Why Does Everyone Hate Witches in Winx Club?

Intro:

Witches just can’t seem to catch a break. For whatever reason, no matter how many times witches fight alongside fairies and specialists to save the Magic Dimension, nor how many times prolific witches like Cloudtower’s Headmistress Griffin battle alongside her fellow Company of Light members Faragonda and Saladin against the forces of evil, it’s just assumed witches are evil because… witches are evil, that’s it.

But why is that? Why do we, or rather, the show itself, assume this of witches automatically no matter how often they prove themselves? Why are witches met with such scrutiny and skepticism, and seen as inferior to fairies? And is this part of a long trend of our need to persecute women who accrue power of their own and refuse to bow to conventional social structures? You know the answer, girliepops, it’s yes, and it’s time to talk about it.

Now without further ado, this is why everyone hates witches, and why everyone is an idiot for doing so.

Witches in the Magical Universe:

The Magical Universe is home to many different magical creatures: wizards, elves, mermaids, leprechauns, and… well, what I assume to be humans with some kinda magic in them, despite never using it? In any case, the lines between what is innate and what is learned are a bit fuzzy with certain classical fantasy creatures, especially for fairies and witches, the two most prominent guardians of the Magical Universe.

Magix, the capital and heart of the Magical Universe, is home to three magic colleges: Alfea College for Fairies; Cloudtower College for Witches; and Redfountain College for Specialists. Students at each school hone their skills in order to become defenders of the Magical Universe, with the fairies obviously receiving most attention given the Winx are all fairies. And given the schools are each headed by former members of the Company of Light, there is meant to be an eternal alliance between the three colleges should a crisis arise… emphasis on “meant to be.”

Throughout the first season, there’s a strong rivalry between fairies and witches. They’re quite similar in the fact each fairy and witch has a unique source of power. For example, you have Stella as the Fairy of the Sun and Moon, and Stormy as the Witch of… well, Storms. The main difference seems to be how they draw upon their magic. We don’t learn more about this until season 2, but fairies draw upon light and positive emotions, whereas witches feed on darkness and negative emotions.

While the Winx study as exchange students at Cloudtower, Griffin leads them in an exercise where they have to channel negative memories and dark emotions—the more intense, the stronger the magic gathered. Griffin and the witches also scoff when Flora suggests that the students study in pairs or groups. For witches, teamwork isn’t the standard, as witches are taught to be fierce and independent. This is at odds with Griffin working with Faragonda and Saladin, and even the formation of covens like the Ancestral Witches or the Trix, but perhaps it’s one of those things that weren’t thought through given… well, the show isn’t really interested in the details of witchcraft. But we’ll get there later.

During season 1, witches are primarily antagonistic. While the fairies aspire to date the jock archetypes that are the specialists, they’re told never to set foot on Cloudtower’s campus, lest they face the wrath of the witches. Griffin also encourages her students to antagonize the Alfea fairies time and time again, both for their school dances, and for their own personal lives. It’s honestly so bizarre seeing just how antagonistic Griffin was early on, when it’s so polarized with how she is at the end of season 1, along with seasons 2 and 3. It’s giving, “We needed someone to egg the Trix on to do their antagonist things, but we didn’t think through whether this was consistent with how we wanted Griffin’s character to be the whole time.”

Still, the witch students themselves could be argued as being more antagonistic under the influence of the Trix. Especially in the 4Kids dub as senior witches with lots of social capital and influence, the Trix could sway their classmates  into harassing the fairies of Alfea in force, especially the Winx. That’s kinda how it goes when the witches chase Musa through Magix City.

In general, nobody likes witches. When Sky - I mean, “Brandon” - learns that Bloom might be a witch, he basically abandons her and then stops talking to her for several episodes, so… yeah, Sky is trash. The trauma of the person I’m romantically interested in as she learns she might not be who she thought she was? Yeah, don’t care, I’m just gonna throw her away because she might be an icky witch.

But when the Trix acquire the Dragon Flame and take over Cloudtower, they battle Griffin and imprison her and all the witch students. The witches don’t join the Trix’s conquest. Instead, they rally with the fairies and specialists when they’re freed by Bloom and Stella’s group, helping to defend Alfea and defeat the Trix and their Army of Decay (yes, I still call it that, because it’s a superior name).

From then on, the relationship between fairies and witches is a bit more… amicable, or at the very least civil. The Winx still aren’t fond of witches, especially when Faragonda sends them to Cloudtower to learn about dark magic and defend their part of the Codex. Nor are they exactly forced to unpack their prejudices. Instead, they kinda just… take over protecting the Codex, and failing, with the witches mostly taking a backseat. I love season 2, but it’s such a missed opportunity.

Then you have season 3, where witches are again victims, this time of Valtor. Some witches see a deer being chased by wolves, inviting it into the castle to protect it (We’re gonna ignore the 4Kids dub trying to lure the deer to turn it into potions cuz that’s a yikes). Turns out, the deer was Valtor in disguise, using this to enter Cloudtower as an invited guest so he could take it over. He tells the witches, “Next time you see a fawn, be a wolf.” So this is showing witches can be capable of kindness and goodness, right? Season 3 continues with the witches being victims as they’re brainwashed into serving Valtor, unwillingly laying siege to Alfea and attacking the Winx when they arrive.

With this treatment, you’d assume maybe we’d delve into the fact witches aren’t inherently evil, or even debate what good and evil even mean. But instead, witches are continually pushed to the sidelines, and only invoked when we need conflict. It gets worse in later seasons, considering the fact they’re not even present at all for seasons 4, 5,  or 7, and they only appear in one episode of season 8. And when they’re brought back in season 6, it’s cuz the Trix, once again, conquer Cloudtower and use it as their base to attack all the other magic colleges.

And somehow, the witches in this case are more than willing to work under the Trix, despite all the Trix have done to them and their school. It’s so bizarre and exhausting, the way season 6 just fully gives up on trying to humanize witches, giving completely into the idea of witches being inherently evil. Headmistress Griffin is against them, of course, but she’s reduced to a supporting character who does nothing to take back her school from the Trix. It’s as if her goodness as a witch is just… ignored completely, which is so baffling.

And going back to the differences between fairies and witches not being inherent, we learn that in actuality, witches can become fairies, and presumably vice versa, through Mirta. 4Kids even uses the term “trans magic,” with Mirta realizing over the course of the first season that witch magic isn’t for her, transferring to Alfea in season 2 and becoming a fairy. It really calls into question why the fairies and witches divide themselves so much.

While Mirta is bullied by Lucy and other witches for becoming a fairy, it’s clear the narrative supports her, as it should if this is what makes her happy. However, we never see the same depiction of the inverse: of a fairy becoming a witch. The only time this happens is with Selina, a major antagonist in season 6. Her backstory makes absolutely no sense and destroys canon, but ignoring that, she was once a fairy who became a witch to serve the dark sorcerer Acheron. By the end of the season when Selina redeems herself, she just… goes back to being a fairy, studying under the Fairy Godmother Eldora. She goes back to being “good” by becoming a fairy.

What this suggests is that the narrative considers fairies to be good, and witches to be evil, except Griffin because we can’t be bothered to acknowledge how she proves this dichotomy wrong. Any prejudice towards witches goes unchecked because the show agrees with it. That the Winx, and others, are right to be skeptical of the witches, even as most witches prove they’re good or just neutral people who fight against evil time and time again. And just like the specialists, we don’t learn the intricacies of what it is to study at Cloudtower and to be a Guardian Witch… actually, the term Guardian Witch doesn’t even exist in-show.

While fairies very clearly have a base form, then Charmix, and then finally Enchantix as full-fledged Guardian Fairies, witches don’t get this. The only witch forms we see are specifically for the Trix, given to them by villains like Darkar or Valtor. So it’s clear the show isn’t interested in exploring what it means to be a witch in this show like the fairies. But why is that? Well, for that, we have to explore the source material of witches in the real world, and why exactly so much media, and so many people, have such unfavorable views of witches.

Now, I am no expert in witches or witchcraft, so I’m merely reporting my own knowledge, as well as knowledge I’ve gathered on the subject. For further research, I recommend Philosophy Tube’s video: Witchcraft, Gender, & Marxism (gods I hope saying Marxism doesn’t get me demonetized). But history, being patriarchal, has not been kind to powerful women who are leaders of their communities. Women, and virtually anyone at the margins of social convention and hegemony, have been demonized and called witches when they’ve behaved in any way which goes against said hegemony, in addition to the view of any non-Christian beliefs as pagan and deviant.

The legacy of both these things has resulted in witches being seen as dark, evil creatures who practice vile dark arts in service to, you guessed it, the Christian Devil, because we just assume everyone believes in our institutionalized religion, even if they aren’t Christians themselves. It’s why there’s so much misinformation on Satanism and Wicca, and why people think pentagrams are demonic when they’re actually symbols of protection.

While there have been more favorable depictions of witches throughout media recently, there’s still this generally negative connotation that witches are inherently, or are more predisposed to being, evil. This is why witches are written off in Winx Club. They rely on the mainstream knowledge most people have of witches through cultural osmosis, rather than taking the existing lore of witches and reimagining it, challenging our traditional ideas of what a witch can be.

So… how could Winx have remedied this?

How Witches Should Be Treated:

Well for starters, let’s look at the concept of yin and yang, which Wizgiz conveniently mentions during season 2. There are many ancient beliefs and religions built on dualism: the concept of two opposing forces, whose dynamic influences the world’s happenings. Yin and yang specifically is a Chinese philosophy that describes the harmonious coexistence of two opposite, complementary forces. I discuss this a bit in my video on the problems with spirits in Legend of Korra, but yin and yang doesn’t entail two forces fighting each other for domination, but rather, two forces which are interdependent, neither of which being good or evil.

This is how I view fairies and witches in the Magical Universe. They are inherently neutral forces who can either be guardians, or villains. Just because witches draw on darkness and negativity doesn’t make them evil, nor does a fairy’s reliance on light and positivity make her good. The purpose of their coexistence is to balance each other out. With fairies and witches having different approaches to protecting their worlds, it allows them to cover all their bases, so to speak, so that they can work together to fend off any crisis which threatens the Magical Universe.

Unfortunately, this balance was disrupted by the Ancestral Witches, who terrorized the Magical Universe in search of the Dragon Flame, and ultimately destroyed Domino. It’s likely this event traumatized the worlds, inspiring a fear and distrust in witches because of the actions of three. This would also explain why witches are so hostile towards others.

When your entire group is written off as marginalized and dangerous, you’re unlikely to trust outsiders, and even scorn them. And frankly, I don’t see Faragonda and Saladin doing enough to fight this anti-witch prejudice in their schools, but that might be because they still carried unchecked skepticism towards their former ally Griffin given she once worked for the Ancestral Witches.

I’d like to see the Winx’s anti-witch prejudices checked as well, specifically Musa’s. Yes, she was the victim of harassment by the Trix and the witches who followed them, but that doesn’t excuse her viewing all witches as evil and worthy of contempt (especially since I’m pretty sure broomstick, in the 4Kids dub, is a witch slur). They need to be made to confront their distrust of witches, and actually confront them so they can work with the witches to defeat the Trix.

Mirta should not only call out the Winx on their prejudice, but also dismiss praise for becoming a fairy. Or rather, she should emphasize she didn’t choose to be a fairy because she “wanted to be good,” but that she just felt it was right for her personally. That most of the witches she was classmates with were good people who kinda had a good reason for disliking fairies for the way the fairies treated them. And we definitely need a fairy who transitions to becoming a witch, doesn’t do so to be evil, and doesn’t go back to being a fairy at the end. Basically… let Selina stay a witch, please.

The Trix perhaps represent a view where witches embrace this villainy, handed down to them from the Ancestral Witches. They want witches to be cruel, vicious, and out for themselves, willing to destroy anyone for the pursuit of their personal desires. This is why they resent Griffin so much. Griffin represents the true nature of a Guardian Witches, who uses her powers to not only serve herself, but to protect others.

Oh also, more evil and antagonistic fairies, please. If they tend to fall on the light side of things, probably self-righteous fairies who view themselves as saviors, but in reality are judgmental, holier-than-thou jerks who are just as destructive as the Ancestral Witches.

Conclusion & Outro:

Witches in Winx Club deserve better. They’re not these inherently evil people, but rather, rely on darkness to defend their worlds just like the fairies do.

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I’m the Unicorn of War, and to be a witch in the Magic Dimension is to live in a perpetual shit show.