Secret Society of Second-Born Royals is one of the first original projects to debut on Disney+, and it's clearly cut from the same cloth as a Disney Channel original movie. It has all the classic DCOM hallmarks: a cast full of Disney-adjacent actors (Peyton Elizabeth Lee starred on Andi Mack, Isabella Blake-Thomas did a stint on Once Upon a Time, Faly Rakotohavana has appeared on Raven's Home, and Élodie Yung is well-known for her role in Marvel's Defenders TV universe), a plot that seems cobbled together from the plots of ten other movies, costumes that will be easy to replicate for the Disney Store, an adorably modest budget.
Yes, it's formulaic. No, it's not particularly suave or nuanced. Despite this, it's actually a better X-Men story than the live-action films produced by Fox.
Sam (Lee) is the perfect protagonist for baby's first X-Men story. Her parents happen to be the queen (Yung) and deceased king (Sam Page) of the fictional kingdom Illyria, and she struggles in the shadow of her perfect older sister Eleanor (Ashley Liao). Her wardrobe is equal parts Hot Topic and Justice. She plays the guitar and is in a band with her non-royal best friend Mike (Noah Lomax), and she vocally opposes the monarchy. She's just rebellious enough to be the cool alternative kid the story needs, but her angst and feelings of isolation are sympathetic. She also happens to have Daredevil-style super senses, which the movie starts dropping hints about almost immediately.
Despite her innocently antisocial behavior, Sam quickly becomes the de facto leader (the Cyclops, if you will) of the other second-born royals in Secret Society training. Second-born children of royalty just have superpowers sometimes in this universe. It's not widely known, but once they're told, the characters accept it without many questions. Mousy and eager to please January (Blake-Thomas) has the ability to borrow the powers of the last person she touched, combining Mimic and Rogue in the safest way possible. Matteo (Rakotohavana) is painfully shy and awkward, but he blossoms in the company of the others and as he develops his insect manipulation powers. Tuma (Niles Fitch) is the Disney Channel version of a bad boy, but unlike other characters with a compelling voice (Marvel antagonists Kilgrave and Lorelei, DC's Music Meister), the worst thing he's ever done is get friends of his to pull quasi-dangerous pranks. Teen influencer Roxana (Olivia Deeble) is shallow and obsessed with her image, so of course she ends up being this team's Invisible Woman. They're the kind of characters that are just different enough to make a perfect team, and to give kids clear types to play as in their own pretend games.
The team's Professor X is James (Skylar Astin), a cheerfully snarky and casually gay second-born himself. He has the powers of Multiple Man (though if his original self is injured, the duplicates also falter and fail) and he spends most of the movie training the new kids. He even has them training in the baby version of the Danger Room. More importantly, though, he's a much more likable character than Professor X. He tricks the kids in order to teach them things, but unlike Professor X, he doesn't play favorites with the kids or put them in unnecessarily dangerous situations just for the sake of it. He genuinely seems to care about them developing their true potential and being successful in life and as heroes.
Queen Catherine is herself a second-born, it turns out, gifted with teleportation abilities. She's also the head of the Secret Society, and her relationship with Sam improves drastically as they bond over both having powers and being secret heroes. Incumbent Queen Eleanor doesn't have powers, being a first-born, but when she learns that such things exist, she's immediately understanding. Mike also doesn't have powers, but he ends up proving a valuable ally all the same. Most X-Men stories feature worldwide persecution of mutants as a plot point, but this is a kids' movie, so it's an easy and honestly reasonable thing to cut.
The villain of this piece is Inmate 34 (Greg Bryk), a telekinetic with connections to the royal family and a vague agenda of powered-folk supremacy. He spends a lot of time monologuing, and in true Magneto fashion, a lot of what he says makes sense until he starts advocating for the murder of innocents. There's even an eleventh-hour reveal of his Mystique-style accomplice.
There's nothing terribly original about this movie (aside from its surprising willingness to show the protagonist criticizing the monarchy) but that isn't really the point. The main characters seem to care about each other and they work well as a team. The characters' superpowers aren't random and in fact inform their narratives (Roxana, for example, learns to accept being invisible while doing heroic things and in doing so learns to be less shallow). The movie is cheesy, but it has the fun vibe of a lot of the X-Men comics and cartoons. A lot of the best X-Men stories are about the characters working as a team and supporting each other, and that's something the Fox films (in their attempts to be serious and edgy and to highlight specific popular characters) tend to forget. Secret Society isn't a perfect film, but it's got a lot of heart.