Fate: The Winx Saga — Disregarding The Female Audience
2020 saw the majority of the world through many disappointments, with the announcement of a live action Winx Club hitting Netflix, fans of the noughties cartoon wished that the first month of 2021 would at least give them this one joy. But, after the release of a simple minute and a half long teaser trailer, the sighs of fashion loves echoed in disappointment at the sight of this supposedly magical world.
The Animated Series
The original Winx Club animated series ran from 2004–2019 and the diversity of the cast opened up a huge cult following for the series. Young girls across the globe watched in awe as this group of young women stood up against evil, navigated friendships and shared stories of young love, all while donning bright, glittery and super campy outfits that instilled a love of fashion in many of its watchers.
The Italian cartoon was created to give young girls action based storylines similar to the cartoons developed for their male counterparts. Mastermind Iginio Straffi wanted to delve into the physiological transition from girlhood to adulthood and, seeing a huge gap in female led cartoons, created the Winx Club to do so. Arguably one of the most important parts of the Winx Club, or at least the factor that continues to stand out today, was the fashion featured in the show. The original pilot for the Winx Club, tested in 2002, saw a lack of interest from the target audience and the less than enchanting outfits were the butt of the majority of the backlash aimed at the cartoon.
To rework his idea, Straffi brought in Italian designers from brands such as Dolce and Gabbana and Prada to restyle the cartoon and increase the appeal to young girls who wanted to see themselves in these characters. Characters would now see outfits lending themselves to more modern designs with attractive colours and pieces that followed the 2000’s trends.
Even in 2003, the cartoon knew how integral the fashion element of the show would be in playing to the interests of young girls at the time — but this is a concept that the 2021 live action remake, Fate: The Winx Saga, didn’t seem to click on to.
Fate: The Winx Saga
Similarly to the cartoon, Fate: The Winx Saga sees a group of young fairies trying to protect their school from predators that lay beyond the magical barrier all while simultaneously figuring out who they are and where they belong.
The new Netflix show takes on the trope of a gritty and dark teenage fantasy, seemingly the only type of show that Netflix has decided young women want and need. This setting of live-action adaptations of traditionally female childhood classics, has taken the forefront since the retrospective successes of both ‘Riverdale’ and ‘The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’. Dark and foggy shots of ‘troubled’ young girls making their way in the world as they transition into adulthood is what young women get, and it’s all they really get now.
Diluted Issues and Character Tropes
The writing is flawed throughout the six-episode season debut, everything that made the cartoon such a success amongst young girls has been abandoned in favour of diluted storylines and simple character tropes.
The biggest issue that leaves the majority of characters in the Winx Saga lacking substance is the way in which they so easily give away their darkest emotions and troubles. What should be an impactful release of emotions ends up feeling like an easy way to justify bad character traits and poorly judged actions. When the horrific reason why Bloom (the series main character) ended up in this foreign world is told, the scene falls flat as she recounts the story, that she’s never told a soul, to a girl she’s known for less than half an episode. Recurring scenes similar to this are littered throughout the season as the show introduces various other characters and their trauma’s.
These traumatic backgrounds should be main storylines used to create deep and well thought out characters, but instead so many of these characters’ problematic backgrounds are explained through dialogue rather than being shown to the watcher. This leaves the characters filling the ideals of a trope rather than being well-rounded and useful personifications of trauma.
Trope — A common motif or pattern of work, such as ‘The Girl Next Door’ or ‘The Femme Fatale’
Female character tropes are often used as a marketing tool to appeal to a female audiences and sell them an empowering story without actually delivering an in-depth, strong female lead. Winx Club, following the story of four strong women, plays into tropes at every twist and turn, leaving the characters feeling flat and uninspiring.
Bloom
The lack of substance in this main character leads her to come off as self-serving at best and plain out toxic at worst. The writers try to give Bloom a troubled background which they seemingly believed would justify her selfish actions to the audience, but it falls flat as it is learned she tried to kill her parents after they call her a “basic bitch” and denounce her for spending time in antique stores — a bit drastic. A real breakdown of her relationship with her parents is never shown and the emotional struggles she faces aren’t voiced. To the audience there is little wrong in Bloom’s life and even as her storyline develops and deepens through the season, the lack of intimate, psychological struggle does nothing to excuse her toxic behaviour.
Musa
Inspired by Lucy Lui, the animated character of Musa took inspiration from Asian heritage and wore a myriad of costumes inspired by Asian culture. Unfortunately, the live action adaptation of Musa is white-passing at least and doesn’t go far in competing with the diversity that many loved about the cartoon. Musa is one of the more mysterious characters, the show sees her struggling with unspoken issues and the only glance into her background and the troubles that riddle her mind leave a refreshing mystery that draws more interest into the character.
Terra
Terra’s character was a new addition for Fate: The Winx Saga, her character replacing her ‘cousin’ Flora. Considering the unattainable body types of the Winx Club animated series, it was refreshing to see the addition of a plus size character, but the re-placement of Flora — the only Latina of the group — is blatant whitewashing and alongside the aforementioned white washing of Musa, is unacceptable.
Terra is shown as a sweet, bubbly young woman with a love of plants, family and friends. She is often the target of fat-phobic jokes and occasional bullying, her response to these jabs aims to be ‘empowering’ but instead her actions often lead to her physically harming the offender and then no more is said. As the season develops there are no consequences for the bullying she faces and there is no indication as to how she personally deals with this harassment. There was the opportunity here to portray the detrimental effects of bullying and fat-phobia but nothing came of the storyline leaving the scenes feeling flat and unnecessary.
Aisha
Unfortunately, Aisha seems to be a part of this show only to find convenient ways to develop a storyline. The audience doesn’t learn much about her at all and she plays to the ‘good girl’ trope so intensely that she may as well have no personality of her own at all. In the animated series, Aisha is the princess of a magical realm yet in this live adaptation she’s been demoted to a side character while a white woman has replaced her as the royal.
Stella
When Stella first graces the screen she is seen as no more than a rich girl with an intense jealousy problem. But as the episodes develop and more is learnt about her, the stories behind these flaws are exposed and this leaves her as one of the most well-rounded characters in the entire cast.
Fated Friendship
We hardly see the group of friends together, the season is littered with fallings out and angsty one liners aimed at one another. There’s no bonding, no meaningful friendship formed and despite all this we’re meant to believe these girls would die for one another — it makes no sense. Girlhood friendships developed around the ages of 16 are rocky relationships at least and they present a very meaningful connection for young women, a support group in your darkest and most confusing times, yet this show seems to make light of that. The Winx Club animated series had a strong focus on the importance of friendship and being there for those you love, it’s a deep connection that runs thicker than a simple falling out.
Failing Fashion
If you were a fan of Winx Club in the noughties, there’s an 100% chance your fashion is at least a tiny bit influenced by the trends featured in the show. Fashion was such a huge part of the Winx Club cartoon and, especially with the live-action adaptation being skewed to appeal to a Gen-Z audience, the early noughties fashion that inspired the outfits in the original Winx Club could be so easily adapted to fit into the Y2K Tik-Tok style that we’re seeing take off this decade. A great example is this styling video from Australian Youtuber @StealTheSpotlight.
Taking more outrageous and imaginative costume design choices would have gone miles in terms of bringing us into the magical realm. Instead the outdated wardrobe reminds the watcher constantly that this place isn’t real and that these people aren’t in fact fairies at all. There was the opportunity here to create a super campy stylized world with glitter and bright colours, editorial makeup looks and clothing that actually screams ‘fairy’ when we see it!
It would be easy to be less mad if there was even a hint of a thought going into the show’s costume design. There were outfits featured on all characters across the last three episodes that could’ve worked, but there was visibly a lack of care there to pull the whole look together. At the very least, there could have been a nod to the original colour palette of the animated show, where each character had their signature colours, but without the nod to the cartoon being given in the live-action’s title, there is no way to connect the two adaptations together.
Deeper issues
On top of the whitewashing of both Flora (now Terra) and Musa, there are other issues that run deeper than just the lack of substance in the characters. One of them being the unaddressed homophobia running in the background of the main storylines throughout the show.
Side character Dane, is introduced as a possible love interest for Terra until he is outed on Instagram by the token ‘bad guys’, Beatrix and Riven. Not only is there then no consequence for forcefully outing someone but the storyline is never mentioned again! Characters around Dane question his sexuality constantly but his struggle with this is never shown or spoken of. Considering only heteronormative couplings are shown through out the 6 episodes, the introduction of a gay character with an interesting storyline would’ve been a huge win for Winx Club fans.
Another huge issue through the show is the near demonisation of sex. The token ‘bad guys’ are the only ones seen having sex or even talking about it. Dane’s mystery sexulaity is again played into here when he is shown experimenting with drugs and sex alongside Beatrix and Riven. By portraying sex and drugs in this light, people class them as things done soley by bad people and especially in a show available for people in their early teens, portraying these topics in a healthy and mindful way could have gone miles in improving the conversations that surround these topics. There are many more ways to show the audience who the villains are meant to be than simply attaching them to storylines featuring sex and drugs, its lazy.
Live adaptations formed from traditionally male skewed childhood characters are given so much thought when being adapted. In depth storylines and characters struggling with trauma are given thoughtful back stories and redemption arcs that can take whole films to develop. The female counterparts feel like a second thought, more of a do the bare-minimum and sell it quick approach. Fate: The Winx Saga is the epitome of this, something that had so much potential to be a great show for young women has been diluted down, pushed out and marketed as an empowering story for the audience.
The show fails at every twist and turn and yet young girls will still watch it, whether it is because they’ve been conditioned to believe this is what they want or because there is simply nothing else.
