"Magic lives in a very fabric of nature." note
"They deserve to know what I am."
— Bloom
Fate: The Winx Saga is a Netflix drama TV series inspired by Iginio Straffi's Nicktoon series, Winx Club. The first live-action series in the Winx franchise, it is created by showrunner Brian Young (The Vampire Diaries), produced by Jon Finn, Macdara Kelleher and John Keville, and executive produced by Young, Judy Counihan, Kris Thykier, Cristiana Buzzelli and Joanne Lee. The directors for the first season include Lisa James Larsson, Hannah Quinn and Stephen Woolfenden and the writing team includes Young, Speed Weed, Victoria Bata, Niceole R. Levy and Sarah Hooper.
The series focuses on a young fire fairy named Bloom (Abigail Cowen), who travels from California to the Otherworld to enroll in Alfea, a prestigious boarding school where wingless fairies learn to master their powers – and where trainee warriors, known as "specialists", guard the realm from the feared "Burned Ones". It is all new to Bloom, but she has guidance from Alfea's imperious headteacher, Farah Dowling (Eve Best), and her four roommates: the tenacious water fairy Aisha (Precious Mustapha); the grounded and chatty earth fairy Terra Harvey (Eliot Salt); the mind fairy Musa (Elisha Applebaum), an empath who keeps her headphones on to block out other people's emotions; and Stella (Hannah van der Westhuysen), a snooty light fairy who also happens to be fairy royalty.
Fate also stars Sadie Soverall as Beatrix, Freddie Thorp as Riven, Danny Griffin as Sky, Jacob Dudman as Sam, Robert James-Collier as Saul Silva, Theo Graham as Dane, Alex Macqueen as Ben Harvey, Lesley Sharp as Rosalind and Kate Fleetwood as Queen Luna.
The series premiered worldwide on January 22, 2021, and the first season consists of six episodes. Nearly a month after its debut, Netflix renewed it for a second season, which was released on September 16, 2022 and consists of seven episodes. On November 1, 2022, it was announced that the series was cancelled after two seasons.
Previews: Teaser
, behind the scenes Trailer, Season 2 Teaser
Fate: The Winx Saga contains examples of:
- Action Dad:
- Andreas. He's a famous warrior and continued fighting Burned Ones after his son Sky was born. "A Fanatic Heart" reveals he also counts as one for Beatrix, his adopted daughter.
- Saul Silva. He is both Sky's adoptive father and Alfea's combat instructor. He has years of experience fighting Burned Ones.
- Adaptational Angst Downgrade: The series does not include Aisha's backstory as an isolated princess who grew up in a very strict environment.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
- In a flashback, Bloom accidentally starts a house fire after arguing with her parents, causing her tremendous guilt. She also feels guilty about hiding her powers from them. In the cartoon, Bloom discovered her powers while trying to protect Stella from an ogre, she never gets into a fight with parents, and her parents are fully aware of magic from the beginning.
- In contrast to the cartoon, Stella has a troubled relationship with her mother, feels great pressure to keep up appearances, and accidentally blinded her friend because she couldn't fully control her powers. Stella's relationship with Brandon in the cartoon is much less tumultuous than her relationship with Sky in the series.
- In the series, Sky's father was a famous warrior who died when Sky was a baby or so everyone thinks, thus Sky grew up in his father's shadow. There's also no mention of his mother, since he was raised by Silva. In the cartoon, both of Sky's parents are alive and involved in his upbringing.
- Musa is deeply affected by her mother's death in both the series and cartoon, but in the series it's much worse because Musa actually felt her mother's emotions as she was dying and become traumatized as a result. Also, her mother's death happens much more recently in the series (a year before season 1, as opposed to when Musa was a little girl), so the grief is still fresh.
- Adaptational Location Change: In the series, Alfea is located in the Kingdom of Solaria. In the cartoon, Alfea is located on the planet Magix, while Solaria is a different planet altogether, as is Eraklyon.
- Adaptational Mundanity:
- The cartoon contained multiple different planets with magical plants, strange creatures, and unique environments unlike anything on Earth (the planet of Solaria had three suns, for instance). The series has a single alternate realm, the Otherworld, that is largely indistinguishable from Earth.
- The Otherworld in the series has a modern-Earth level of technology, but the Magical Dimension in the cartoon was a futuristic society with advanced technology that is heavily implied to be powered by magic, like airships that can travel across dimensions and supercomputers than can create hyper-realistic simulations.
- Magic is more commonplace and casually used in the cartoon, while in the series it's primarily geared toward combat. The cartoon also has a variety of magical creatures like ogres, trolls, water nymphs, elves, and leprechauns. In the series it's explicitly stated that only fairies can use magic naturally, although it's later revealed that blood witches are regular humans who obtain magic through sacrifice and other unnatural means.
- The Specialists train dragons in the cartoons, but not in the series. Their phantoblades are replaced with conventional weapons and they no longer use Wind Riders (motorcycle-like flying vehicles) to get around.
- In the cartoon, fairies can regularly transform, which gives them wings and the ability to fly. In the series, it's explicitly stated that fairies lost their wings many years ago. Bloom gains a pair of fairy wings that look like they're on fire in the first season finale while fighting a horde of Burned Ones. In season 2 the other Winx girls also gain their wings, but the concept of multiple fairy forms, first introduced with the Charmix in season 2 of the cartoon, has been axed from the series.
- Adaptational Personality Change:
- Bloom was never shown to be a loner in the cartoon, unlike the series.
- This version of Aisha is more uptight and focused on school than her cartoon counterpart.
- Musa is more aloof and closed-off than she was in the cartoon.
- In the cartoon, Stella was bubbly and cheerful. This version of Stella is much more serious, uptight, and haughty.
- In the cartoon, Flora was very calm, cautious, and demure. This version of Flora is more carefree and rebellious, although her Nice Girl nature remains.
- In the series, Riven is a laidback troublemaker who often cracks jokes at other people's expense. In the cartoon, he was more serious and had anger issues prior to his Character Development.
- Farah is much more stern and formal than her cartoon counterpart Faragonda. While Faragona never hesitated to enforce disciple, she was also warm and maternal toward her students.
- Adaptational Superpower Change:
- In the cartoon, Stella's ring can transform into a scepter with a variety of powers. In the series, it doesn't transform and is only used to travel between the First World and the Otherworld.
- In the series, each fairy can manipulate one of six elements: fire, water, light, earth, air, and mind. In the cartoon, magic was not limited to those elements, as characters have power over things like technology, music, and gemstones. There were also general spells that anyone could use regardless of their main power, like transmutation and shapeshifting.
- In the original cartoon, as "The Fairy of Music", Musa had various powers related to sound and music, here she is now a "Mind Fairy" with empathic abilities.
- A minor case: in the original cartoon Aisha had the power to manipulate fluids in general, in particular a magical, pink substance called Morphix, and only rarely controlled water. Here she's explicitly a Water Fairy.
- In the cartoon, witches have innate magical abilities like fairies, but in the series blood witches are regular humans who obtain magic by unnatural means, such as sacrifice and death.
- Adaptation Deviation:
- Alfea and Red Fountain have combined into a single school, while in the cartoon fairies and Specialists trained separately.
- In the cartoon, Aisha is the Princess of Andros and Sky is the Prince of Eraklyon. They're not royalty in the series.
- Unlike the cartoon, the series features male fairies and female Specialists.
- In the cartoon, the barrier around the magical schools is meant to keep out non-magical beings, while in the series it's meant to keep out Burned Ones (who do not exist in the cartoon).
- The destruction of Aster Dell in the series is clearly meant to parallel the destruction of Domino in the cartoon, but there are several major differences between them. One difference is that in the series blood witches are the victims and fairies were the culprits, while in the cartoon it was the other way around.
- In the series Stella's mother is the Queen of Solaria in her own right. In the cartoon Stella's father King Radius was the King of Solaria and Luna gave up her title when they got divorced.
- Adaptation Distillation:
- The series opens with Bloom arriving at Alfea and we're shown how she discovered her powers in a flashback. The cartoon began with Bloom living a normal life and goes over how her discovered her powers and chose to attend Alfea. Stella helping Bloom impersonate someone else to get into Alfea is also cut.
- In the cartoon, Sky temporarily switches identities with his squire and close friend Brandon. In the series, Brandon is Adapted Out and Sky uses his real name the entire time.
- In the cartoon, the Trix spend several episodes trying to steal Stella's ring. In the series Bloom accidentally loses the ring to a Burned One and it only takes an episode for her to get it back.
- The series completely removed the subplot about Bloom losing her powers but still working to stop the Trix regardless, only to regain her powers with help from Daphne.
- Adaptation Dye-Job:
- Aisha in the original cartoon had brown hair (though her hair become reddish in season 8). Here, she has black hair with dark blue highlights.
- In the cartoon, Riven had magenta hair. Here he's a brunet.
- Queen Luna was blonde in the cartoon, here she's a brunette.
- In contrast to her short brown-haired animated counterpart, Vanessa Peters has long blonde hair here.
- Adaptation Origin Connection: Bloom and Beatrix (a composite of the Trix) both survived the destruction of Aster Dell as infants, while only Bloom was present for the destruction of Domino in the cartoon.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
- In the cartoon, the Winx Club become close friends very quickly, while in the live-action series, it takes considerably longer for them to warm up to each other. In the cartoon, Bloom and Stella were best friends, as were Musa and Aisha, but in the series Bloom is closest to Aisha and Musa is closest to Terra.
- With Stella being a Composite Character of her cartoon counterpart and Diaspro, the Bloom/Sky/Diaspro Love Triangle is transferred to Bloom/Sky/Stella. Stella and Sky never dated in the cartoon and Stella was in love with Sky's friend Brandon, who has been Adapted Out.
- Bloom fully trusts her teachers in the cartoon, but is more suspicious and critical of them in the series.
- Sky and Riven are friendlier to each other in the series than in the cartoon, where they were rivals.
- Stella's relationship with her mother is more loving and affectionate in the cartoon.
- Musa has feelings for Riven in the cartoon, but in the series her love interest is Terra's brother, Sam.
- Bloom's relationship with her parents, while still loving, is rockier than it was in the cartoon. Mike and Vanessa's decision to adopt Bloom is replaced with Rosalind swapping Bloom with their deceased biological daughter without their knowledge.
- Adapted Out:
- Tecna, Brandon, Timmy, and Helia are not included despite being main characters in the cartoon. Flora has been replaced with Terra until she appeared at the beginning of season two. Bloom's rabbit Kiko is also gone.
- Another important character who was cut is Daphne, Bloom's Spirit Adviser and long-lost sister who plays in a key role in Bloom uncovering her past and regaining her magic after it was stolen from her by the Trix.
- The Alfea teachers not included are Griselda, Palladium, and Wizgiz. The teachers from Red Fountain, Saladin and Codatorta, are also gone.
- While Alfea and Red Fountain were merged into one school, Cloud Tower School for Witches is completely absent, along with Headmistress Griffin, Professor Zarathustra, Professor Ediltrude, and two students named Mirta and Lucy. Although, blood witches are confirmed to exist in this continuity. Knut, the Trix's lackey who helps out most of their schemes before his Heel–Face Turn doesn't appear either.
- Lord Darkar, the main antagonist of season 2 of the cartoon, doesn't exist in the series. Instead, the main antagonists of season 2 in the series are Rosalind and Sebastian Valtor. The pixies and Pixie Village don't exist either.
- For some reason, there's no mention of Stella's father Radius, Musa's father Ho-Boe, or Sky's mother Samera (Sky has a completely different father in the series, so he may have a different mother as well).
- The series spends less time following Bloom's normal life, so we never see her human rival from the cartoon, Mitzi.
- Aerith and Bob: Some students have names like Musa and Riven, others are called Dane and Sam.
- All Women Hate Each Other: In contrast to the original animated series where they were almost instantly friends, the girls are much more antagonistic towards each other, particularly Stella and Bloom who are in a love triangle with Stella's boyfriend Skye. Stella and Bloom's relationships with their mothers are also much more troubled.
- Ambiguously Bi:
- Riven has an explicit relationship with Beatrix but at the same time enjoys teasing Dane a lot for his apparent homosexuality and seems all too positively interested in being the object of his sexual desires.
- Dane an obvious crush on Riven, but seems to enjoy it when Beatrix joins in, and Musa's empath powers do say he "likes" Terra - though she doesn't know if it's platonically or not. When Riven asks if he's gay, he replies with "fuck off".
- And Starring: In the ending credits, the main cast roll concludes with "and Eve Best".
- Ascended Meme: Flora smoking weed is a running meme, partially based on her sounding like a hippie in the 4Kids dub of the original cartoon, as well as a joke on her plant-related powers. Here, her cousin Terra explicitly makes weed brownies for a party.
- Beware the Nice Ones: While Terra is a normally very kind and caring person, she does have a limit to her patience and has no problem telling bullies to fuck off, going so far as to actually wrap vines around one's throat and strangle him a bit (She didn't kill him, but still extremely intimidating and aggressive for a normally bubbly and bright Flower Girl).
- Big Bad Ensemble: Season 2 has an Evil vs. Evil situation between Rosalind, a genocidal fairy who murdered Dowling and seized power over Alfea, and Sebastian, a blood witch who is trying to get revenge about what happened in Aster Dell, endangering the whole of the Otherworld in the process. Both want to use Bloom's Dragon Flame power to their own ends.
- Bilingual Bonus: The very title of the show. "Fate" is Italian for "Fairies".
- Both Sides Have a Point: Nearly every conflict in the series comes down to both sides having a valid reasons for why they do what they do. Bloom doesn't trust the staff because she thinks they're keeping important secrets? Turns out they are. The staff wanting to keep those secrets because they fear the damage that knowledge could cause? They turn out very right about that.
- Bloodier and Gorier: The cartoon had dark moments, but they were presented in a sanitized way because it was for children. The series pulls no punches on showing blood, burns, or mutilated bodies.
- Blow You Away: Strangely, this is a power Earth fairies are implied to have, as Terra mentions controlling wind and creating cyclones, with Air fairies having more electrical powers than anything to do with air. Doubles as a Mythology Gag to Flora, who, despite being a flower fairy, had a lot of wind and air-themed attacks, to the point of using her breath as a weapon.
- Body Horror: The Burned Ones look like charred corpses that got up and started attacking people. People who've been infected by a Burned One gain dark veins and seem to be rotting from the inside out.
- Canon Foreigner: Terra, Dane, Sam, Callum, Andreas, Ben Harvey, Saul Silva, and Rosalind do not exist in the original cartoon. The Burned Ones are also completely unique to the series.
- Casting Gag: This is not the first time Abigail Cowen (Bloom) played a person with magical powers before, since she previously played the witch Dorcas in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. And in that she was on the other side in helping haze a newcomer to a magic academy.
- Cliffhanger: The first season ends with the girls returning to Alfea, only to find that Rosalind, Andreas, and Luna have taken over the school.
- Color-Coded Characters:
- Bloom is associated with the color red, through both her fire magic and her red outfits.
- Aisha is associated with blue, as she's a Water Fairy and often wears blue.
- Terra is associated with green though her clothes and plant magic.
- Composite Character:
- Queen Luna, while technically based on her animated counterpart, looks much more like Stella's former Evil Stepmother Countess Cassandra in characterization.
- Stella herself in this version appears to be a sort of amalgamation with Chimera (Cassandra's biological daughter) and Diaspro (Sky's ex-girlfriend) although, compared to the two girls in the animated series, she is portrayed in a much more understanding and sympathetic light.
- Compressed Adaptation: The first season of the cartoon consists of 26 half-hour episodes, while the series consists of only 6 one-hour episodes. Only major plot points like Bloom uncovering her past were kept, while less plot-relevant adventures were liberally cut loose.
- Consistent Clothing Style:
- Bloom typically wears leather jackets and skinny jeans with either a t-shirt or turtleneck sweater. A lot of her clothing is red.
- Stella wears a lot of coats and jewelry, her outfits often have sparkles, and she's fond of wearing pink.
- Riven is very often seen in hoodies and jackets that are various shades of grey.
- Cosmetic Catastrophe: Downplayed. Terra botches her eye make-up in advance of the Specialists' party, but Bloom and Aisha are able to fix it quickly.
- Darker and Edgier: Fate is the darkest portrayal of the Winx Club universe to date. People get slashed and sometimes Eaten Alive by the Burned Ones, and Bloom inadvertently used her fire magic to burn down her home in California. The show also features a TV-MA rating, and the first word uttered in the series is a f-bomb.
- Death of a Child: Bloom is a changeling, intended to replace Mike and Vanessa's daughter, who died of a heart defect.
- Decomposite Character:
- Terra effectively fills the same role in the show as the Winx fairy with Earth Magic, which Flora had in the original cartoon. When Flora appears in the second season it becomes a case of Expy Coexistence
- Sam takes over the role of love interest to Musa that Riven had in the cartoon, despite Riven also being a character on the show.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Alfea has a Wild Teen Party that the staff turn a blind eye to. Bloom is ecstatic to be able to drink alcohol, since in Britain and Ireland drinking at sixteen is considered far more socially acceptable than America. It's twenty-one in America but eighteen in the UK and Ireland, and legal to do so at sixteen depending on the circumstances.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the series, Musa reveals that her mother died the year before. In the cartoon, Musa's mother died when she was a little girl.
- Emotional Powers: This is the basis of everything related to magic, every fairy to use and effectively control their powers must have a good control of their emotions from which they draw their magical energy. Conversely, being overwhelmed by negative emotions can lead to both cases of unexpressed magic and Power Incontinence, as seen with both Bloom, Aisha and Stella.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Andreas arguably doesn't seem to have a lot of care for his son Sky. However, when Beatrix is threatened Andreas is prepared to sacrifice a lot Even killing Marco in season 2 to trade for Beatrix, for her safety.
- Eye Color Change: Whenever the fairies use their powers, their eyes change color according to the element they possess (fire fairies get red-orange eyes, water fairies get steel blue eyes, mind fairies get purple eyes, and so forth).
- Expy Coexistence: Flora appears in the second season, cashing in on the Chekhov's Gun of Terra's cousin… whom she herself was an expy of.
- The Force Is Strong with This One: Many characters keep reiterating that Bloom has unusually strong fire magic for the standards of a fairy first-year student. In the last episode, Rosalind reveals that the source of all her magical energy is the Dragon's Flame.
- Genocide Survivor:
- Played with in regards to Bloom. She survived the destruction of Aster Dell as a baby and sent to Earth as a changeling. While she's initially horrified upon hearing this, she changes her mind after learning her biological family wasn't actually from Aster Dell — the people of Aster Dell were blood witches who had kidnapped her.
- Beatrix. She despises the teachers of Alfea for destroying her hometown, Aster Dell, when she was a baby and killing her entire family.
- Good Feels Good: Upon Beatrix betraying Sebastian to sabotage his plan of getting Bloom to give him the Dragon Flame, she comments that she just saved the world and "gotta admit, it feels pretty good".
- Heart Is an Awesome Power:
- Aisha at one point mocks Stella's power for being useless. But as Luna demonstrates, controlling light can make herself invisible or create illusions. Plus Stella once blinded a character with her powers, though that was an accident.
- Empathy isn't much use in combat, but Musa's able to use her powers to confirm that the Burned One they subdued is still alive - sparing the others from being attacked. And she later discovers that Farah's worries about Callum's murder.
- Hotter and Sexier: Played with. The young girls in the cartoon wore skimpier clothes, but in the series, characters are much more frank and open about sex.
- In Name Only:
- The original series' theme is The Power of Friendship and a rule every writer had to follow is "the Winx win only when together, if one acts alone she will lose". In this adaptation, the Winx show little bond with each other and tend to mostly act on their own.
- The setting is a Low Fantasy setting instead of futuristic Magitek in the original.
- The fairies have no wings in present day, making it a traditional term.
- The teenagers spend more time messing around with school drama instead of actually doing any heroics, only acting when it concerns them.
- In contrast to the loving relationships they had in the original series, most of the protagonists suffer from angst-ridden relationships with their parents without much justification outside of plot.
- Jerkass Has a Point: It's a major Kick the Dog when Luna reveals to Aisha that her boyfriend is a mole, using it as a taunt that she's a Horrible Judge of Character but she does have a point that Aisha dated a mole for months without ever getting suspicious while she's appearing as a character witness for someone else.
- Kill the Parent, Raise the Child: Silva killed his best friend Andreas in a futile bid to prevent the destruction of Aster Dell. A distraught Silva then raised Andreas' infant son, Sky. When Sky learns the truth years later, he feels utterly betrayed and it tears a gaping rift in his relationship with Silva. Later subverted when it's revealed that Andreas was secretly alive the entire time and had raised Beatrix, who was orphaned when Aster Dell was destroyed. Much of Sky's arc in season 2 is about him coming to terms with Silva lying to him and Andreas faking his death.
- Like Goes with Like: Referenced when Beatrix mocks Sky for his interest in Stella, asking what it's like to sleep with someone "who looks just like you".
- Light/Fire Juxtaposition: Bloom and Stella retain their respective fire and light powers. Their relationship is also initially much more antagonistic than in the original show.
- Lighter and Softer:
- The destruction of Aster Dell is the show's equivalent of the destruction of Domino. However, the former was a small town and the latter was an entire planet.
- In the season 1 finale, the Burned Ones break into Alfea, but only focus on Bloom and leave everyone else alone. In the cartoon, the Trix took over Cloud Tower, destroyed Red Fountain, and besieged Alfea, with the teachers and students having to fight to defend themselves.
- Live-Action Adaptation: Of Winx Club.
- Mundane Utility: Sam uses his intangibility to get to class more quickly.
- Mythology Gag:
- Terra mentions she has a cousin called Flora, whom she replaced for the first season until Flora showed up properly in season 2.
- Riven nicknames Beatrix 'Trix' at one point as a nod to the Trix characters she's a composite of. Season 2 reveals she has two sisters, one of whom is D'Arcy and the second is Isobel (implying that's Icy). She's also called "little storm" at one point, as a nod to Stormy, whom she most resembles out of the Trix.
- In the 4Kids dub of the cartoon, Faragonda comments that the fairies will go on to "fight evil, grant wishes, or are princesses that will take over their realms." Dowling is given a similar speech that fairies will go on to "rule realms, lead armies, forge powerful relics and rediscover magic that was used long, long ago."
- Necessarily Evil:
- Rosalind argues to Bloom that wiping out the people of Aster Dell was necessary because they were blood witches and Bloom accepts her explanation at face value despite previously calling the destruction of Aster Dell a war crime. Later when Dowling and Silva learn this, they quickly agree that Rosalind was right to want them all dead.
- Rosalind is on the receiving end of it when Bloom discovers that she murdered Farah and uses the Dragon Flame to kill her for real - removing a proven manipulator and murderer from the head of Alfea. Farah herself later says that "the world is a better place without Rosalind Hale", even admitting that she had wanted to do it in the past.
- Never Trust a Trailer: All the stuff about live-action fairies and the girls hanging out in the teasers? That doesn't happen until late into Season 1 while the girls, especially Stella, screw each other over in more ways than one as soon as they meet each other.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: The staff of Alfea hiding important information from the students, especially Bloom, was genuinely done with the best intentions. But the fact they refuse to share anything with Bloom, even as she gets more wrapped up in those secrets in her search for answers, leaves her open to being manipulated by the school's enemies and ultimately plays a big part in Rosalind getting set free.
- Power Parasite: Scrapers are magical creatures that originate from the Realm of Darkness. They feed on magic and can drain a fairy of their powers. Sebastian, as Blood Witch learned how to extract the power from the scrapers and use the stolen powers of the fairies.
- Precision F-Strike:
- The show has plenty of swearing, in keeping with its edgier tone. In fact, the very first spoken word said in the entire show alone is an F-bomb, said by a farmer.
- When Sky finds out that Silva was the one who killed Andreas in his efforts to stop Rosalind's plans, the only thing he can say is this:Sky: "What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?"
- Race Lift:
- Musa, who was coded in the original cartoon as East Asian, is played by Elisha Applebaum, who is whitenote .
- Related in the Adaptation: The last episode of season 1 reveals that Beatrix was adopted and raised by Sky's father, technically making them adopted siblings. Sky had no such connection to any of the Trix in the cartoon.
- Remake Cameo:
- In the Latin Spanish dub, Musa is played by Monserrat Mendoza, who previously voiced Bloom in Winx Club: The Mystery of the Abyss.
- In the Italian dub, Winx Club actors Gaia Bolognesi (Mirta), Stefano Crescentini (Avalon) and Gianluca Crisafi (Andy) provided additional voices.
- In the Polish dub, Modest Ruciński (Nabu in the fourth season) is Silva, Jacek Król (Tritannus in the third film) is Harvey and Brygida Turowska (Layla/Aisha in the Cenega Polska and Zig Zap versions, Icy in the Zig Zap version) is Rosalind.
- In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Pamella Rodrigues (Chatta/Carla) is Bloom, Bruna Laynes (Amore) is Aisha and Isis Koschdoski (Vanessa from the first two seasons) is Dowling.
- In the German dub, Giovanna Winterfeldt (Krystal) is Stella and Katarina Tomaschewsky (Griselda) is Rosalind.
- Rescue Romance: Subverted. Terra develops a crush on Dane after saving him from being bullied by Riven, but he doesn't return her feelings.
- Ring of Power: Stella's ring, an heirloom of the Solarian royal family, has the power to transport people between realms.
- R-Rated Opening: The first episode starts with a farmer dropping two f-bombs in rapid succession searching for one of his sheep that's gone missing, finding its decapitated head in a tree and then getting attacked and killed by something in the woods, complete with blood splatter.
- Sequel: The Original Title: Adaptation, rather than sequel example. The series puts the overall franchise title - Winx as part of the subtitle.
- Superpowerful Genetics:
- Aisha deduces that Bloom is a changeling because her magic is too strong for her not to be a pure-blooded fairy. Since her parents are human, that would mean they weren't her biological parents.
- Fairies are shown to have the same primary branch of magic as their relatives. Stella and her mother are both Light fairies, while Terra is an Earth fairy like her father and brother. That doesn't necessary mean they have exact same power, as Terra can manipulate plants, Ben can manipulate soil, and Sam can move through solid matter.
- Transformation Sequence: Bloom undergoes one to gain fire wings, battling Burned Ones in the final episode of the first season.
- Tyrant Takes the Helm: At the end of season 1, Silva is arrested for attempted murder and Dowling is killed by Rosalind, who takes back her position as Headmistress. When Bloom and co. return to school, they're shocked to find Rosalind, Andreas, and Luna waiting for them at the gate.
- Wicked Witch: The Blood Witches. They're implied to have once been human and gained powers through human sacrifice.
- Wild Card: Beatrix was an antagonist in Season 1, but graduates to this in Season 2. While out for her own interests, she helps Rosalind, Sebastian and the Winx at different points. She's actually the one who convinces Stella to fight Sebastian, putting the whole world's needs above her own. She even makes a Heroic Sacrifice to stop Bloom giving Sebastian the Dragon Flame.
- Yandere: Stella punished her previous roommate for flirting with Sky by blinding her with her powers. It's later revealed to have been an accident, but her mother pressured her to lie that it was intentional to keep up appearances that she has full control of her powers.
