. That gap is worth noting: the second season is the show’s one act of expansion, and even its size is not on the record here.
Brian Young Inherited a Franchise He Had to Rebuild
Brian Young developed “Fate: The Winx Saga” and served as showrunner and executive producer. The series is produced by Archery Pictures in association with Rainbow, the studio co-owned at the time by Winx creator Iginio Straffi and Viacom.
Straffi first proposed a live-action Winx in 2011, after Viacom, which owns Nickelodeon, became a co-owner of his studio and started financing his projects. He did not approve production immediately. He went and got experience in live-action television first, working as a producer on Nickelodeon’s “Club 57.” Principal photography on “Fate” began in September 2019 in Ireland.
The crew is a strange hybrid. Early in production, Nickelodeon’s American crew members from the cartoon — including Bloom’s voice actress, Molly Quinn — met with the “Fate” team and reviewed the pilot script. Rainbow’s Joanne Lee oversaw the show as an executive producer. Everyone else was new to the franchise, and the writers were recruited from teen dramas like “The Vampire Diaries.” That last detail explains a lot about the finished product.
Abigail Cowen and the Cast Read Their Characters Better Than the Scripts Did
The actors gave unusually clear descriptions of their characters, and those descriptions are more coherent than anything the scripts manage.
Van der Westhuysen on Stella: “Stella is a very complex girl. She appears a certain way, but she’s actually a lot softer and she has a lot of barriers that need to be broken down.”
Mustapha on Aisha: “Aisha is a water fairy. From the offset, she seems quite confident with her powers. But, ’cause she’s a perfectionist, she doesn’t think that’s good enough. She wants to always be developing.”
Salt on Terra: “Terra’s power is all plant based. It’s growing things and sending them off after people. She is the most welcoming. She loves it. She loves to meet new people. She gives too much.”
Applebaum on Musa: “Musa is an empath. Her power is to feel everyone’s emotions, whether it’s nature or anything around. She’s just open and honest, but also she’s not honest with herself and she’s trying to learn how to do that.”
Danny Griffin played Sky, Sadie Soverall played Beatrix, and Robert James-Collier played Saul Silva. Freddie Thorp and Eve Best played Riven and Farah Dowling.
Paulina Chávez Brings Flora to Season 2
Season 2 added Paulina Chávez as Flora, Brandon Grace as Grey and Éanna Hardwicke as Sebastian, announced on 20 July 2021. Chávez talked about the part with real feeling.
“She’s very much a person that cares about people a lot, and that’s what makes her so easily lovable,” Chávez said. “She really controls the room when she’s in it, and that’s something that I had to learn to do. I’m a little shy.”
She also remembered the reaction to her casting. “I remember when they actually announced it and there was a comment just like, ‘Guys, she’s Mexican. We won.'” And: “This is a big win for the Latino community. I’m in Ireland, what the hell?! Who would’ve thought this girl from El Paso would be here? It’s pretty cool.”
The show had a whitewashing controversy before that, and Applebaum returned as Musa despite it. On 27 July 2022, Miranda Richardson and Daniel Betts were announced as replacements for Lesley Sharp and Alex Macqueen as Rosalind Hale and Professor Ben Harvey. Sharp could not return because she had other commitments scheduled and could not make the filming dates work.
The Burned Ones Never Get Their Due
Here is the problem, and it is not the cast. “Fate: The Winx Saga” was built by people recruited from “The Vampire Diaries,” and it behaves like it. Alfea is a school where the lessons matter less than the love triangles, the rivalries and the brooding. The Burned Ones are a threat in name; the real engine is who is angry at whom in the suite.
That approach can work. It does not work here, because the show keeps reaching for a mythology it never bothers to lay out. Bloom’s origin is the central question of both seasons, and the answer arrives in pieces so small that the payoff never lands. Six episodes in season one is not enough room for five fairies, a school, a war, and a mystery.
The transformations are the tell. A show about elemental powers should make those powers feel like a physical fact. “Fate” treats them as a special effect budget line. Terra grows things and sends them after people — that is a good, strange, specific idea, and the show uses it as a background gag.
What the show does have is a cast that understood the assignment better than the writing did. Van der Westhuysen’s read on Stella — a girl with barriers that need breaking down — is a better character than Stella gets to be on screen. Applebaum’s Musa, an empath who cannot be honest with herself, is the most interesting idea in the ensemble and gets the least to do.
A Franchise Rebuilt Without Its Own Fans
The strangest fact about “Fate: The Winx Saga” is how little of the original it kept. Straffi spent years getting ready to put Winx Club in live action, and when he did, the writers’ room came from a vampire show and the crew was new to the franchise. Two veterans of the cartoon reviewed the pilot script. That is the whole bridge.
So the question of who this was for has no clean answer. Not for kids who grew up on the cartoon, which looks nothing like this. Not for the “Vampire Diaries” audience, who had better versions of this already. It sits in a gap.
The 57 million subscribers in 28 days is the number Netflix cared about, and a second season exists. The source does not say the figure caused the renewal, and it does not say why the show stopped at two seasons. Two seasons, 13 episodes, and a story that stops mid-question.
“Fate: The Winx Saga” is not a disaster. It is a waste. The premise of a fire fairy learning what she is at a school full of monsters is a good one. The cast is game and articulate about their characters. The production got itself to Ireland and shot two seasons.
What it never does is decide whether it wants to be a mystery, a war story or a soap, and 13 episodes is not enough time to try all three. The Burned Ones are the show’s best asset and its most neglected. Bloom’s past is its hook and its least answered question.
The published critical score sits at 4.0 out of 10, with a 40 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That is the right neighborhood. There is real material here — Terra’s plants, Musa’s empathy, Stella’s armor — and almost none of it gets the room it needs.
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