“Fate: The Winx Saga” Season 2 brought more danger for the teenage fairies at The Alfea School of magic, as they faced one of the strongest villains they’ve come across – Sebastian.
(Spoiler alert: This story dives into plot details from Season 2 of Netflix’s “Fate: The Winx Saga.)
Bloom (Abigail Cowen), Terra (Eliot Salt), Stella (Hannah van der Westhuysen) and Aisha (Precious Mustapha) had to combine their power to defeat Sebastian, whose goal this season was to get Bloom’s dragon flame for himself. Bouncing off each other’s energy, the young women found themselves floating into the air surrounded by bubbles of magic of different colors as they worked together to take down the Season 2 baddie, who made their lives — and those of their school chums — hell.
“It was actually really exciting,” Mustapha told TheWrap of going up on wires to film the pivotal scene. “It was so fun, but also kind of uncomfortable, but I rode it out like a champ. Yeah, it was really, really fun.”
Below, the stars of the series breakdown that scene and some of the biggest character moments of the season.
On defeating Sebastian by combining their powers
Mustapha said: “I think it was an amalgamation of using the convergence crystal … as well as Dowling also telling the girls — well, almost giving them permission to transform. Being like, ‘The transformation is from within.’ And it’s like, you need to use all your emotions, [your] strongest emotions to connect to be able to transform. And so, I think when we were filming that scene, we all individually had our own character arcs and emotions to pull from.
“So for me, I was pulling from the fact that Grey’s pretty much betrayed [Aisha],” she continued. “So she’s heartbroken. So she’s using that emotion to transform. And yeah, I think for Stella I guess it was seeing Beatrix [who Sebastian had killed]. So everyone had their emotions to pull from.”
On how Beatrix’s death impacts Stella
“I think it’s just a devastating friendship breakup in the first place,” van der Westhuysen told TheWrap. “The fact that she sort of finally [was] vulnerable with someone and also, they’re both so damaged and so untrusting. … It feels like they’re both fighting for survival in very different ways. So, when they sort of reached this resolution of trying to show up for each other properly and doing the thing and committing, I think it’s really beautiful to experience that — not necessarily in a romantic contact — in a friendship way that you can still give that level of commitment. [And] for it to then end with the death of Beatrix is so earth shattering. I imagine it just pulls everything into focus for Stella and I think that’s a really exciting jumping off point for her for next season.”
On Bloom choosing to go to the Realm of Darkness to seal the entrance, while simultaneously locking herself in (where her mother just might be)
“I think that there’s a lot of elements to that,” Cowen said of her character’s decision. “I think her main reason is that she is so terrified of harming anyone that is close to her. And I think there’s an interesting thing there. … I guess – it looks like she’s being a jerk leaving letters and not saying goodbye, but she knows that if she didn’t, they would stop her. And they wouldn’t understand what she’s doing and what she’s doing is actually trying to protect them. And I think that’s a big part of it.
“Also, I think she’s, in a way, kind of punishing herself and being like, you know, ‘I don’t need to be in this world anymore, where everyone else is doing OK, or everyone else is figuring it out, and I’m just being a burden on everyone.’ And I think that she’s kind of doing that which is not a smart decision. … But, I think that that also plays into it. And then she has this intuition of, ‘I need to go here.’ She’s been having these visions; she’s just feeling this pull towards it. And that plays into it as well. So it’s quite complicated.”
On Flora looking in the mirror at her scraper scars in her final Season 2 moment
“I truly believe she’s a person that shoves everything down,” Paulina Chávez, who plays Flora, said. “No matter what she’s feeling like, she’s not going to let anybody in. She’s not going to let anybody know. She has a wall up, even though she’s very open to fall in love, to have fun, she will not let her emotions really see the light of day. And so I think that’s one of her breaking points. Some people hold everything in until they finally explode, and maybe that was her way of, ‘Oh man. I need to figure this out.’”
On Musa losing her powers during the season and choosing to restrict them at the end
“I think it’s both really helpful for her to have this tough love with Riven who brings her into the fighting and because she isn’t able to help the girls in the suite,” Elisha Applebaum, who plays Musa, said. “So I think she feels bit hopeless and doesn’t really know what to do. She’s having an identity crisis. But, I worry for her now, because I’m like, you’ve restricted what you really are. So I’m hoping that, you know, more comes next season and if there is one … where she can find happiness in her magic, because that’s who she really is. You know, she’s kind of putting a facade on at the moment.”
On Terra coming out
After confessing to her cousin Flora about a years-ago awkward kiss with Riven, Terra finally put her feelings into words, and opened up about how she had realized she is attracted to girls. Flora was honored her cousin shared the moment with her. And later, Terra got to tell her suitemate friends, who gave her a loving embrace.
“It was so special to do, I was so excited about it,” Salt told TheWrap. “It’s such a huge honor to get to do that kind of storyline, especially one with so much queer joy in it, and one that I would so have loved to have seen when I was growing up. So, I was really excited to do it. And I didn’t expect actually to have the emotional response that I did. I found it yeah, very, very emotional to do. And I’m not usually much of an emotional recall actor, but it really — it really hit me, but I think it made it even more special to do, actually. Felt very personal.”
Van der Westhuysen, who plays princess Stella, was glad to be a part of Terra’s moment.
“I think also for me, like in a very similar vein, it just felt like a story I would have loved to see when I was growing up; it felt so much bigger than us,” she said. “And also, just the ability to set aside everything and come and hold and support space for this queer coming out. And this like authentic acceptance of who Terra is, for me, was so emotional on so many levels.”
Salt added: “There’s a bit towards the end that they kept in where I go to the curtains and I look back and we have a look, and I’m so moved that they put that in because it was very touching.”