#wctmib

From a writing perspective, there is one huge, defining issue as well and that is how inorganic and hollow the friendship between the Winx girls feels. The first two episodes move at a breakneck pace that doesn't let any emotional moment exist, let alone breathe and sink in. As a result, the foundation of the friendship between the girls is never built and that makes it a shock to see them act like besties when they next interact in the third episode. They rely too much on the viewer to bring the sense of friendship from their memory and impose it over the reboot since those are the same characters so we don't need to bother with building their relationships again, right? How are you going to have a "power of friendship" show and forget to bring the power of friendship?! There are moments where the girls' original personalities and therefore bond shine through the writing but that doesn't amount to much. Whatever spark was animating the creators and ended up being put in the original characters, isn't present at this point in time and hasn't been for a while now. This reboot feels exactly like the live-action Disney remakes that no one asked for.

Interestingly enough, there is an attempt made here at approaching the older fans. I'm not saying that it is successful but after the backlash Fate faced, especially where Flora's character was concerned, I think Rainbow may have realized there are more Winx Club fans, who have been with the show from the start, than they originally thought. For the first time in a long while they have remembered that Flora was always supposed to be a Latina (maybe we should collectively yell at them about Layla next and make them fix the issues with her as well), which I wouldn't say earns them any praise after what they've done with previous seasons but it's a step in the right direction at least.

They've made attempts at streamlining the story that they've kept from the original as well. The Company of Light has been introduced as a concept from earlier on to avoid making it - as I said in another post - the world's best kept secret. Faragonda's behavior is a lot more dictated by her actual character here rather than the need to put the Winx in the center of the plot as it was on the original show. They've tried to make Griffin's actions make more sense as well by introducing a - yet unrevealed - motivation for her to cover for the Trix and try to keep them out of trouble. The Black Mud Swamp episode is reworked in a way that makes it make a lot more sense than it used to. Unfortunately, that doesn't save it, just like none of these changes can save the reboot as a whole because of the charm and emotion lacking in the Winx group.

Rainbow tends to have its blind spots when it comes to the writing and I'm beginning to think that no matter how much the fan base critiques them on account of those, they will never learn. First of all, the Sky and Bloom drama. I am convinced that they genuinely thought that they were improving on the dumpster fire that that was in the original first season. Surely, Sky not lying about being in a relationship with Diaspro and not actually starting anything with Bloom despite the yearning looks is better, right? Right? Unfortunately, I don't think Rainbow and the writers that they hire will ever become aware of the fact that you can have obstacles to a relationship that aren't jealousy and/or an already existing relationship involving one of the characters. In their minds they were taking the only possible course by a) keeping Diaspro in the story (despite how her role has been completely vanished as explained here) and b) not making Sky and Bloom get together immediately by introducing an obstacle in their relationship.

Another issue that has been dragged over from the original show and somehow made worse despite the changes to Griffin's character and the situation with the witches are the extremely prevalent undertones of witchphobia. Which are, frankly, not even undertones in the reboot. They try to save this by making Flora say that not all witches are bad only to make Bloom have the meltdown of the century the second the possibility of her being a witch arose. And since we rushed right through the first two episodes in another instance of laziness as Rainbow relies on the viewers' familiarity with the original show, there was no time to establish how much Bloom liked fairies, which would have been a plausible enough reason for her to not want to be a witch and would have helped avoid the implications of hatred towards witches. Now if that were a deliberate choice that they intended to follow through on when they reveal more of the backstory and if they were willing to explore how the Ancestral Witches' actions would have made life that much harder for all other witches in the wake of the war between them and the Company of Light, that would have been one thing. Based on the fact that they used the "not all witches are bad and not all fairies are perfect" card, though, as well as everything else that we've seen so far, I'm certain that they have no such intentions and either don't notice the witchphobia that they write into the plot or they don't care.

The biggest blind spot in the writing would be the Trix. Now the fandom isn't exactly helping with the contradictory messages that we send regarding the Trix since there are cries for them to be removed from the show alongside insistence that they are too iconic and should stay so Rainbow needs to remember that and figure out how to write them well again.

I don't want to go on a tangent here but I have to say that the Trix were pretty much doomed from the very start. They struck a golden balance between them being high school bullies and a genuine, credible threat in the first season of the show, which made them as iconic as they are. Bringing them back was always going to be fraught with issues, though. They couldn't have 8 seasons of Winx vs Trix thanks to continuous power-ups (tbh that's pretty close to what we got anyway and look where it's gotten us). That meant that they had to bring in a new angle to justify the Trix' return and up the stakes, which was always going to go wrong, at least the way that Rainbow is going about it. You can't have the Trix remain the same cookie-cutter, two-dimensional cartoon villains without an actual motivation besides hunger for power if you want to keep them around for so long. They needed to introduce a motivation for them, a reason for what they were doing in order to make them more interesting but that brings us right back to what I said in the beginning about laziness being one of Rainbow's two main issues.

It was easier to introduce another Saturday morning cartoon villain than to do the heavy lifting with the Trix and elevate them to characters that have their own stories and arcs (they have some development but it's not enough to keep them interesting and fresh for 8 seasons). Adding a new female villain would have been dangerous by threatening to make her look too much like a fourth Trix (I bet you can see the problem), especially considering that they introduced Layla, who was meant to be the sixth Winx, in the second season and the parallels would have been too obvious. They didn't figure out how to make them collaborate with another woman until season 6 and by then, the writing had become too stupid and juvenile and the Trix had already suffered blow after blow to their reputation for that endeavor to be successful. So they introduced Darkar instead but him being the one to give the Trix their power-up that became the only reason why they were still a threat to Winx in the second season already became the beginning of the Trix' downfall. It's only downhill from there, with Bloom even boldly proclaiming in 3x05 "You'd think you'd understand the balance of power by now, Icy. Whenever you face us, you lose." And she's completely right too! By that point the Trix were no longer a threat to the Winx and bringing them back over and over again is the epitome of diminishing returns. It's completely pointless when they aren't a challenge for the Winx anymore.

The reboot shoots itself right in the head by starting out with the Trix already failing to be a challenge to the Winx. It doesn't take longer than reaching the culmination of the second episode for it to become clear just how pathetic they are when they fail to take down Bloom in an empty classroom with Bloom's ability to stand up to them being no greater than what it was in 1x02 of the original show. Really, the Trix are completely assassinated here from the very start in favor of the new villain - Vexius, who is, luckily, far enough away from being a copy of Valtor that I can stay in denial about him being the new replacement of Valtor they conjured up after the fiasco that was Sebaltor in Fate. With Rainbow riding on the Trix being the fan favorites ever since they were introduced back in 2004, they aren't likely to ever develop them properly and give them real motivation (I'd be happy to eat my words at any point) rather than make them the buffoon minions of yet another ill-conceived male villain.

Vexius at least manages to be somewhat threatening once he finally stops relying on teenagers for his plans and kicks into gear. I don't love anything they're doing with him, though. The evil advisor trope is so tired and so far they haven't even used the set up it provides to tell us anything more about the Domino royal family. Damien is a total mystery and they haven't answered even one of the gazillion questions that his existence creates. On the one hand, he is one of the parts of the reboot that they really committed to and I would like to think that Rainbow is finally remembering that the reason why Winx Club was so successful in the first place was because they had a vision and they committed to that vision with everything they had and the passion came through and made millions of children love the story and the characters. However, I cannot help but notice the way that the show has stopped promoting "girl power" (all the way back in s5 when they introduced Neptune as monarch of the Andros seas and took the title of heir away from Tressa) and is trying to shove men in positions of power as often as possible. It was one thing to introduce powerful villains like Darkar (and Avalon) and Valtor that preyed on young women's deepest desires and insecurities and a completely different thing to introduce Damien as Bloom's twin and make Oritel the monarch of Domino and keeper of the Dragon Fire when Marion was the one who was always implied to have it in the original run of the show (the first three seasons and the movie).