On October 2, 2025, A new reboot of the Winx Club franchise was released. “Winx Club: The Magic is Back” is a new take on the 2004 cartoon. The first half of season one dropped, leaving many fans divided.
The reboot has a similar premise to that of the original. Bloom is a normal girl from Earth, when on her sixteenth birthday, she discovers she has magical powers. Later that day, she rides her new bike into the park and sees a fight between an ogre and two fairies: Stella and Flora. She then gets caught in the fight, but defends herself with her own magic.
Discovering this, she goes back with the fairies to Alfea, a school for fairies and witches in the Magic Dimension. She meets her other three roommates, Musa, Tecna, and Aisha. She also runs into three evil witches, Icy, Darcy, and Stormy. They don’t know what, but they know there’s something magical about Bloom that goes beyond normal fairy magic. The Trix make it their mission to get whatever power she’s holding, and become the most powerful witches in the magic dimension.
With any reboot, there’s going to be similarities and differences. Primarily, Alfea is now the school for fairies and witches. The witches used to go to Cloud Tower, but it was destroyed in a battle 16 years ago. Another key difference was that In the original show, Aisha joined the Winx in season two. But here, she joins us at the very beginning of the series. It was refreshing to see her at the start, and she didn’t stick out in a negative way.
The reboot has been blowing up on social media for a number of reasons, one being the rumored use of AI. Since we started to see official pictures, fans noticed little instances where generative AI was clearly used. One of the first promotional images stood out for its strange background, as the glass behind the characters seemed warped. Another version of the same image was either AI generated, or simply photoshopped. Aisha had the exact same hair as another AI-generated photo. You could even see the faint appearance of an earring which was not a part of the official outfit.
Winx Club’s company Rainbow has denied the use of AI time and time again, but has continued to do some sketchy things anyways. Last year, Winx Club’s production company Rainbow created another 3D Netflix cartoon called “Mermaid Magic”. They posted YouTube Shorts introducing each of the characters, but they were eerily narrated by AI models of the cast. I found that incredibly shocking, and just confused as to why. Why would you bother creating that, when you could ask them to narrate some more dialogue for social media posts?
One thing that really sparked criticism amongst fans was an AI ad that Target created. Since Winx Club is collaborating with Target to sell dolls of the reboot, they decided to create a small target ad that they posted to TikTok and YouTube. It was a short of the new doll of Stella going into Target and finding their dolls in store. In my opinion, it was just weird and not well done. I have heard that this was more of Target’s doing than Rainbow’s, even though Winx Club posted it on their social media. Either way, I definitely don’t think it helps their reputation.
That aside, the transformation sequences were incredible. They were animated by a different studio, and I’m so glad they were. The 2025 standards of magical girl transformations are high, and they did not disappoint. The effects were dynamic and complex, connecting to each girl’s element. The cinematography was incredible too, I feel like Bloom, Tecna, Musa, and Aisha really stood out in theirs.
I also really liked the Trix in the reboot. I love that they kept their original witch outfits, and I think it speaks to the timelessness of the original series. I also liked the new characters and villains. With a reboot, there’s going to be some changes, and I was pleasantly surprised with these new characters. I also really enjoyed the music. Three songs stand out to me the most: “From Now On”, “Forever Winx”, and of course, “Step into the Dark (feat. ili)”. We only heard that song once in the series, and in my opinion, it sounds like a perfect opportunity for a Trix transformation sequence. We didn’t get that, but I’m praying for that in the next release.
One of my main critiques is the pacing. Everything happens incredibly fast, to a point where I’m rewinding just to hear what they said again. Whether it’s important main character lore, or more filler-type content, it genuinely goes by so fast. In episode one, we have Bloom’s birthday, the fight in the park, the visit to Alfea, and we meet the other Winx and professors in just the first four minutes.
In conclusion, I would have to give the reboot a 7/10. I think the animation is beautiful, and you can really tell the detail they put into it. If it weren’t for the fast-pacing and wonkiness of some shots, I might have given it a higher rating. It’s only the first half of season one, so that could definitely change. I am looking forward to more coming next spring!