YMMV / Winx Club

A-C

• Anticlimax Boss:
  • Acheron is released from the Legendarium, causes a little havoc, summons a giant turtle monster, and is resealed in a new prison all in the span of one episode. He at least beat the Trix fairly easily.
  • The Wizards of the Black Circle are defeated less than five minutes into the last episode. The fandom was pissed, and it's usually considered the worst season finale, even with Season 5.
• Anvilicious:
  • The "save the rainforest" mini-arc in Season 4.
  • Happens a lot in the comics too, for example:
    • Issue 24: Love is earned, not taken.
    • Issue 43: We should treasure books as a source of valuable information.
    • Issue 52: Drugs Are Bad.
    • Issue 55: Be wary of people in online chatrooms, especially if they ask you to meet in real life.
    • Issue 73 is a Green Aesop and emphasises the use of natural ingredients within perfumes.
  • Season 5 opens with an accident that was inspired by the BP platform oil spill, and new villain Tritannus is powered by pollution.
• Arc Fatigue: Bloom's missing biological parents. They are first mentioned in episode 13^note her "mysterious past" was hinted at as early as episode 2, but this could have gone in any number of directions, but it takes three seasons and one movie before they are finally reunited. It doesn't help that there were other plot threads going on at the same time, with the show only coming back to her missing parents seemingly when it felt like it.
• Ass Pull:
  • The reasoning behind the need to replace Believix for Sirenix in Season 5. It is stated that their Believix powers won't work as well underwater. However in Season 3, the Winx had no problem fighting underwater, be it in Winx or Enchantix. Somehow, the most basic fairy transformation has a better performance underwater than a transformation earned by restoring an entire world's belief in magic.
  • Bloom's friendship flame. The Winx realized they needed the help of everybody to defeat the zombies attacking and Bloom just so happened have a spell that allows her to share her power, something that you'd think would be a simple standard spell for all fairies.
  • Near the end of Season 7, the Trix return, despite the fact they got sealed away in the Legendarium for eternity back in the end of Season 6.
  • In Season 8:
    • The return of Valtor despite being killed off in Season 3; and the Trix returning despite having been sealed away by the Swan of Infinity at the climax of Season 7.
    • The Trix are allowed in a dance contest without anyone recognizing them. These are the women who either tried to Take Over the World or allied with people trying to do so (often as Dragon with an Agenda) several times over.
• Audience-Alienating Era: It's widely agreed that the series entered this during Season 5, and that it never recovered from it. The series going through a Soft Reboot, dumbed down, and the outfits being made less revealing went over as well as one could expect. It also doesn't help that every season post season 4 is considered to be subpar at best. While Straffi originally stated that the changes were necessary for the series to continue, this has widely been derided as a Fan-Disliked Explanation, and it seems that Straffi has come to come to agree with the fans on that one. This era was so poorly received that the announcement that Winx would go through a complete reboot after season 8 was met with widespread acclaim from the fanbase.
• Badass Decay: Valtor. For a good part of Season 3 he was an astute and almost invincible villain, but after the Winx got the Water Stars he tried to avoid direct fights and lost much of his intelligence when he went One-Winged Angel.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Bloom is loved by the Target Audience but disliked by many others. Tends to get the Ron the Death Eater treatment in fanfics quite a lot.
  • Some love Riven for his "bad boy" persona, morally gray nature, and/or his Darker and Edgier personality compared to the other specialists. Others hate him how much he's become a Jerkass over the series, as his character development is often reset to stir up drama with Musa and/or Sky.
  • Half of the fandom like and enjoy Diaspro for her classiness, inner passion personality and wish she would’ve pulled a Heel–Face Turn like in the comics, while others despise her for being a typical Spoiled Brat cliche and were kind of glad Sky called off his relationship with her.
  • Half the fandom hates Nex with a passion because of his abrasive personality at first and the way he acted while competing with Roy for Aisha. The other half doesn't mind him, saying he got better after the Love Triangle, and point out that at least he isn't Roy, who is probably the biggest scrappy of the series. Nex won the love triangle.
  • Sky. Fans view him, in Bloom's words, as "a courageous, handsome, gentle" person and believe he has his good moments, while others despise him, mostly due to the fact he didn't get any blame for the problems between Bloom and Diaspro, and is viewed at best as too boring and perfect.
  • Selina. Some love her, others hate how much of a cruel Jerkass she is and an Entitled Bastard.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The part in season 3 episode 25 where Bloom is randomly attacked by a mud monster during the fight against Valtor.
  • The dance during the Butterflix transformation is pure filler and is repeated during every transformation.
• Broken Base:
  • Over whether anything from season 5 and beyond are worth watching. Most of the fandom have refused to watch anything from those seasons due to the retcons and continuity errors made, while others assure they had a fair share of good points (like finally exploring Tecna's homeworld for example).
  • Musa and Riven's relationship. Either it's loved for being the most realistically portrayed relationship out of all of them or it's hated for never being stable, with some considering it a romanticized abusive relationship.
  • While the Trix are generally well-liked, the fan base is split on whether they've been overused. For example, the only season in which they have no involvement is season 4. This got really bad after they appeared at the end of season 7, taking the place of the original villains.
  • Starting from Harmonix, the transformations start to look more similar to one another and less individualistic. Some people criticized Winx' earlier designs, saying they didn't make the group like a team and will praise the newer transformations. However, some people feel like the designs have gotten lazy and/or lost their personality.
  • The Art Shift to Fairy Couture Style initiated with World of Winx and continued with Season 8 has divided the fanbase: on one side, some people enjoy the stylistic evolution, which they claim as coherent with the fact the Winx have been at it for years and look more like adults under the new style, while on the other side, people decry that the Winx now look like plasticine Barbie dolls, with yet another section of the fandom criticizing Flora and Aisha's lighter skin complexion.
  • The outfits have generally been less revealing and more sensible since the series was revived, including older outfits in new promotional materials.^ExplanationThe DVDs of season 1 and 2, released after Viacom became a co-owner of Rainbow, colored in the midriffs of the original transformations to make them less revealing dresses. While some appreciate this, other fans dislike the Bowdlerlization and think that the show has lost the unique edge it once had. As mentioned in Americans Hate Tingle above, part of this can be chalked up to different attitudes about revealing clothing in the many countries the show is broadcast in.
  • The finale of season 4 is pretty hit with this for either being solid since it closes out Roxy's subplot or terrible since it feels rushed.
  • The second movie, Magical Adventure, is pretty divisive. People either enjoyed the movie since it explores more depth in the characters, others rather ignore it due to the Continuity Snarls made.
  • Which dub is preferable? 4kids? Cinélume? Atlas Oceanic? DuArt? Dubbing Brothers?
• Complete Monster:
  • The Ancestral Witches, real names Belladonna, Liliss, and Tharma, are the first witches in existence and some of the first evil beings in the Magical Dimension. Under the orders of their master Lord Darkar, the Witches launched an attack across the Magical Dimension which reduced heroine Bloom's home planet Domino to a frozen wasteland, with its petrified inhabitants dragged into the Obsidian Dimension where the Witches torture them. The Witches are also responsible for wiping out the city of Havram to force its king, Erendor, to avoid conflict with them and condemned the souls of the deceased to constantly wander the ruins. The Witches attempt to capture the reincarnation of the Flame Dragon, Bloom, who was just a baby, forcing her elder sister to sacrifice her life to save her. The Witches are also terrible parents, viewing their son Valtor as useless and eventually transforming him into a mindless monster to use as a tool to destroy the Magical Dimension. Ultimately, the Witches plan to wipe out positive magic to rule supreme.
  • Season 2: Lord Darkar himself, the Shadow Phoenix, is the Greater-Scope Villain of the series. Born from the void as the Flame Dragon's opposite, Darkar launched an attack on the Magical Dimension with the goal of destroying it, including ordering the the Ancestral Witches to attack and devastate Domino. Defeated and sealed, Darkar plots to steal the Relix Codex to gain ultimate power. He captures Pixies to learn the location of the Codex, torturing them and their friend Aisha by draining their magical powers. After learning that the Codex has been split into four pieces, he frees Trix from their imprisonment to serve him and captures and tortures Altea's new professor Avalon for months while placing his spy in his place. Darkar successfully obtains all the pieces of the Codex and brainwashes Bloom into being his minion while banishing Trix to the void since he doesn't need them anymore. When her friends come to rescue her and stop Darkar, he almost kills them all before condemning Bloom to die with her friends after she breaks free of his control.
• Crossover Ship: Stella is shipped heavily with Ben Tennyson from Ben 10 and has seemingly been popular for years. Don't believe it?

D-H

• Designated Hero:
  • Bloom is basically treated like she can do no wrong, and becomes somewhat of a brat in season five, essentially getting upset every time something does not go her way. For instance, she solely blamed Diaspro for ruining her relationship with Sky, despite the fact that 1) Diaspro had no idea who she was 2) Bloom randomly decided she was one of the Trix in disguise and attacked her and 3) Sky was essentially cheating on Diaspro with Bloom, meaning he deceived two people, not just one. Sky is also never held accountable for it. What really sells it, however, is that Sky's father clearly seems to see Bloom as someone rushing headlong into a situation she doesn't understand and upsetting things for specious and self-serving reasons. He's thus cast as a nattering nabob of negativity for letting someone charge around the whole situation like a bull in a china shop.
  • Some think Riven is a massive Jerkass whose relationship with Musa would be abusive in real life, and hate how we are supposed to cheer for him when he keeps getting back together with her.
  • Griffin spent the first season encouraging the Trix's bullying and harassment of Alfea's fairies, only expelling them because their failures kept embarrassing her. Later seasons would try to put her in a more heroic light but she's never called out for being the one who enabled the Trix's evil habits in the first place.
• Designated Villain:
  • The witches of Cloudtower are considered evil and malicious by most of the fairies, but they're more on the level of the average "mean schoolgirl" and some of them even seem to be rather good-hearted.
  • Diaspro. Bloom blamed her solely for ruining her relationship with Sky, despite the whole thing being Sky's fault for not telling Bloom about Diaspro (or about his real identity for that matter).
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Aisha/Nabu and Musa/Riven fans are the most resistant when it comes to accepting other pairings. Roy, Nex, Darcy, and Orlando are common threats. Nex is especially hated since he's now Aisha's new boyfriend. Fanfic writers have found a lot of creative ways to write him out of her life.
  • The same can be said for Bloom (who tends to get bashed by most Sky/Diaspro shippers) and to Krystal, who too gets flacked on a lot by Helia/Flora shippers.
  • Bloom/Stella or Bloom/Icy shippers tend to dislike Sky.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Riven isn't actually a villain, excluding season 1, but he's become such a Jerkass over the series that people were glad he appeared to be written off in season 6 — only for him to come back in season 8. His fans tend to gloss over his many flaws.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Mirta for being The Woobie and adorable and cute Perky Goth.
  • Lucy gets a lot as well for defying the usual cookie-cutter face/body molds as all the other girls.
  • Dark Bloom is incredibly popular, with far more fan art than her good personality.
  • Though all three of the Trix sisters are very popular, Darcy has the strongest fan base for her dynamic personality and appealing design.
• Fandom Rivalry: With W.I.T.C.H., another Italian Magical Girl series starring a Five-Man Band that uses Elemental Powers and debuted in the same year. Though it's not universal among fans, as there are some degree of Friendly Fandoms, it is official in the sense that the Walt Disney Company actually filed a lawsuit (and lost it) against the creator of Winx back in 2004. There used to be an entire meme about this rivalry (see Memetic Mutation below).
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Fans have latched onto two non-canon pairing above all others, Bloom/Icy and Bloom/Valtor. The art and fics for these two outnumber Bloom/Sky exponentially.
  • A non-romantic example, but several fics have Zing be Roxy's bonded Pixie.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Many fans don't consider Magical Adventure canon, not necessarily because they think the movie is bad, but because there are so many Continuity Snarls that many argue it makes more sense for the Winx to be in Enchantix rather than Believix. Then again, despite killing off the Ancestral Witches, which is something that could have easily been done in Secret of the Lost Kingdom, the film adds nothing to the series or tells us anything new.
  • As far as many fans are concerned, Winx Club only had four seasons and two movies. The third movie is derided for claims of it not having much plot and for having a boring villain Politea who didn't add much to the story, and the later seasons are practically reviled due to the retconning of certain characters' backstories, the plot holes that ensued, and the flanderization of several characters. A good example would be Season 5, due to Seasonal Rot and the heavily disliked decision to revive Daphne, as well as retconning her backstory so that she was cursed instead of killed.
  • The most infamous example is season 8. Many fans have chosen to ignore it due it bringing back a popular villain, Valtor, who had been killed at the end of a previous season, and also for giving a Freudian Excuse backstory to Icy. Not only does it retcon the fact that the Trix are sisters, something that Word of God and the show itself has said for years, but the fact that it's a retcon is also blatantly obvious due to everything from the previous seasons contradicting it. And due to how unabashedly evil Icy and the Trix have had been since the beginning, Icy certainly has not earned any sympathy from the fans. They also made Musa and Riven get back together.
  • Many fans like to pretend that Nabu's death from the 24th episode of season 4 never happened and like to think he is still around the series, whether it be from fanarts or fanfics.
  • There's also several fans that like to pretend anything after season 6 didn't exist since it was the last season dubbed by Atlas Oceanic before DuArt took over.
  • Most Musa/Riven shippers like to think their breakup in season 6 never happened. On the flip side, those who didn't like Musa/Riven as a couple like to pretend the breakup stuck and that they didn't get back together in season 8.
  • Many Nabu fans like to ignore seasons 5 and beyond, which features Aisha getting new boyfriends, in the form of Roy and Nex.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Darcy and Musa in season 1, because they both like Riven (albeit for different reasons).
• Franchise Original Sin: The overwhelming focus on Bloom was one of the show's biggest criticism from Season 5 onward. However, the disproportionate focus on Bloom, which is ridiculous even for a main character, has been there since the beginning of the show due to her having the Dragon Flame and the Myth Arc of her biological parents being unresolved until the last (supposed) moment.^note  Season 1 revolves around the Trix obtaining her Dragon Flame. Season 2 has Bloom being used as the Light counterpart for the Big Bad to obtain the power of Relix. Season 3 has Valtor reveal personal ties with her missing biological parents and homeworld. Season 4 has her be mistaken for the last fairy on Earth. What made this slide to most viewers was that at that time, the other Winx members had their own concurrent subplots to let them shine on their own. However, Season 5 and beyond proceed to demote anyone that isn't Bloom to window dressing while constantly pushing her in the right, making her focus practically impossible to ignore. ^note Season 5 had her revive Daphne, who was (mostly) alright with being dead while Season 6 has a transformation created and named after her.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • There's been overlap with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom, especially during 2012-14 when both franchises had just been relaunched by Nickelodeon. Nick's promo events from that time usually revealed new content for both shows, and many fan blogs helped each other out by posting all of the new info about both Winx and TMNT.
  • There are many fans of Miraculous Ladybug and Totally Spies! who tend to get along with Winx fans.
  • Despite the Fandom Rivalry mentioned above, there are a cross-section of fans of both Winx and W.I.T.C.H. that have no problem crossing over the two franchises in fan works (especially fan art,) helped by the fact the main characters have counterparts with each other that have similar powers or personalities, whether shipping is involved or not.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • In Japan, the show has a small but very devoted cult following despite not even airing there. Its spin-off World of Winx eventually received a Japanese dub.
  • And believe it or not, it's very popular in Vietnam as well. All eight seasons received Vietnamese dub and merchandise for the show were advertised on cable TV.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: Even though the girls get more focus, Iginio Straffi has said that the Specialists and action scenes were made for male viewers.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "Hallowinx" in season 2 had Mitzi and her friends make the Winx believe three sisters inside the house she rented were coming back as ghosts to avenge their dead fourth little sister and cause mayhem upon the house. While it's revealed it was all just a prank, the girls ponder if the "three sisters" weren't the Trix. Come season 8, it's changed that the Trix aren't really sisters, but Icy does have a little sister who was attacked by an evil witch, leaving her bitter and in despair.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In the movie Winx Club 3D adventure where Sky proposes to Bloom, becomes even more heartwarming when their original English voice actors Christopher Corey Smith and Cindy Robinson got married in 2022.
• He's Just Hiding: Since Morgana promised to look after Nabu until he "wakes up", some believed to think that he might not be dead after all. But he was Killed Off for Real.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Fandom Rivalry with W.I.T.C.H. would become relevant when Fate: The Winx Saga, this franchise's live action adaptation, received complaints of resembling more W.I.T.C.H. than Winx Club.
• Ho Yay: There is an episode where Palladium takes Avalon to the forest, carries him back to Alfea when he is hurt by a plant and starts blushing when he thanks him.

I-R

• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Some ship names allude to the characters' respective magic affinities. Bloom x Flora is called FireFlower (i.e., they are the fairies of the Dragon's Flame and Nature) and Bloom x Stella is SunFire (i.e., the latter is the fairy of the Sun, Moon, and Stars). The quasi-paedophilic shipping Bloom x Valtor (she's barely 18 and he's at the very least middle-aged when they meet) is called Sparksshipping because both of them are bearers of the Dragon's Flame—although just a Spark in his case—which originates in planet Sparks (aka Domino).
• It Was His Sled:
  • Bloom is the long-lost princess of a distant planet.
  • Nabu dies.
  • Due to fan reaction, the fact that Musa and Riven broke up became common knowledge overnight — although it didn't last, and they got back together again.
• Jerkass Woobie: Diaspro. Can you really blame her for her Face–Heel Turn given the circumstances? The poor girl got treated like shit by Bloom and Sky.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Diaspro put Sky though a love spell and attempted to kill Bloom in season six, Darkar brainwashed Bloom and made her his minion, and the Trix have repeatedly attempted to take over Alfea and steal the Winx's powers. None of these characters are hated compared to Mitzi, a recurring character from the earlier seasons. Between her self-imposed sense of overall superiority, her attempting to ruin Stella and Brandon's relationship just to have Brandon to herself, her siding with the Wizards of the Black Circle because she didn't like the attention the Winx were getting, keeping the Lilo away from the Winx, and being a generally abusive sister to Macy.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Riven is the most pair-able character in the whole show.
  • Bloom has been shipped with almost every character in the show, both good and evil.
• Les Yay:
  • Moreso in the comics than the cartoon, as shown in an issue where Stella looking pretty happy when tickling Bloom and trying to prove she's not fat.
  • Musa and Aisha in Season 2. The two girls form a bond thanks to their common interest in the music. Add that Aisha, before Season 3 and meeting Nabu, did not seem interested in boys.
  • Bloom comforting Flora in her room involves her taking about how beautiful and amazing she is, and how lucky Helia is to have her. Friendship pep talk, or poorly disguised pining?
• LGBT Fanbase: This show has a decent sized fanbase of gay males who gush over the Specialists. Also the amazing fashions probably help as well.
• Like You Would Really Do It: This was the majority of fans' reasoning after Riven and Musa broke up in season 6. Many felt that they would make up near the end of the season or in the next one. It actually happened in the season after the next one, a timespan of around four years in real life, which was just long enough for fans to start thinking the break-up would stick.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • You're either a Winx or a W.I.T.C.H^note A meme, which used to be popular in Tumblr, about the Fandom Rivalry between Winx Club and similar series W.I.T.C.H.
  • Back in the heyday of both Winx and Code Lyoko in Europe, there was a popular joke that the two series were secretly connected and the Specialists were actually older versions of the male Lyoko Warriors, as the two teams happen to physically resemble each other a lot (Brandon - Ulrich, Timmy - Jeremie, Helia - William, and Sky - Odd, with additional jokes that Odd had decomposed himself in Sky and Riven becaue he combines the hair colors of both and the hairdo of the latter).
• Mis-blamed:
  • Fans have mistakenly blamed Nickelodeon for the show's shift to a preschooler demographic and childish plotlines. Series creator Iginio Straffi has clearly stated the reasons why he personally changed the show's target to young children, in interviews like this 2019 one:
    Straffi: “In the last ten years, the animation audience has skewed younger. Nowadays, it's very difficult to get a 10-year-old to watch cartoons... When your [new] target is 4-to-8, your story cannot have the same level of complexity as the beginning seasons of Winx, where we had a lot of layers of different stories... The fans of the previous Winx Club say on social media that the new seasons are childish, but they don't know that we had to do that.”
  • Fans also blame Nickelodeon for making the show "less European," ignoring how much Straffi values the American team's involvement in Winx (and other Rainbow shows). In April 2019, Straffi talked highly about his near-decade of work with Nickelodeon, saying "Nickelodeon is a guarantee of success." Elaborating a little further, he said here:
    Straffi: “...the know-how of Rainbow and the know-how of Nickelodeon are very complementary; the sensibilities of the Americans, with our European touch.“
• Moe: Flora, for being shy and having low self-esteem.
  • Mirta as well, due to her sweetness and shyness basically making her into a witch version of Flora.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Not only does Ogron ultimately cause Nabu's death, he also steals the power that could revive him and wastes it, gloating to the poor Aisha. No wonder she decides to join Nebula, still bent for revenge.
  • Tritannus initially crossed it when he tried to murder his own brother out of jealousy, and it got worse from there.
  • Stormy crosses this when she nearly kills Flora's kid sister right in front of her.
  • Icy proves that she's completely beyond redemption when she attempts to murder Oritel and Marion after using them as leverage against Daphne just for her own amusement.
  • Selina crosses it when she almost tricks Bloom into giving Flora a lethal poison by saying it was an antidote. She really had no reason to do that other than to be a complete sadistic bitch.
• Narm: An infamous (and hilarious) bit of Bowdlerisation in the Nick recap of season 4 — since the series had been changed so the Winx never grew up and graduated, Nabu asking Aisha to marry him was changed to Nabu asking Aisha to "be my Forever Girlfriend," — which was every bit as ridiculous as it sounds.
• Narm Charm: Tecna's angry rant at Stella about being emotionless (two episodes after the one where she'd been temporarily turned into a robot) came straight out of nowhere, was melodramatic to Anakin levels, ended up being ironic due to her actress' performance... and it was funny as hell.
• Periphery Fandom: Boys liked Winx Club too.
• Questionable Casting: Many people thought Ariana Grande did a poor job voicing Diaspro, as Grande was criticized as being too soft spoken for the character and having a bad case of Dull Surprise. Partially due to the criticism, Grande was replaced in season 6.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Roy is one of Nabu. Thankfully, Aisha doesn't hook up with him, and he disappears after she ends up with Nex.
  • The selkies seem are this for the pixies, being essentially rehashes without anything that made the pixies likable. Thankfully it seems Rainbow realized how unpopular they were, as they don't return after season 5.
• Retroactive Recognition: Alejandra Reynoso, the Atlas Oceanic voice of Flora, is better known these days as Sypha Belnades.
• Romantic Plot Tumor:
  • Season 4 has actually two: Musa and Riven fighting and breaking up again, and the Brandon-Stella-Mitzi Love Triangle.
  • Bloom and Sky were this since the start. Especially with the Bloom/Sky/Diaspro love triangle.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Because of her extreme amount of focus and the fact she seems to be unable to do no wrong in the show, a lot of fans started holding a grudge against Bloom, going even as far as villanizing her in fan-content. The existence of dark Bloom doesn't really help her case.
  • Although being an occasional jerk, Riven's alignment is officially good after season 1. However the guy still gets treated as villain by some fans. Likewise, Musa is treated like this by Riven's fangirls.
  • Roy and Nex were disliked by many people, to the point there were serious theories they were evil and would be unmasked as the real villains of the story. Even when there was no indication of their bad nature, they, especially Nex, would be written out or portrayed as evil in fan-content.

S-W

• The Scrappy:
  • The villain for Season 5, Tritannus, became this almost immediately due to being probably the most pathetic antagonist in the entire show. He's considered one of the absolute worst things of Season 5. Valtor and Darkar had problems, but they still had their fans. Tritannus has very few fans.
  • Roy, from Season 5, is hated due to being a complete Flat Character and a Replacement Scrappy to Nabu. The fan base rejoiced when he was Put on a Bus after Aisha's Love Triangle ended.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Generally agreed to have started around season 5, which is also when the show was revived by American company Viacom and retooled to appeal to younger audiences. Low points include the retconning of important continuity points — such as changing Daphne so she was never actually dead — characters losing whatever development they had, and the girls being treated like they're still 16 year old high school students, with anything set up to the contrary — the graduation, Bloom's engagement — being quietly ignored and forgotten. Seasons 5 and 6 also marked the use of unnecessary, jarring, and downright ugly shifts to computer graphics (sure, the movies weren't ever Pixar quality, but it least didn't look disturbing). The Trix also get complaints about being overused, especially seeing as how they inexplicably come back from being sealed away for all eternity twice over.
  • Season 5 in particular gets this for having an utterly pathetic villain, Tritannus — essentially a petulant child having an prolonged temper tantrum, yet being built up as a threat to the entire magical universe.
  • Season 6 also gets flack due to how the season's reliance on nostalgia bait due to it being released during the series' 10th anniversary, bringing back the Pixies only to replace two of them (Tune and Digit) with entirely different characters for seemingly no reason. Selina and Acheron were also seen as lackluster villains with the latter getting defeated in the same episode he is released in, and the former for having a shallow connection to Bloom. Season 6 also introduced Bloomix and Mythix, the latter of which is disliked due to the CGI outfits, and the former for its earnings almost all relying on ass pulls (Such as Stella and Aisha getting their Bloomix's by doing backflips of all things).
  • Season 7 introduced the widely disliked Butterflix transformation, featuring very generic outfits and an annoying dance number that goes for way too long. While season 8 is officially where the series becomes a preschool series, many fans feel it actually starts this season.
  • And as for season 8; the sudden change in animation style makes the characters look about 12, the increased focus on the preschool crowd means the plots are even simpler, and the return of Valtor, despite his fan-favorite status, is derided as an Ass Pull since he died in his last appearance. And then there's the retcon of the Trix's backstory, particularly Icy's. The entire season is yet another Soft Reboot to appeal to an even younger demographic.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Darcy/Riven vs Musa/Riven rivalries were once very heated during season 1's first airing.
• Signature Scene: Flora blowing some magic powder. The scene was used in every merchandise commercial up to season 3, often with whatever the commercial was for edited on Flora's hands, giving the impression she's magically delivering it to some little girl.
• Sliding Scale of Social Satisfaction: Classifying Magix is tricky because of the continuous soft reboots.
  • From seasons 1 to 4, it's a solid "Sweet with a Helping of Sour". Lingering problems such as political betrothals, poverty, and civil wars are mostly only alluded to as the conflicts stem from power-hungry individuals, but they exist nonetheless. Magix is mostly a very good place to live in — magic and technology fuse to make things such as interplanetary travel or repairing buildings extremely easy. Earth, meanwhile, it's the "True Neutral" it is in real life, therefore giving the impression that magic does make things better, albeit not perfect.
  • From season 5 onward, the aforementioned lingering problems are not even mentioned anymore. Villains (the Trix and Tritannus) can still be veritable menaces but society is essentially a Sugar Bowl at this point. This is lampshaded with the art style shift in season 8 and the fact most of the clashes against the villains are solved without involving violence.
• So Okay, It's Average: Season 4 tends to get this reaction. The Wizards of the Black Circle are beloved villains, and Roxy, though initially a very divisive character, has been somewhat Vindicated by History. However, the magic on earth subplot doesn't really go anywhere and the finale is a rushed Anti-Climax. Even those who like the season agree it's not as good as the first three seasons, though everyone agrees that it's better than the seasons that came after it.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The song "Love Is All Around" from "The Alfea Natural Park" has a backing rhythm that sounds almost the same as Katy Perry's "Roar".
• Theme Pairing:
  • If all the Homoerotic Subtext wasn't enough, Musa/Aisha is one of the most popular pairings. They are both passionate, Broken Birds (the former's mother died and the latter's childhood was loveless) who have to rebel against their parent(s) so they can achieve their dreams (pursuing a musical career and breaking out of the perfect princess ideal). They are also tomboys with a girly streak in the form of loving dancing, liking cute critters, and being sensitive inside. Coincidentally, they both maintain a Vitriolic Best Buds friendship with Stella, as they clash the most against her.
  • Sixth Ranger Roxy and Dragon with an Agenda Selina are paired both platonically and romantically because they are the Tag Along Kids of their respective teams, come from Gardenia (Earth), and have very similar magic sources — Roxy is the fairy of animals while Selina is the witch of snakes.
  • Bloom's name alludes to a flower blossoming and her Enchantix transformation reflects that; also her mother owns a flower shop. Flora is the fairy of nature and her bedroom is always a miniature greenhouse brimming with plants (and flowers) of all kinds. Add that they've been roommates since the series began and it's very easy to see why FireFlower was born.
  • Most winxers have gotten very tired of Sour Supporter Riven's toxicity, immaturity, and Ungrateful Bastard tendencies. As a result, a good chunk of the fandom decided to ship Riven's Betty and Veronica canonical Love Interests: Musa and Darcy. It doesn't help that they are arch-enemies and, aesthetically, their spells often take the form of fluorescent ripples.
  • A platonic example occurs with Daphne and Sylvanas Windrunner from World of Warcraft. As it turns out, they are Mirror Characters in just about everything — powerful warriors who get brutally murdered by The Dragons of invading, Zerg Rushing evil forces led by a Satanic Archetype. Then, they are cursed watching the ruins of their loved home planet/country for years as bodiless spirits. Fanfic Paradoxus makes this a key Plot Point.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Fits some of the fans' responses to the series from season 5 onwards (when the show was specifically targeting younger viewers, so it's no surprise). The addition of CGI segments in seasons 5 and 6 was met with a particularly poor reception from fans.
  • The Art Shift for Season 8, along with an even more pronounced shift to a younger demographic, has been contentious with fans for a variety of reasons. Many fans hate the apparent whitewashing, with Aisha and Flora now being Ambiguously Brown (which was a criticism that was also directed at World of Winx), and the fact that the characters look more like children than ever in the new art style.
  • The return of Enchantix, the most popular transformation, in Season 8 was widely anticipated. Fans, however, immensely disliked the redesign, with the simplified details, more pink being added and less revealing outfits resulting in what was considered an inferior Transformation Sequence compared to its predecessors. A common complaint is that the transformation has lost the elegance it originally had, making it resemble Butterflix more than Enchantix. The iconic Enchantix theme being replaced with the less well-liked movie version just made the fan reception even worse.
  • Many fans flew into a rage when the Trix were retconned into not being sisters (in spite of being confirmed to be triplets years ago by the creator and the show canonically having them as actual sisters) and that Icy was a princess of a frozen world with a younger sister, as it brought about many continuity errors and plot holes. Many loathe it not only because it's recycling Bloom's backstory, but also because it distorted Icy's character, trying to change her from a villain who liked being evil to a Woobie who only wants to save her home - even though many of her actions and motivations since the beginning of Season 1 do not align whatsoever with what Season 8 is trying to establish her goals to be. Some fans are trying to find ways to prove that it's not a blatant retcon, twisting canon and using dubbing errors to match their theories, in spite of the fact that the creator of the show actually had the story all planned out and was going to end the series after Season 3 (with the first movie being the "grand finale" of the series), making the fact that this is a retcon even more obvious. The arguments are not pretty.
  • Fans were not happy when early reports came out that Tecna and Aisha would be cut from the Live-Action Adaptation. This was made worse with the initial cast announcement, as it revealed that it was Tecna and Flora that were being cut, with Flora seemingly being replaced with a white girl named Terra.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!:
  • Many reviews criticize the unoriginal plot, usually comparing it to Harry Potter or Sailor Moon or both of them, with the series being often described as "Sailor Moon meets Harry Potter", or "Salor Moon with some Harry Potter elements". It doesn't help that Iginio Straffi himself said that he took inspiration from Sailor Moon, including the Transformation Sequence scenes.
  • The series was initially accused of being a rip-off of W.I.T.C.H., and it still is to an extent, for people who remember both shows/comics. It's easy to see why, since it debuted the same year, has a redheaded protagonist who is The Leader of a Magical Girl team, and even has a similar-sounding title (with no in-universe explanation of the meaning of the word "Winx") though the plots and the art style are quite different.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Roxy, the Fairy of Animals. She's pretty much the reason Season 4 exists, yet by the time Season 5 rolls around, she was Demoted to Extra. Season 7, which focuses on enchanted animals, gave her a bigger role at first, but she was demoted to Mission Control after Brafilius stole her Time Stone.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Some people thought that Mitzi becoming a dark fairy could have been much better and ended too quickly.
  • Season 3 revolves around the girls having to make a sacrifice for someone from their planet, which initially became a problem for Bloom, since she was the sole survivor of Domino. While there were a lot of ideas the show could have went with (reveal there were other survivors from Domino, save Daphne, save somebody from Earth and learn her adoptive home is just as important, make a sacrifice for the dimensions like Tecna, which would allow Domino a chance to be saved), it instead went with her earning her Enchantix by believing in herself hard enough. It is noted that the very next episode addresses this by revealing that her Enchantix was incomplete as a result, an issue that won't be rectified until Secret of the Lost Kingdom.
  • Likewise, the premise promised we'd get to see each of the girls' planets, but we still had to wait until Season 5 to see Zenith.
  • By the end of Season 4, the Winx Club had graduated from Alfea as young adults, Bloom had become engaged with Sky, and the club had started taking up mentorship roles with new younger fairies. Also, the Earth fairies had returned, bringing magic back to the realm with them. The following seasons, being a Soft Reboot, completely ignored everything in those last two sentences — the Winx suddenly started attending Alfea again with no explanation, characters like Tecna were reverted back to their pre-character development selves, Bloom's engagement subplot was dropped like a hot potato and new concepts and characters were either Demoted to Extra or gradually written out altogether. Needless to say, most are hoping there will be a new reboot in the future that will address seasons 5-8's issues and bring back the writing quality of seasons 1-4.
  • Riven's backstory, which was only revealed in supplemental material, revealed that he was abandoned by his mother at a young age and forced to spend most of his childhood alone, which is why he's so rude and sexist. If this had ever been addressed in the show, Riven could have tried to work out his issues and attempt to become a better person. Musa could even have helped him with his problems and the two could have grown closer as a result. Instead, Riven just became such a huge Jerkass until Musa broke up with him and he was Put on a Bus for a whole season — after which, of course, they got back together again.
  • Aisha has had several plots that could've been handled better - and differently.
    • First, the premise of her going blind in Season 3 could have been a great buildup for character development and Aisha having to learn how to deal with being handicapped, as it tied in perfectly with her character and what she stood for: a girl that would always rush in to help others now needing to learn to accept help herself (not to mention her two main character arcs were her distrusting nature and her fear of the dark, which went along nicely with being blind making her wrapped in eternal darkness and forced to rely on her friends). Instead, it gets fixed literally two episodes later with a Deus ex Machina.
    • Second, her staying single for a whole season (and presumably for the rest of the series) without having to gain any new love interests post-season 4 as well as the Love Triangle not existing would've helped her boost her Character Development more, considering the fact that she is known to dislike show off-y/bad-boy stereotypes.
    • Third, her fans felt that she should've been the one to take down Tritannus in the Season 5 finale instead of Bloom since she had so many stakes throughout the season. With the Big Bad being her cousin, imprisoning her family by turning them into aquatic abominations, and the final battle taking place in the oceans of Andros. Yet, Bloom is the one to finally defeat Tritannus, robbing poor Aisha of her glory.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: When we first meet Diaspro hanging out with Sky in season 1, we are supposed to sympathize with Bloom and see her as a villain trying to come between Bloom and Sky. However, while Diaspro is a bit of a snob, Bloom proceeds to attack her with very weak reasoning and without trying to understand the situation. We later find out Diaspro is Sky's fiancee, meaning he was cheating on both Bloom and Diaspro on top of lying to Bloom about his true identity. Diaspro had no idea who Bloom was or why she was being attacked and doesn't come off as much of a bad person at all with this context. Later seasons attempt to correct this by instead portraying Diaspro as a Rich Bitch and a Yandere, but the damage was already done.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Complaints about the Winx's outfits being too revealing (at least, for a show that targets young girls) come generally from the United States and other non-continental European countries, as the local standards for what is considered risqué clothing are, or at least used to be, quite lax in comparison. Tellingly, the few stylistic complaints the show received in Europe were directed instead at more universal things, like the girls being drawn unhealthily thin or the romance element being given too much weight.
  • There's a scene where a straight-haired Ambiguously Brown girl has her hair turned into an afro. She freaks out and the others are disgusted by her hair. In Italy such a scene might not have meant much, but it couldn't pass in a place like America with so many black people and a lot of history involving kinky hair. As a result, the 4Kids dub had the girl freak out over her ''voice'' changing, not her hair.
• Vindicated by History: Both fans and detractors of the 4Kids dub can agree that 4Kids treated the show well. Winx Club originally aired via over-the-air broadcast television on a major network. The worst treatment the FoxBox/4KidsTV block could give a show was having it air in the 7am EST slot, a time when the target audience might still be asleep.^note Adding to 4Kids' infamous reputation, they've saved the worst treatment, both in dub production and TV broadcast, to shows targeting girls. Even then, western markets air the block at a later time, while reruns got the same amount of promotion as new premieres.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The show has some pretty intense moments, such as Nabu's death scene, which children could find to be upsetting. Even with the show being retooled to appeal a preschool audience from Season 8 onward, it will still be prone to this.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Some feel that season 7, particularly the removal of uncanny CGI segments, is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the base was broken again by the end of it, and season 8's monumental shift in art and tone did not help.
  • Many of the Periphery Demographic were excited for World of Winx due to aiming for an older audience than the main series, with the characters looking and sounding more their age. The art style has been commended for using the already well received Winx Couture style as its base, and the animation has been lauded for being much more fluid than the show currently is.
• The Woobie:
  • Mirta in the first season. She is the only Nice Girl among the witches, so nobody respects her at the school and she is bullied by the Trix. Plus, for interfering with the Trix's business, she is punished by being transformed into a pumpkin for the second half of the season.
  • Musa. In ''The Show Must Go On'', her father threatens to transfer her to another school if she performs in a concert just because he can't move on from Musa's mother's death (Musa has moved on).
  • Roxy fit during the first few episodes of season four because she had no choice in whether to become a fairy or not. To sum it up, her choices were either become a fairy or be captured/killed.
  • Aisha is one too. In Season 2, her pixie friends were captured by Lord Darkar, and she at first had difficulty fitting into the Winx Club due to her lonely childhood. In Season 3, she was temporarily blinded by Valtor, and later was upset about her parents setting up an Arranged Marriage for her, until she actually met and got to know the guy, that is. In Season 4, Nabu died. And in Season 5, her cousin turned into a monster that is trying to take over the oceans, and she still hasn't gotten over Nabu's death, and a scene in episode 7 of Season 5 suggests that Aisha feels guilty about having been unable to save him. And also in season 5, she has to deal with the fact that her cousin is the villain this time and not just some random bad guy like in the past. And she recently learned that her aunt, uncle, and two cousins were turned into horrible monsters by Tritannus.
  • Stella was one temporarily. She tries to hide it, but her parents' divorce had a shattering impact on her and it's implied she feels she's partly to blame. Then, in Season 3, she had hopes of her parents reconciling, only to have her hopes crushed by her father revealing he intended to marry a new woman, who almost became Stella's Wicked Stepmother. Also, her vanity comes from being teased about her appearance as a child, which could mean she's very sensitive to how others perceive her.
  • Daphne. Good lord, Daphne! Watching her endure torture up until her parents are threatened and then having her powers viciously ripped from her is too much!
  • Miele gets a Woobie moment in season 7. Flora forbids her from joining the Winx on a mission because of the danger. For some reason, Flora is overly harsh about it, and it's plainly obvious Miele's hurt by what she says. Flora only said it out of concern, but the harshness was not necessary.
• Woolseyism:
  • Most dubs remove the giggling that plagues the Transformation Sequences in Italian.
  • The English versions have Bloom call both her adoptive and biological parents her "real" parents.
  • The 4Kids dub changed a scene where a dark-skinned girl is in tears because her hair was magically turned from straight to an afro. Instead, the girl accidentally cast a spell that made her voice higher pitched, and Stella's straight blonde hair wasn't fawned over as it was in the original.
  • A scene where a spell ends up killing a character (who then comes back to life) was changed to a sleeping spell that he was able to wake up from in the 4Kids dub. Not only does this help the scene make more sense, it also would remove some of the plot holes that come up later in the series.

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