Winx Club Saga: Original vs. Reboot

On January 28th, 2004, the entire world was blessed with the arrival of Winx Club. Winx Club was- and still is- one of the most iconic pieces of entertainment to EVER hit the television screen.

(For my uneducated folks, cough cough Brandon Portillo cough cough, Winx Club is fire, just like Bloom)

HOWEVER, on January 22nd, 2021, almost exactly 17 years after the premier of the original series, the world was punished by the debut of Winx Club Saga.

Some of you may need some background to fully grasp the gravitas of this situation. Winx Club (the ORIGINAL) is an Italian animated fantasy series centering around six fairies that attend a magical university called Alfea College located on the planet Solaria. The six girls in question are Bloom, Flora, Techna, Stella, Aisha, and Musa. They’re the fairies of the Dragon Flame, Nature, Technology, Sun, Waves, and Music respectively. Throughout the series across multiple seasons, the girls keep up with their studies and fight baddies using their magical powers in order to grow stronger. One key part of the entire series that many fans love are all of the transformations that the girls use, each one stronger than the last. In total, there are 15 transformations available for the girls to use.

Moving on to the live action reboot version, Bloom, Aisha, Stella, Flora, and Musa are the only original fairies that are still in the story, and Flora isn’t even a main character- her cousin Terra is. Woah, woah, woah.

Excuse me?

Where is my queen Techna? And who the heck is Terra?

Just like me, many other avid fans of the series were disappointed at these illogical changes. Another big problem many people had with the show was the fact that there were no fairy transformations.

Winx Club with no transformations?!

I guess the writers and producers and whoever else was working on the show thought that NOT including the most iconic component of the show was a great idea. Well I mean, Bloom did have a semi-transformation at the end of season one, but the CGI was a CRIME against humanity and all she got were poorly animated wings made of fire and no cool outfit, so I’ll take that with a grain of salt.

Lafayette Junior Lauren Rich, a longtime fan of the OG series, said, “I like the original better than the reboot. The reboot is boring and it doesn’t even have the same people as the original one!” Clearly, I’m not the only one who dislikes the new version.

Another more problematic issue that the new Winx Club had was whitewashing. For example, it’s clear that Flora, Musa, and Aisha are coded to be Latina, East Asian, and Black respectively. While the actress who plays Aisha, Precious Mustapha, stays true to her coding, the same can’t be same for Musa and Flora. The actress who plays Musa, Elisha Applebaum, claims to be a quarter Singaporean, but is still clearly white passing. In fact, many people believed her to be fully white until Applebaum, fed up with the controversy, revealed her ethnicity. The main point is, people find Applebaum to be a shallow and inadequate representation of the beloved fairy Musa.

As an Asian who grew up watching Winx Club, I was excited to see Musa played by a real person, but suffice to say, I was disappointed and almost felt disgusted by Netflix’s awful casting choices. Meanwhile, Flora’s role, remember, was replaced by Terra who is played by Eliot Salt, a full white British actress. While Terra technically isn’t Flora, she does mention she is Flora’s biological cousin which in turn should make Terra some part Latina. Luckily, whenever the real Flora does make an appearance, she is played by Paulina Chávez, an American actress of Latin descent. And while I can’t say much about Terra/Flora seeing as I don’t have a drop of Latina in me, I can assume Latinx viewers felt as awful as I did about Musa’s whitewashing.

Lafayette Junior Brandon Portillo has strong feelings about the Flora/Terra whitewashing. “I found the replacement to be very unnecessary. They included all of the other fairies but replaced Flora which just really makes no sense and the fact that she only got a supporting, small role in season two did not help their case.”

Clearly, the Winx Club Saga reboot has issues- major ones. The writing is lazy, too mature for the intended audience the original Winx Club spent so long cultivating, and the casting choices made by Netflix were inappropriate and outright infuriating. However, I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t want to listen to the ramblings of a seventeen-year-old girl about animated fairy princesses, so I encourage you to watch both the original and reboot and form your own feelings about it.