Roasting Winx Season 7 for 4400 Words Gay

INTRO:

Rewatching the newer seasons of Winx have made me realize something: season 7 is in fact the worst season. I used to feel it was 6, but the more I’ve rewatched it for my rewrite, the more I’ve come to appreciate the season, flaws and all. At the very least season 6 lets me appreciate the Bloomix designs, and it at least has a plot. It’s contrived and boring as hell, but it’s something I can grasp onto to have a rough idea of how much longer they’ll drag out my suffering.

But season 7? Oh dear god. This is when the writers really ramped up the attempt to kiddify the show, with no effort in establishing any kind of concrete plot, underwhelming transformations, and the most boring and annoying villains imaginable. At the very least they ran out of money for CGI scenes, and thank god, because the Mini-Worlds look so much better in 2D. Now today, in order to achieve justice and cleanse our souls, we’re gonna drag season 7 for filth. So grab a drink, grab some snacks, and get comfortable, cuz we’re gonna be here for a while.

Before we begin, I do wanna ask y’all that if you’re willing and able, any support over on my Patreon would be very much appreciated. Along with that, I’d like to ask y’all to check out my urban fantasy novel De Cineribus: From the Ashes on Amazon and wherever else books are sold, and you can also request it at your local bookstore or library.

Now without further ado, let the suffering commence.

WHAT PLOT?:

Like the other newer seasons, Winx season 7 revolves around a central theme, this time being animal rescue. The Winx each get their own bonded fairy animal, they have to save fairy animals at large, and the antagonists are shapeshifting poachers. Conceptually, it’s far more juvenile than even 5 and 6’s core themes, which goes hand-in-hand with the effort to lower the show’s age demographic.

I don’t mind this fairy animal theme at all, actually. In fact, I think it could be interesting exploring the creatures of the Magical Universe more in-depth, given how relatively little we’ve seen of them the past few seasons. We’ll get to that later, but the fairy animals themselves are one of the few highlights of season 7, with their designs and the creativity behind their powers.

The issue comes into play with the plot… or the lack of a plot. Whereas season 6 at least had a very clear conflict of the Winx trying to lock the Legendarium and reclaim Cloudtower from the Trix, who were using it as a base to conquer the other magic schools, season 7 is nowhere near as clear. Instead, two low-power randos, Kalshara and Brafilius, are looking for the “ultimate power of the fairy animals,” because their goal is to… control every fairy animal in existence to have an invincible army? Um… sure, whatever.

The ultimate power of the fairy animals solely on an idea level seems ridiculously trite. It’s yet another reality-altering power that they couldn’t even bother defining beyond a vague title, and why would the fairy animals even have such a thing to begin with? At least antagonists going after the Dragon Flame made sense. But beyond that, it leads to so many problems with our new villains that we’ll save for later, along with problems of pacing and a lack of structure.

The Winx basically just wait around for Kalshara and Brafilius to cause problems wherever they think the next clue to find the ultimate power is. And a lot of the time, those two aren’t even involved in whatever chaos is going on, like the wild magic fungus on Lynphea, or the wild magic in the jungles of Earth, or… goddamn Paradise Bay. There’s no clear plan the Winx have in finding and protecting this ultimate power, nor a clear plan for the villains in achieving it.

You know those last few episodes of season 6 where they forged the Legendarium Key, so to stall for time until the finale, they just had the Trix turn Cloudtower invisible? Yeah, that’s essentially all of season 7 - the Winx looking for something to occupy them with nothing substantial to do. They’ve so thoroughly given up that they just have Roxy’s new birds yell at the girls about the latest conflict they need to resolve. They literally have plot birds yelping about how the Winx need to engage in an arbitrary plot cul de sac, whether it’s going to Medieval Italy to save a cat, or fighting an evil unicorn in the mountains of China… neither of those are as fun as they sound, for the record.

Most of these problems come from the writers failing to create a plot structure for this season, so things just have one after the other for no rhyme or reason, and they need to pad for time as much as they can to fill out the standard 26 episodes. And the thing is… it wouldn’t be as bad if the individual stories were fun, or they were doing interesting things with the characters. I think season 7 could’ve worked if it was more similar to 2, with more lowkey slice-of-life, character-focused stories. Something very low-stakes to give the girls time to breathe after the chaos of the last few seasons.

But uh… we can’t do that, because the Winx are more boring now than they’ve ever been.

THE WINX ARE BORING:

The Winx really have nothing to do anymore. See, part of Rainbow’s goal with the start of the Nickbow era was to keep the Winx at Alfea, not only to lower the target age of their audience, but also to make it easier to generate new plots every season. If you keep the Winx at Alfea eternally, and prevent them from getting older, you never have to worry about keeping the club together once they’ve graduated. You can just have them deal with whatever conflict you want while locking them away at school.

It’s a lazy writer’s dream come true, but there’s a problem with that: the Winx are now a hive mind. By forcing them to stay together, and preventing them from pursuing their own dreams (aside from dead-end gags like Stella’s fashion designs), you wind up stripping the girls of not only their personalities, but also their motivations. They don’t each have their own reason for engaging in the plot; rather, they band together because the script says so. They’re completely and utterly passive, and that’s no way to write a protagonist, let alone six.

I can’t even really say anything about them individually because they’re written as a collective. The most I can say is… I miss OG Bloom. I miss my little hotheaded cinnamon roll who’d assault someone on impulse. I miss snarky but lovable Stella who’d drag a bitch for fun and then devour an entire buffet table. I miss group mom Flora who still had a backbone. I miss chill and aloof Musa who actually gave a shit about her musical ambitions. I miss Tecna being more than stereotypical dork humor, who learns how to deal with her emotions. And I miss Aisha being a bit edgy, the badass who got shit done and who loved to rebel and dance. Basically, give me a blend of their characters from the first four seasons with how they’re written in World of Winx, please. With a dash of 4Kids Bloom.

They honestly had a great opportunity to expand on the girls’ personalities through their bonds with their fairy animals. It could’ve brought out new sides of their characters we haven’t seen before. I did actually enjoy Aisha being a nurturing presence for Squonk, as it reminded me a lot of her relationship with Piff. And I like Flora being forced to assert herself to keep Amarok in check. Other than that… eh. Give me Bloom being fed up with how bratty Elas can be. Give me Tecna inventing new gadgets with Flitter to pull some pranks on people at Alfea. Something, anything, pelase.

Oh, and they did Roxy DIRTY this season. Like, they went out of their way to have her be a supporting character who’s more engaged in the plot this season, and they still felt the need to shove her into the background? Season 7 revolves around animals, so you’d think the Fairy of Animals would finally be allowed to become the seventh Winx like they’d teased back in season 4. But nah. Roxy doesn’t get Butterflix or Tynix, her Stone of Memory gets stolen by one of the show’s worst villains, she doesn’t even get a fairy animal of her own, and she’s barred from participating in the majority of the conflict. Thanks, Rainbow. I hate it. If you’re gonna make the other Winx 16 again, the least you can do is pretend Roxy’s on the same level as them. You’re already throwing the rest of the continuity in the trash, so why not do it again for something people actually want?

THE FAIRY ANIMALS ARE NICE THO:

Again, I actually really like the fairy animals themselves. Whenever a show set in another world has fun with its wildlife, it’s a good time, and it’s nice seeing something other than the classic Avatar route of mashing up animals from our own world. Some of my favorites include the rab-con, the scarret, and of course, the accordiphant. C’mon, it’s an itty bitty elephant with the body of an accordian. How the hell could you not love it, you monster? Oh also, the pelifly is an eternal mood, and I want one to scare my guests. I want it to stare them in the eyes as it speaks in a warped version of my own voice, repeating the swear words I mutter under my breath.

Anyhow, onto the Winx’s fairy animals, cuz they actually did a pretty good job tailoring them to each girl. Elas… is a fucking brat. It’s no secret Bloom’s a lover of unicorns, which makes it a bit of a shame that so much of my job involves dragging her for filth. Still, Elas is a little runt that reminds me a lot of classic 4Kids Bloom. Snooty, thinks he’s better than you, and wants all the attention on him no matter what. In the right hands, this could absolutely make Bloom go “... Is this what I have become?”

I don’t know why, but the idea of a bird whose wings generate sunlight is perfect for Stella. It’s a bit of an eccentric, odd choice that just screams Stella. And what makes it even better? Shiny… well, loves shiny things, by which I mean she’ll eat all of Stella’s jewelry in one gulp. I appreciate some conflict that reflects the dumb behavior of people’s actual pets in real life, but of course escalated and with a fantastical twist.

Amarok is my dumb wolf son who deserves all of the happiness, but also needs to get his shit together. Again, it’s nice to see Flora have to assert herself to keep Amarok from wrecking everything, given… well he’s a fucking wolf, not a dog.

Critty is probably the most normal out of the bunch, since… well, she’s a cat. Pissy, is annoyed by everything all of the time, but actually is a marshmallow who loves snuggling and listening to Musa sing. The only thing that makes her magical, aside from being pink, is the fact she can shoot quills, which oh my god I love it so much. And she is a true artiste, like any cat.

Flitter’s probably the most boring of the bunch, which is a shame. You’d think a hyperactive little squirrel with aviator goggles who likes to invent things, fuck with people, and destroy everything in his path at the speed of light would be a great match for Tecna. Maybe he’d be able to get her out of her strict patterns and make her enjoy the chaos of the moment a bit. I will say, I do love his little friendship with Kiko - they absolutely got hammered at that ending party.

And Squonk? Hmm… protecc. Like yeah, he can be annoying, but that’s kinda the point. He’s a freaky little abomination who’s named for his alarm-like cries and the literal floods he creates with his tears. Only Aisha would have both the strength and patience to suffer through his nonsense to care for him. Also, I’m at the point where I’m so annoyed with this cast, I’m lowkey rooting for Squonk to drown them all. I don’t know what to tell you.

The one fairy animal I will not forgive tho… aside from Roxy’s dumb plot birds, is the goddamn Infinity Swan. We’ve made fun of this thing forever, but… what the hell is this thing? It just comes out of nowhere in the very last episode to send the Trix to yet another extradimensional hell prison. There’s no foreshadowing of this thing before it appears, it’s not mentioned in any kind of fairy animal lore, no theming for it in the designs of the Mini-Worlds or even the transformations, and it took away my fairy animal babies. Stupid bastard swan.

THE VILLAINS ARE ANNOYING:

Kalshara and Brafilius have to be the most underwhelming villains of the entire franchise. Well… second-most. Actually, I go back and forth with whether I hate them more than Acheron. At least I can take Acheron seriously in some abstract sense, even if he had the personality of dirt, and he was defeated in 15 minutes with the dollar store Agador Box. At the very least, you could take him even a little seriously, and his motivations of wanting to be free made sense. And you could argue he was never all that important beyond manipulating Selina into doing evil.

Kalshara and Brafilius, meanwhile, are buffoons, and they’re not even entertaining in their buffoonery, which defeats the whole point of them being buffoons. I just really like the word buffoon, okay? They should’ve called it Buffoonix, at least that sounds like it’d make for a hell of a time. Maybe it’s a circus-themed transformation, and we have to fight evil magic carnies… oh my god, see, I’m writing season 9 already.

Anyhow, I’m eternally bored of these two. Aside from wanting the ultimate power of the fairy animals to build an army, they don’t have a clear plan to get them there, meaning they’re meandering around just like the Winx, or laying lazily about their ugly lair. Not to mention that with the weird time travel nonsense going on, it means they were just… doing what, nothing in all that time between the Winx’s first time travel escapade and the present? And in all that time all they’ve done is kidnap a bunch of tiny animals to keep in cages? Okay yeah, sure, real main villain material right here.

They don’t even have any motivation for what they’re doing. They don’t seem all that interested in fairy animals on any level, even as poachers. The animals are just a means to their ends, meaning Kalshara is yet another generic villain who’s no different personality-wise from Darkar or Valtor or Tritannus or Selina or Acheron, and who’s far weaker than any of them. Seriously, she’s just some shapeshifting nobody, and the Winx wield the Dragon Flame at this point and have saved the world a dozen times at this point. They should be able to level Kalshara in less than five seconds. But then again, this is the same Dragon Flame that left the Winx groveling at the feet of freshmen Cloudtower witches last season, so what do I know?

I do like the idea of Kalshara having a personal connection to Faragonda, and that she’s a fairy gone rogue, because it serves as an example that not all fairies are good. But they don’t even do anything with that. Kalshara loses her fairy powers once she’s able to shapeshift, so we can’t even get any evil fairy outfits out of it, and she has some of the most boring shapeshifting powers I’ve seen from this show. Every time she shapeshifts, we take forever to stare into her eye as she transforms, killing the pace of the scene whenever it happens. And all she can turn into is… a bird, a panther, and a dragon. Nothing else. And she doesn’t even use the dragon form all that much, so why even introduce it?

Not to mention she has no presence whatsoever. On top of hardly being involved in the plot, with the Winx half the time dealing with a conflict that Kalshara and Brafilius have nothing to do with, Kalshara doesn’t even get the Stone of Memory to follow the Winx into the past. Nah, they just let Brafilius keep that one. And Brafilius is… so exhausting. He’s the epitome of an annoying comic relief villain who makes you wanna scream. You’d think Brafilius would be lovable, if anything, being forced into this life of crime by his sister, who he feels indebted emotionally and wants to support, only to be treated like shit time and time again. But again, they do nothing with that, making Brafilius’ presence nothing more than a joke that goes on 26 episodes too long.

Honestly, I remember when they first revealed these two designs, and I thought they were gonna run an evil circus of some sort with corrupted fairy animals. Like, maybe every fairy animal they catch is corrupted by wild magic and turned into a monster that serves them. Imagine if the kangormane from the first episode was an attempted recruit, and that led into the Winx discovering that Kalshara already has a small army of dangerous fairy animals transformed by wild magic? Now there’s an aesthetic I can jive with.

And honestly, I keep going back and forth with how I feel about the Trix returning this season. By this point I’m so sick of them that I’m disappointed they came back at all. Part of why I enjoy season 4 is the lack of the Trix, forcing the writers to introduce new conflicts for the Winx outside of the usual antics of the infamous witch trio. But on the other hand, this is the first time since the earlier seasons the Trix have been even remotely threatening, and I actually love their fairy animals, especially Occula. But then DuArt ruined it with their voices, so I guess I hate it. Seriously, you have Lisa Ortiz in your cast but you didn’t have her reprise her role for Icy? Forshame.

TIME TRAVEL???:

Time travel is one of those tricky things that’s hard to get right. I’ve been harsh to it in the past, but that’s mostly because through my admittedly limited media diet, I’d always seen it used in the most contrived, boring ways imaginable… looking at you, Kingdom Hearts. The thing is, time travel can be a great tool for interesting conflicts you couldn’t explore any other way. But Winx season 7… you guessed it, does nothing interesting with it. Yay.

They explain it through the Stones of Memories: convenient artifacts kept right at Alfea. Wonderful. Just how many reality-altering secrets are kept in this goddamn school? And where were these when we needed to learn about what happened to Bloom’s parents? What happened to chronomagic where we punched clocks to see the past? What happened to the Tracix wings-- actually I don’t mind ditching the Believix wings, let’s not give them all the same, super convenient powers when Flora can already speak to nature to discover what the trees have seen.

But the ultimate sin is that the writers fail to take advantage of these stones. Imagine if the Winx went back to witness ancient battles between the Great Dragon and the Shadow Phoenix, or the Fall of Domino, or even smaller conflicts within their own families. Maybe meeting younger versions of their parents when they were the Winx’s age, and realizing there’s a reason why they are the way they are. So many interesting possibilities are thrown away so the Winx can befriend a dinosaur or fall into boring situationships with medieval loot players.

Actually, where are the fairy hunters whenever they time travel on Earth? You’re telling me that when we go back in time to when the wizards were capturing all the terrestrial fairies, we don’t encounter Ogron and his goons even once? That could’ve been so much fun, and also served as a chance for the Winx to confront the trauma these villains have left on them since season 4. But nah, they just… don’t exist anymore. Wouldn’t wanna have fun with your time travel plots or anything.

And again, I will scream it until my dying day, why didn’t Roxy keep her Stone of Memories? Why are we so insistent on writing Roxy out of the story time and time again? And why does Brafilius get the stone instead of Kalshara? Can’t we at least get the less annoying villain involved here? Oh, and this is admittedly very petty, but why didn’t they tie Butterflix into the idea of the butterfly effect? If they’re gonna wear ugly pancake tutus, at least do something interesting with it.

Or just have them use Butterflix only when they time travel. Maybe Butterflix corrects the timeline automatically to minimize the damage, which is how they were able to bring back Squonk, Critty, and Flitter into the present? I don’t know, it’d still be super pointless, but at least then it’d mean they use Bloomix in the present instead of goddamn Butterflix. Speaking of which…

BAD TRANSFORMATIONS:

I’d like to apologize to season 6 again, this time for saying it had the worst transformations. Because it doesn’t - season 7 does. All Bloomix has going for it are its looks, and Mythix is straight-up trash, but at the very least, neither of them are Butterflix. Seriously, I’m so bitter that Bloomix got thrown away forever to be replaced by… Butterflix. Yeah, I get it, power of the fairy animals, but Bloomix is the power of the Dragon Flame. If anything, it should be the new base transformation they use by default, with new transformations used for specific situations. Like you know how they only used Mythix to enter the Legendarium World? Keep it like that, with the Winx using Bloomix by default, and then only using Butterflix when they time travel.

Conceptually, Butterflix irks me. The only reason it has to exist is that it holds the power of nature… you know, like Sophix, or Harmonix before they got rid of the Nature’s Key thing for no reason. Honestly, if only they saved Harmonix for season 7, at least then I’d be less annoyed. But Butterflix is the representation of season 7 being made for far younger audiences, not only through its ridiculously ugly name, but also its gaudy design. I will forever begrudge Butterflix for ruining monarch butterfly aesthetics for me.

I don’t even know why they had to go with butterflies, especially when they didn’t even bother with the butterfly effect. I agree with Winx Decoded that a fawn theme would’ve been far more interesting. Or hell, you already have the Infinity Swan, so why not go for a swan-themed transformation? It’d even fit the weird ballet tutu thing going on. But please god, don’t call it Swanix, please don’t do that.

Butterflix’s transformations at the very least don’t have the girls flailing everywhere to remind us how lackluster the puppet animation is, so that’s a plus. But the real problem, aside from the uncreative turns to reveal their outfits, is that most of the transformation isn’t even them transforming. Instead, they do that accursed Butterflix dance that’s been memed into oblivion. And to make it worse, Rainbow also plagiarized it from popular K-Pop dances? Not surprised, honestly. At the very least, I don’t hate the song… aside from the weird pronunciation of “nature.”

I do actually like the wings, but the designs of the outfits are so hideous, especially Bloom and Flora. The only designs I genuinely like are Musa and Aisha, who again are coming in clutch to try and save this trash fire form. Absolutely love their wings, their color schemes, and their hair.

I also appreciate that Butterflix encourages the Winx to use their environment to their advantage in fights, since they can’t use the power of nature to hurt anything that’s part of nature. However, that also makes Butterflix one of the most useless, most laughable forms they’ve had. So often, the Winx are completely helpless, unable to perform even the most basic attacks against their enemies.

Tynix, meanwhile, is… eh. It’s better than Butterflix, but that’s not hard. Conceptually I actually really love the idea of the Mini-Worlds, and the designs of these realms are gorgeous and surprisingly inventine. This makes me wish they handled the Infinite Ocean and Legendarium World in 2D instead of 3D… and makes me dread the idea of Tynix looking even uglier than Mythix.

Tynix’s designs are tacky and cookie-cutter, but I do love the hair and wings. I also really enjoy the supermodel vibe going on with the transformation, though I’m not as fond of the song as I used to be. These spells are trash tier, though. More generic blasts, more generic shields, and some of the most generic special spells with the girls’ fairy animals… wonderful.

CONCLUSION & OUTRO:

Season 7 is a disaster of epic proportions. It’s so incredibly underwhelming, as not only did it piss off the older fans even more than seasons 5 and 6 already had managed, but it also clearly failed to entertain the younger audiences Rainbow was aiming for. Winx Club just doesn’t know who its audience is anymore, and it hasn’t for a long time, hence why it’s fallen behind other similar properties and lost its status as a titan. It’s sad to see, but at the very least, it’s fun to poke fun at.

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I’m the Unicorn of War, and season 7 is a shit show.