I cast a spell, it takes a hold of you!
Every Witch Way is an American teen sitcom that premiered on Nickelodeon on January 1, 2014. It is the American Foreign Remake of the Nickelodeon Latin American teen drama Grachi (although both series were in fact produced and filmed in Miami, and in fact Every Witch Way recycles many of the sets and even actors from Grachi).
Emma is a new student who moves to Miami and starts attending Iridium High School. As she's unpacking boxes, she not only meets her new best friend Andi and Love Interest Daniel, but discovers she suddenly has magic powers when a flock of butterflies appears from nowhere (with Andi witnessing the spontaneous creation and putting it together immediately). At her first day of school, she runs afoul of local Alpha Bitch Maddie and her Girl Posse, the "Panthers" - and Maddie soon discovers she's also a witch. Emma and Maddie are soon set up to be rivals both at school and in the witches' realm as they compete to see who can be "The Chosen One." Unbeknownst to either them or their mentors, there's a third witch running around who's bent on stealing both Emma's and Maddie's powers and becoming the Chosen One herself.
In Season 2, Emma and Maddie are able to mend their relationship - but Maddie has lost her powers, and Emma has promised Daniel never to use hers again so that they can be a couple without violating the Witches' Council's rules on witch/human relationships. The temptation for Emma to use her powers proves to be too great, forcing the Witches' Council-members themselves to confront her. Under the transformation of a new moon, one of these council-members, Desdemona, develops plans on how she can use and exploit Emma for her own gains. Meanwhile, a new student at Iridium High, Jax, reveals himself as a wizard to Emma and promises being able to make her a very powerful witch under his mentorship - but what are his own plans for Emma?
In Season 3, a mysterious girl named Mia enters into the picture with her own plans - what special interest does she have in store for Emma and her friends? The third season also played the Emma-Daniel-Jax love triangle up to eleven.
The first season was part of Nickelodeon's "One Month Event", which means that the episodes aired from January 1 to January 30, for a total of 20 episodes. On March 13, 2014, Nickelodeon commissioned a second season of Every Witch Way, which started airing July 7th with the production of a third season announced in August and airing in January 2015. Nickelodeon also announced a spin-off series called W.I.T.S. Academy about Andi training as a Guardian at a boarding school for witches as well as the fourth and final season of Every Witch Way airing in a one-month event for July 2015.
Talia in the Kitchen can also be considered somewhat of a Spiritual Spinoff of Every Witch Way in that both shows are produced by the same creative team, both are adaptations of Latin American shows (which were also productions by the same people) and also deal with magical powers. Talia in the Kitchen and Every Witch Way also each have concurrent crossover episodes with each other in Every Witch Way 's Season 4 and Talia in the Kitchen 's first season.
Tropes seen in Every Witch Way:
- Adaptation Distillation: The show simplifies and removes subplots from the original show. For example, Daniel's mother and Ursula were rivals for Grachi's father, something that is never alluded to in the remake. Likewise, Matilda took some time to become the proper Alpha Bitch to Grachi, whereas Maddie starts out as one. This may be due in part to the first season only using half of the footage that was actually filmed.
- Anti-Climax: Season 3 builds up a big moment in the finale where Emma, Jax, and the newly reformed Mia have their backs against a train, gearing up to fight a group of video game zombies...and then Maddie zaps them out of the game and back into reality, just as they'd planned earlier.
- Big Bad Wannabe:
- Maddie was this in the first season, acting as Emma's archenemy while being overshadowed by the Prinicpal.
- Mr. Jake Novoa, Jax's dad, had been set up to be the apparent villain of the entire series ever since Jax's first appearance in Season 2 and in fact this was one of the main story arcs of Season 4 - until it was revealed that his wife/Jax's mother had been the real villain all along, Jake's scheming was in fact aiming to protect his children and the Witches' Realm from her, and that he had just been a Jerk with a Heart of Gold all along.
- Call-Back:
- When Maddie loses all of her powers at the start of Season 2, her friends (which now include Diego) do their best to convince her otherwise including staging all of the various ways her magic tended to make things go awry in Season 1. This includes Katie wearing wigs of various colors, Diego using his powers to make rain and other weather patterns indoors, buying smoothies and leaving them in bathroom stalls so they can "magically" appear when Maddie walks in, and Sophie setting up a flying harness rig in Maddie's bedroom (they were all hoping Maddie wouldn't notice Sophie tied to a giant rope hanging from her own bedroom's ceiling and Diego awkwardly and obviously hiding in her curtains. It didn't work.)
- Emma accidentally turned herself into a cockatoo, so Andi enlists Maddie to change her back. Unfortunately Andi picked up the wrong cockatoo so the end result is simply a random bird being changed into a human. Unlike Season 1, nobody fell in love with her and she was immediately changed back into a bird. A cockatoo is also what Maddie turned Lily into back in Season 1.
- However, Andi did fall in love with a zombie brought to life from a video game on accident by Emma, mirroring Sophie and Beau's relationship from Season 1.
- The Chosen One:
- Emma is thought to be one early on in the series, and they're right, of course. The Principal is also a "Chosen One" who was thought to have had most of her powers taken away by the Witches Council, but has started to slowly regain them.
- In Season 2, there are multiple Chosen Ones as Emma learns to clone herself. Because all the clones are still Emma, they're therefore all Chosen Ones.
- Cock Fight: It's revealed that the tension between Jax and Daniel over Emma is a major motivation for Jax's Face–Heel Turn and tricking Emma into creating the evil Emma.
- Continuity Nod: Katie and Sophie remember that Principal Torres wanted to use a living conduit to regain her powers, so they try to convince Diego to volunteer to be a conduit for Maddie to regain her powers. Diego also remembers that acting as a living conduit reduces said living conduit into a non-living pile of ash. Fortunately they actually manage to figure out how to build an artificial surrogate conduit for Maddie to regain her powers with.
- Crossover: There's a two-part special with Talia in the Kitchen during season 4. Both shows deal with magic, take place in Miami, and are foreign remakes of other Nickelodeon novelas.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Andi trying to take on Mia by herself results in this: Being a Badass Normal does not automatically make you a match for someone who has been training her whole life to master her Elemental Powers. Andi ends up frozen in a block of ice.
- Cultural Translation: Of the aforementioned Grachi. Characters are changed, along with some plot points from the original to better suit it for an American audience. Some of the same sets are even used, since they were both filmed in Miami.
- Darker and Edgier: Is more emotional and dramatic than most Nick shows, and the Big Bad of the first season attempted to kill the protagonists (her students mind you) before being killed herself.
- Decomposite Character:
- In the original show, after Matilda turned nice, a new witch named Mia Novoa took on her role as Grachi's rival. This remake replaced her with a male character named Jax Novoa, who serves as a love interest for Emma instead of a rival. Mia eventually appeared in the third season as a separate character and the main villain, although her last name is changed to Black.
- Interestingly, Jax is now becoming closer to Tony in the original show, who turned out to be a warlock and was also in love with Grachi, and who is also a completely separate character in the remake's first season that got Put on a Bus, although it remains to be seen if he will come back. Which technically make Jax a Composite Character of Mia and Tony, who as mentioned before are separate characters here. And he most resembles Axel physically.
- And now Mia turns out to be a Kanay instead of a witch, making her a Composite Character of the original's Kim Kanay and herself.
- Enter Stage Window:
- Daniel uses Emma's windows because her dad won't let him through the door.
- Inverted in "Invisible Me": To avoid getting caught snooping in Mia's bedroom, Andi exits through the window.
- Face–Heel Turn:
- Early in Season 2, Desdemona undergoes one involuntarily due to the effects of a full moon.
- Jax always was implied to have sinister ends, but he manages to befriend Emma and become her new mentor until he teaches Emma the cloning spell, then ditching her for Evil!Emma.
- Emma herself undergoes a bit of a Face-Heel Turn in Season 4 when she grows overconfident of her Chosen One powers and openly defies the Witches' Council, Lily, and her own friends including Andi while threatening to disrupt all of time and space as we know it.
- Friendly Zombie: Andi hacked her favorite zombie video game to get a zombie ally by the name of Phillip. This zombie would be brought to reality by Emma's magic, and he quickly became Andi's boyfriend. Though he did have a tendency to bite, it was only when startled by bright light. Though forced back into the game, he eventually returned in a future episode.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- Maddie and the rest of the Panthers join forces with Emma at the end of Season 1 and have kept their Face status ever since into Season 2.
- Jax has an extremely critical Heel-Face Turn at the very last minute in the Season 2 finale, giving Emma her powers back so she can defeat the evil Emma.
- When she's finally defeated, instead of disappearing or disintegrating, Desdemona simply reverts to her pre-evil form.
- Mia spends all of Season 3 plotting to kill Emma, only to save her life and make peace with her in the season finale.
- A somewhat unusual retroactive example: Jake Novoa, Jax's father, had always been implied to be the series' eventual villain, but Season 4 reveals that he'd actually been a Knight Templar Face all along and all his schemes were for being prepared against the true Even villain of the series.
- Literal Split Personality: Happens to Emma in Season 2 when she clones herself. Unique in that the original Emma never actually goes away. The clones are:
- An Evil Twin who is Hell-Bent for Leather. Prefers to go by "E." She later displaces everyone else as Season 2's eventual villain.
- A Granola Girl who Prefers Going Barefoot.
- A Brainy Brunette in Nerd Glasses who is obsessed with studying... and obsessed with Daniel.
- A lazy slob in a robe and pyjamas who is always either sleeping or eating.
- In Season 4, it's revealed that Jax has split himself into clones as well to better take care of the Novoa household while his father's away. Each clone has a distinct personality and takes on a housekeeping role according to that personality.
- In Season 2, Jax starts to impose himself as Emma's mentor for his own selfish ends eventually teaching her the cloning spell specifically so she can create Evil!Emma as his partner (and Desdemona tries as well, but to a far less successful degree); meanwhile, with no real mentor of his own, Diego ends up having Maddie as the closest thing.
- Muggle Born of Mages: Witches' Guardians are usually these, referred to as "powerless witches", including Emma's Guardian Lily and Maddie's mother Ursula. Apparently the powers skipped a generation in Maddie's family.
- Never Say "Die":
- But they do say "vaporized into dust" and "fed to frogs." Make you wonder why they bother.
- A more straight example happens with the conclusion of the Season 2 finale: instead of vaporizing or being turned to dust, Desdemona simply reverts back to her pre-evil self.
- The do use the word "die" and "kill" in season 2 when they where working on a Romeo and Juliet play.
- Interestingly enough in Season 4 it's revealed that Principal Torres didn't die after all, she was merely cast into limbo, from which Emma releases her in order to steal her powers.
- Nonuniform Uniform: Iridium High's dress code options range from a school-logo polo and khaki shorts to a very fancy blazer.
- Perverse Sexual Lust:
- Andi harbors it for a zombie from a video game, even going so far as to consider him her actual boyfriend.
- In Season 1, Sophie had an identical relationship with Beau, a chameleon who got changed into a boy by Maddie ("Beau" being short for boyfriend)
- Powers in the First Episode: In the series premiere, Emma accidentally awakens her mysterious powers and finds out that she’s a witch.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Torres turns people into frogs over petty reasons, but is sure to turn their families into frogs, too, so they don't try looking for them.
- Remake Cameo: Katie Barberi, who played Ursula in both the original and the adaption, and Rafael de la Fuente, who played Diego in the original and Julio in the adaption. In both cases, this goes well beyond a cameo, as they are regular characters.
- Running Gag: Anyone who is quickly teleported ends up in the pool.
- Sadist Teacher: Torres, who sadistically turns people into frogs for whatever reason, does the same to their families and even plans on killing some of her students.
- School Uniforms are the New Black: Mostly avoided, and wow do these kids wear a lot of layered accessories for people who live in the tropics.
- Spear Counterpart: Jax was originally developed as a male counterpart to Mia from the original show (he has her last name,) with the change being him in love with Emma instead of her rival. Subverted in that Mia eventually appeared in Season 3 as the main villain. With her back, Jax now seems more like a variation of the original's Tony (who turned out to be a warlock).
- Spell Book: The Hexoren for Emma. The Novoa family is revealed to have their own version of the Hexoren, the "Charmopedia."
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Averted in "New Witch Order": Maddie, Diego, Jax, and Daniel make a plan to rescue Emma and Mia from inside the video game by sending Jax in, having him lead them to a rendezvous point, and having Maddie zap them back into the real world. It works exactly as described, apart from Mia insisting on a detour to recover her precious necklace.
- Would Hurt a Child: Torres, in addition to turning people into frogs, has actually attempted to kill some of her students. She outright states that once she gets her powers back, the children will be the first to go.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Every Witch Way provides numerous examples of this troupe.
- When The T-3 find Mia in their room, they conclude that she is spying for the H2O. In reality, Mia had infiltrated the Miller residence on her own volition to gain information about Emma. But infiltration is a form of espionage.
- In a future episode, The T-3 attempt to correct their mother after she accuses them of pranking Ursula Van Pelt ( Which was actually the fault of the H2O) . Once again Mrs. Miller assumes that her children are lying and demands that the trio find a new hobby. Although the T-3 were telling their mother the truth about their innocence, the latter was right that the T-3 needed a new hobby, which was in the form of striking back against H2O.
- In ‘’New Witch Order’’, The T-3 prank Gigi but frame the H2O in retaliation for getting the in trouble. Gigi Believes the T-3’s deception, and subsequently punishes her cousins for the T-3’s prank. However Gigi was right in that her cousins deserved punishment but wrong to blame them for pranking her.
- Asshole Victim: The H2O’s defeat serves a good example of this troupe. After the T-3 pranked Gigi, they framed the H2O forcing the latter pair to take the fall for the T-3 despite the H2O pleading their innocence. Although the T-3 were at fault for the prank, the H2O wouldn’t have the misfortune of becoming the scapegoats of the former had they not framed the T-3 for their own pranks.
