For many of us, our childhood Saturday morning cartoons will always hold a special place in our hearts. It takes us back to a simpler time that had us waking up to worlds filled with wonder and imagination over black coffee and morning routines. Winx Club was a popular animated series on Nickelodeon about a group of fairies studying to become fiercely cute warriors at their fairy college. The story has just been revived over on Netflix as a live-action series, but not everyone’s happy with how Fate: The Winx Saga adapts the property.
Fate: The Winx Saga swaps the bright color palette and rainbow glow of the animated show for a gritty take on the series told as a YA adventure in the vein of The 100 or The Society. The series has quickly skyrocketed in popularity this week on Netflix and become the No. 1 title streaming on the platform, but some fans are super bummed about one major character’s absence. As one fan pointed out:
While Winx loosely adapts a majority of the main fairies fans remember from the animated show, Fate: The Winx Saga is missing Flora! Flora is the fairy of nature and the peacemaker among the Winx club. She was a rare Latina character in a series such as this, yet Flora is not a central character in the Netflix show. Strangely enough, there is a Fairy of Nature in the main cast, but her name is Terra. What’s up with that? Another fan showed her disappointment:
If you watch the series, you may have noticed that Eliot Salt’s Terra mentions that she has a cousin called Flora. So... maybe the creators are saving the introduction to Flora for a later season? Even so, it’s even more disappointing for certain fans who feel like an opportunity for Latina representation was missed with the casting of the British Normal People actress. As one Twitter user explained:
The show has been accused of whitewashing, not only by replacing Flora’s role with a white actress, but additionally in terms of Musa, played by Elisha Applebaum, who seems to be a white actress as well when her Fairy of Music was known to be an Asian character in the animation. It’s a shame that Fate: The Winx Saga didn’t take a bold swing with its diversity, especially when part of the original show’s impact was its decision to follow fairies from a number of different backgrounds.
While whitewashing some major characters is making a ton of fans upset, it’s still being watched a lot right now on Netflix and some are setting aside the controversy for its new characters:
Fate: The Winx Saga is also missing Tehna, the pixie-cut wearing fairie who is a Fairy of Technology and the group’s scientist and gamer. We’ll have to see if Netflix’s Winx series can right some of its wrongs if it gets a second season. What do you think? Did you miss Flora? Vote in the poll below.
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