Winx Club was an incredibly popular cartoon in the 2000s about a magical school of fairies who combat the growing threats from a rival academy of witches. The colorful Italian/American collaboration would last for eight seasons, with the last one airing on Nickelodeon in 2019. The final season, like many before it, featured notable retoolings to the series to remain relevant.

This wasn't the final time that the franchise had been reworked from the ground up for a new audience, however. With its first trailer debuting just a few weeks before its premiere, the new Netflix series Fate: The Winx Saga is a more grounded reimagining of the fairy girls of Alfea. Muted, wingless and having a much different cast, Fate is easily the most different and controversial take on the Winx franchise yet.

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Fate's Tone

Fate: The Winx Saga isn't merely a live-action take on the cartoon's adventures. Meant for the now-adult audience that grew up with the original series, Fate wears this concept very much on its sleeve. Rated TV-MA, adult violence, language and sexuality are common occurrences throughout. More analogous to Titans than to Riverdale, F-bombs and other expletives make the series more "adult" than even the Netflix Marvel shows. Some fans have seen these elements as a gratuitous attempt to seem dark and mature, especially when so much of the material is still anything but.

New Characters in Fate

Fate: The Winx Club Saga Season 1. Hannah van der Westhuysen as Stella, Eliot Salt as Terra, Abigail Cowen as Bloom, Elisha Applebaum as Musa, Precious Mustapha as Aisha in Fate: The Winx Club Saga Season 1. Cr. Jonathan Hession/NETFLIX © 2020

The cartoon's classic first season lineup is only partially represented on the show, and there are tons of new characters who have never been in the series before. One such example is Terra Harvey, an Earth fairy who struggles to fit in with her classmates. A fairy named Beatrix with electric powers is also introduced and has seemingly no basis or connection to a pre-existing character in the franchise. It's worth noting that black fairy Aisha is from the original series, but she was referred to as Layla in the English dub.

New teachers and administration are also used, such as Farah Dowling and Professor Harvey. As before, these characters are entirely original, making many fans question at times why the Netflix series even used the Winx name. Other newcomers include Dane, who exists to create bisexual tension with Riven and Beatrix. Many of these new characters have been seen as existing for the sake of diversity, which is particularly questionable given how diverse the franchise has continued to be throughout its nearly two decades of existence.

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Missing/Swapped Characters in Fate

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Terra is the team's resident Earth Magic Fairy, but as mentioned, she isn't from the original cartoon. She's obviously a stand-in and is mentioned as being the cousin of the show's Flora, who was one of the cast members since the first season. Replacing Flora with Terra has been particularly controversial, especially since Flora, unlike Terra, was non-Caucasian and based on celebrities of color Jennifer Lopez and Mariah Carey. Musa's ethnicity is similarly questionable, whereas the cartoon version was blatantly Asian.

The original instructors are also used in the place of the much more magical teachers from the cartoon. These include Palladium, Vizgis and Ms. Faragonda, though Farah Dowling seems to be a stand-in specifically for the latter. The sometimes bumbling but still fabulous trio of villains known as the Trix is also entirely gone, removing much of the heart of the cartoon. The witches of Cloud Tower were not just the rivals of Alfea's fairies, but they grew and were developed just as much. They also showcased the different aspects of magic in the Winx world. Their absence only serves to further downplay magic in this new, supposedly more mature version of the tale.

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Lack of Magic

As part of the show's muted, much more grounded tone and scope, the cartoon's colorful sense of fashion is nowhere to be seen. Thus, also absent are the fairy's trademark costumes whenever they access their magical powers. On a real-world level, this was obviously done for two reasons. Not only does it further the grounded, more adult-oriented premise, but it also keeps the budget down. There is, however, an explanation in the series itself for why the fairies don't don any sort of spectacular plumage to wear while fighting.

In the world of Fate, transformation magic has all but disappeared in modern times. This is the reason why none of the girls, despite being fairies, have their iconic wings and accompanying costumes. To be fair, the original cartoon initially played the long game with main character Bloom accessing her flight abilities, keeping her from doing so until the finale of the first season. This series does something similar with Bloom. Going forward, it will likely do the same with the cast as a whole while still keeping things otherwise grounded in nature.

There are other changes to the series' magic system, namely the powers that it imbues. In the cartoon, characters had powers over several different disparately related concepts, such as Musa being the fairy of music. Here, however, she's a Mind Fairy, and the powers have a more physical, visceral nature. The same powers can also manifest in different ways. For instance, Earth Fairy Terra controls planets, while her brother Sam, who also wields Earth magic, uses it to walk through walls.

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The Villains of Fate

The Netflix show's antagonists are the horrifying Burned Ones. As their name would suggest, they are charred, almost demonic creatures, though still somewhat humanoid in nature. They boast incredible speed, and their burnt nature stems from their connection to the magical fire which also empowers Bloom. This makes them central to Bloom's development as a character, and it's possible that they could reappear in later seasons.

The Burned Ones are entirely original characters, with their horrific designs and mass-murdering nature befitting the darker take on the material. They take the place of the aforementioned absent Trix as the villains, making the villains for the series far less relatable and characterized. There is the somewhat antagonistic character of Beatrix, however. With a criminal past and less than squeaky clean attitude, she's the closest thing to a "bad girl" among the group. Her name is also representative of her being the show's equivalent to the Trix, even if she is just one person.

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