Hey there, everyone! Welcome to my blog post! This is still the Babyland newsletter, just with pizzaz added to it.
Last week, I briefly discussed Winx Club and Fate: The Winx Saga. Today, let me prepare you.
If you are a huge fan or a so-so fan of the adaptation, please skip this post. I’m entitled to my opinion, as you are. Going by the litany of disappointed fans and negative reviews, I obviously agree with them; therefore, I list my own reasons why I don’t agree with the latest adaptation of WINX.
Spoilers are included. Read with caution, loves!
*I read reviews, watched commentary on YouTube, watched trailers for both seasons, and read up on both TV shows to get a feel for whether I’d like to watch Fate. Can’t say I’m interested after I researched all that.

Let’s start with what the show does not include:

1) Close friendship
Yo, I’m not seeing the warm, close-knit, friendly friendship! From the looks of it, the girls don’t bond and go their separate ways. Animated WINX should teach the live-action series a lesson.

2) Home planets
YEAH, HOME PLANET! Mine is Earth, what’s yours! Each fairy from the cartoon series had a residence from another planet, including Bloom, who resided on Earth for much of her life until she learned over time, she originated from a magical dimension named Domino. Now, on Netflix, in the world of Fate: The Winx Saga, planets have been removed and replaced by realms all compressed together. Where be sparkly magical world?

3) Wings
Someone forgot their pair of wings! An angel without wings is ludicrous. A fairy without wings is ridiculous! According to the Netflix adaptation, fairies used to have them. Yeah? I used to be a mermaid; now, I can get by with half a tail transformation and continue to swim in the water—still a mermaid.

4) Magical creatures
While the creator of Winx Club himself, Iginio Straffi, wanted an adult-themed, live-action version of Winx Club, I don’t understand why that meant making the version into a dark version. Unicorns, pixies, dragons, fairy pets, or ogres don’t appear to make the cut for his latest fairy project. Bloom’s firepower counts! She comes from the Dragon Flame! There’s your magical creature! Nailed it, Netflix!
In my opinion, it’d be adorable for a computer-generated pixie to appear on the screen. It’s been done before.

5) Tecna and Flora
In our prevalent reality of omnipresent technology, what GIVES with the erasure of Tecna, fairy of technology? As for Flora, she doesn’t make an appearance until Season 2! She’s practically a late-comer to the Winx! She may, yes, have been added to the series (finally), but her arrival in Season 2, not Season 1, makes me quickly say, “I’m out!”

6) Brandon and Timmy
Pro: the Specialists are included. Con: original members are subtracted. The Winx Saga writers must love to eschew from the original story. Brandon was one of the prominent Specialists, and Timmy might have been the most essential to the crew as he was adroit with technology. Thinking it over, Tecna is absent from this show, and she was Timmy’s love. Then again, we have Stella, who dated Brandon in the first show, but her heart lies with Sky . . .

7) Hovercraft
Synonymous with the tech we saw Tecna use all the time, The Winx Saga leaves no reminder of the hovercraft in their series. Cars are the norm. Basic, are we?

8) Cloud Tower
Headmistress Griffin and her witch students, along with their school, were killed off in the “grown-up” Winx Club. My heart goes out to them.

Follow me, and let’s look at what the hell has changed!!!

9) “Flora” and Musa
The new “Flora” of Netflix’s Fate is Terra. Flora is mentioned in Season 1 as a cousin to Terra. What what? This would be a flip flop, except in the animated counterpart, Flora had a sister named Miele. With Terra in place of Flora, it doesn’t fly with me. Pun intended. Over to Musa: The Winx Saga writers relegated her from a fairy of technology to an empath fairy who feels others’ emotions. Those headphones she wears are to work against her abilities rather than acting as a source of her magic. Cartoon Musa made sense!

10) “Diversity”
I’ve had a look over the extended cast, and there is diversity. Applause! However, look closely enough, and you’ll see precisely where casting screwed up. Wow, one black character in the overall major Winx characters. I don’t find this up to snuff. Was there difficulty hiring an Asian actress for Musa and a Latina actress for Flora, or more like, Terra? Write to me, Netflix!

11) Wardrobe
Explain how this is a young-adult version of Winx when the girls are supposed to be the same age as their cartoon counterparts. Further, the teens on the Netflix saga don’t dress as much as teen girls do. The fashion is quite blah. Surprisingly, I am fond of the outfits from the original TV show. For the Netflix original series, skimpy outfits would do. That’s how girls from my high school dressed, anyway.

12) Accents
Read this twice in case I’ve offended you: I have no problem with British accents. It’s in a story written like Fate, where characters who come from all over share the same accent, does it piss me off. Harry Potter characters can get away with it for the straightforward reason that they live in England. For Fate: The Winx Saga, where everyone has the same accent (but not Bloom), makes the creators look like they are striving for unimpressionable sophistication.

13) Trix
We got no wings; we got no Cloud Tower; we got no Trix! The destructive trio of witches made the animated Winx so enjoyable to watch. Come on over to live-action Winx, and one has made it to the small screen. Her name isn’t any of the original Trixes: it’s Beatrix. Beatrix dies already by Season 1. To screw this up more so, she’s a flippin’ fairy!

14) Evil headmistress
What I love about Winx Club (I have plenty of seasons left to watch) is the presence of the sincere, kind headmistress named Faragonda. Faragonda protected the girls and strived for them to be powerful fairies. Enter Fate: the world of Alfea has changed its tune by replacing her with a headmistress who isn’t what she seems to be.

15) Relationships
Stella goes for Sky, Bloom’s BF? Riven has his eyes set on Beatrix and not Musa? Where did these effed-up relationships come from?? I find it cringe-worthy! Sky and Bloom were such a power couple in animated Winx! Just put Sky with Bloom and Musa with Riven–properly–end of story!

16) No crown
I was surprised to learn that in Season 2 of the 2004 series, the newcomer Winx–Layla/Aisha–was a princess. Switch to the 2021 series, no princess Aisha. Stella keeps her crown. Can’t say the same about Bloom, but I’m not picking favorites here.

17) Added characters
All these unnecessary brand-new characters, even a fill-in for a Specialist, when surely there was room for a Specialist named Brandon, make the show unrecognizable to the highest degree. Around this point, I fail to see how this is Winx Club in flesh and blood.

18) Parents
2004 Bloom had a warm, supportive relationship with her adoptive parents. In that version, she was adopted after her adoptive father discovered her safely protected by a magical shield. That shield protected her from fire, which broke out around her. In the gloomy Netflix version, she’s switched with another baby. Somehow her parents didn’t know that. :/ Not dark enough? Her power unleashes in her house and on one of her parents, nearly killing them. Thankfully, Winx Club didn’t turn down that dark path. While original Bloom’s power was magic, I look over at adapted Bloom, and I get more of a sense she’s a mutant and not a fairy.

19) Stella
In the lovely Winx Club, Stella wasn’t perfect, for she made comments about those around her, was highly opinionated, and snapped when she didn’t get her way. Through it all, her habit of cracking jokes, standing up for her friends, courageousness, and kindness is the polar opposite compared to the live-action Winx Club. Hell, going after her friend’s boyfriend is not Stella at all! Her rudeness, mean attitude, and lack of loyalty to her friends turn me away.

20) Moody and gloomy
A young-adult-themed Winx Club didn’t have to be dark, rife with snappy, uneasy-going teenagers who drink and mention gays. LGBTQ is the norm in television nowadays; refer to social media and Harry Potter, as though that’s the single most appropriate reference for a magical fantasy series. It could have turned out similar to Mean Girls, embracing the colorful set design and outfits for each character that is both on-point for their style, age, and period. The magic deserved a more magical essence than popping up like mutant abilities. The girls definitely could have acted nicer to each other and accepted one another faster.
Harry Potter did a fantastic job going from page to screen. The writers of Fate: The Winx Saga did not have such a laborious task. Yet they mistook that grown-up fans of the original Winx would love a stress-inducing, eerie take on the beloved show in live-action.

Admittingly, Fate looks cool, but I don’t get that same feeling of Winx when I look at it. I see gloom and death and so-so friendships. If you like the show, good for you. I’m going to be sticking with the beloved, colorful Winx Club!

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After reading this post, are you more Winx or Fate?

Thanks for reading!
Sources:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8179402/?ref_=hm_rvi_tt_i_12
https://winx.fandom.com/wiki/Winx_Club_Wiki
https://winx.fandom.com/wiki/Fate:_The_Winx_Saga
https://www.rbw.it/en/about/management/iginio-straffi/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDkKzjDW1TU&t=436s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4aDRtnk4Yo&t=903s