Fate: The Winx Saga

• Abigail Cowen as Bloom, a 16-year-old fire fairy who was raised on Earth by human parents. She is a first-year student at Alfea and Aisha's roommate. She discovers that she is a changeling.
• Hannah van der Westhuysen as Stella, a fashionable light fairy and the princess of Solaria. Unlike her suitemates, she is a second-year student.
• Precious Mustapha as Aisha, an athletic water fairy. She is a first-year student and Bloom's roommate.
• Eliot Salt as Terra Harvey, an earth fairy and Sam's sister. She is Flora's cousin. She was raised at Alfea but has trouble connecting with her suitemates, especially her roommate Musa.
• Elisha Applebaum as Musa, a mind fairy who feels other people's emotions. She is a first-year student and Terra's roommate.
• Danny Griffin as Sky, Stella's ex-boyfriend and son of the late Andreas of Eraklyon. He was raised by Silva and is a second-year Specialist student.
• Sadie Soverall as Beatrix, an air fairy who can manipulate electricity. She is a first-year student, trying to discover more about Alfea's dark history.
• Freddie Thorp as Riven, a second-year Specialist student and Sky's best friend. He is romantically involved with Beatrix.
• Eva Birthistle[lower-alpha 1] as Vanessa Peters, Bloom's adoptive mother. Because of an incident where Bloom lost control over her powers, she is covered in healed burn wounds.
• Robert James-Collier as Saul Silva, the Fencing instructor at Alfea and Sky's guardian. He used to be friends with Sky's father.
• Eve Best as Farah Dowling, Headmistress of Alfea.
• Lesley Sharp[lower-alpha 2] as Rosalind, a previous headmistress of Alfea.

• Theo Graham as Dane, a first-year Specialist student who befriends Terra, Riven and Beatrix. He has a crush on both Riven and Beatrix.
• Josh Cowdery as Mike Peters, Bloom's adoptive father. Like Vanessa, he does not know that Bloom is a fairy and not his real daughter.
• Alex Macqueen as Professor Harvey, Terra and Sam's father, the botany teacher at Alfea.
• Harry Michell as Callum, Dowling's assistant.
• Jacob Dudman as Sam Harvey, an earth fairy and Terra's brother, who has the ability to phase through walls and objects. He starts dating Musa.
• Kate Fleetwood as Queen Luna, Stella's mother and Solaria's queen.

• Ken Duken as Andreas, celebrated war hero, Sky's father and Beatrix's adoptive father.

The idea for a live-action adaptation of Winx Club dates back to 2011. Winx Club creator Iginio Straffi first proposed a live version in May 2011, several months after Viacom (owner of Nickelodeon) became a co-owner of his studio (Rainbow) and started financing his projects.[5][11] At the Ischia Global Fest in 2013, Straffi stated that he was still planning a production "with the Winx in flesh and blood, played by real actors. Sooner or later it will be done."[12] At the time, Straffi had only worked on animated productions, so he transitioned his focus to live action over the next few years as a producer for Nickelodeon's live-action show Club 57.[6]

In February 2016, Straffi mentioned that a live-action movie concept was being considered in partnership with Hollywood Gang Productions. Straffi described the project as "a dream of mine since the very beginning." The project never moved on.[13] In March 2018, the idea was revisited as a television series when Straffi and Netflix announced that a young adult live-action series had been ordered for the streaming service.[14]

After a pilot episode was scripted, Nickelodeon's American crew members from the cartoon (including Bloom's voice actress, Molly Quinn)[7] met with the Fate production team and reviewed the script.[7] Rainbow's Joanne Lee also oversaw the show as an executive producer. Apart from them, the crew behind Fate is entirely new to the Winx franchise, and the writers were recruited from teen dramas like The Vampire Diaries.[8] Brian Young, who worked on seven seasons of The Vampire Diaries,[15] is the creator and showrunner of Fate: The Winx Saga.[16] According to an interview with The Guardian, Young chose to "ditch the look" of the cartoon Winx fairies, who have big eyes and sparkling outfits. He said, "Look, again, I'm a massive manga anime fan... but nobody looks like that."[8] Some episodes of the first season were directed by Lisa James Larsson and Hannah Quinn.[17][3][16]

Casting calls were held in August 2019.[18][19]

The show's filming began in County Wicklow, Ireland in September 2019[16] and ended on December 13.[20] The first season's primary filming locations included Killruddery House[21] and Ardmore Studios in Bray.[22][23]

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 38% based on 15 reviews, with an average rating of 5.33/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Flat, flimsy, and forgettable, Fate: The Winx Saga is a fantastical flop that fails to capture the magic of its source material."[24]

The series received backlash over the casting of Applebaum as Musa, who was coded as East Asian and whose character design was based on Lucy Liu, as well as the apparent replacement of Flora, who was coded as Latina and whose character design was based on Jennifer Lopez, with a new white character named Terra.[25][26]