I keep trying not to think about the reboot, but alas, it swamps the tag, and the morbid curiosity keeps me watching the youtuber breakdowns.
Before it came out, I did talk a bit about what I hoped the background plot was: villain from the future messes with the past so Stella never goes to Earth, so Bloom is never found, thus the Winx never form and become a threat to the villain BUT stones of memories cast echoes back to the Winx, and when four of them meet at Alfea, it brings enough clarity to know they’re missing people, so they go looking, and the timeline fixes itself as they go, kind of.
But now with added patches for the plot holes like the existence of Enchantix existing before season three.
Scooting over a bit: how can I fix the Damien situation using this particular premise?
The twin thing is dumb, he’s Bloom’s son from the future now, and Robin is his cousin, Daphne and Thoren’s daughter.
Damien has always wanted to be a fairy, and Robin has always wanted to be a specialist, but the wielder of the Dragon Flame has never been a boy before, so everyone expects Robin to be the next wielder, even though Bloom supports her son’s desire to be a fairy.
At his lowest point, she gives him her memory stone, and tells him not to give up cause hey she didn’t even know fairies were real until she was sixteen, there’s still time for him to manifest wings.
Robin has expectations on her to become a fairy, but she’s never had the grasp on magic she feels is required, and she’s always enjoyed swords and shields more. Thoren’s ecstatic, and Daphne is more than supportive, believing that things work out in their own time (but sometimes you’ve got to get proactive about it) and they assure her if she’s that worried about their bloodline having no fairies, they can have more babies, but she’s fine as she is.
Vexius is a dickbag who thinks the Trix aren’t shit, and if he could get the Dragon Flame, he wouldn’t have fucked up and lost it. Unfortunately for him, everyone who has access to the Dragon Flame is too powerful for him to defeat, and too emotionally strong to trick into handing it over, and he’s tired of waiting for one of the “pathetic and useless children” to inherit.
Vexius finds a temporal anomaly while researching evil shenanigans, and forms a plan: change the past, beat the Trix to the punch by isolating Bloom on Earth and stealing her magic and becoming the most powerful magic user ever.
Unfortunately for him, again, Robin and Damien are together when the ripple affects of his time travel reach them. Protected by the memory stone they’re using, trying to figure out why Bloom gave it to Damien (so he could see that she had her own fears and doubts at his age, and she made it, so he can too) they notice immediately when reality changes, because it changes enourmously for the worse.
The universe becomes a dark place, Domino frozen to its core as if it was never revived. They search the ice covered palace looking for any clues, but find nothing, until the rest of the Winx show up, looking for Bloom, because she’s not on Eraklyon.
Vexius* shows up not long after, wielding the Dragon Flame, and far too powerful having managed to pull off the plans of previous villains, but better because he’d broken the Winx Club before it could form, his reign of terror had enveloped the Magical Dimension, and only those who had protections against temporal anomalies, like memory stones, remember the original time line.
The Winx give the kids their memory stones, hoping they can use them to make a time portal to travel back and stop Vexius before he can complete his plan. The time line alteration has affected their magic, they’re weaker than they were before, they can only hold Vexius off for a short time, not long enough to travel themselves, and Damien and Robin shouldn’t even exist in this timeline, so he won’t know they’re missing from the battlefield.
(*This Vexius is the one who went back in time and has travelled the long way round, not the Vexius who should be from this time period. He probably offed the og baby version of himself so he wouldn’t die of temporal cascade failure, or worse: have to share his power with himself!)
They find a safe place to hide, and try to figure out how to work the stones, but between them, they can’t quite get it. Then suddenly the seven* stones start to glow and swirl in the air, the memories of Alfea, and the time Bloom wanted to share with Damien forming a portal that will take them exactly where they need to go.
(Yes, Roxy showed up too.)
They jump through with no real plan. Behind them the portal closes.
In the shadows, Diaspro lowers her hand, magic dissipating from her finger tips. Beside her, the shadows deepen and Chimera steps out to ask “you’d really betray Master Vexius?”
“Haven’t you lost things to his crusade? If they can make a timeline where Sky is alive, then I don’t care about anything else. What’s the good of all I’ve gained in the face of all I’ve lost?”
The timeline ripples before Chimera can respond.)
Because the memories were so strongly focused around Alfea, that’s where Damien and Robin land, shortly before the original series would have started, and they try to explain things to Faragonda, who tells them not to tell her too much, because that could affect the future in ways they can’t predict, but she welcomes them into the school, giving Robin a job since she’s too old to be a student and makes a place for Damien as a student.
The cousins research what they can in the library when they realise what changed in the past, and use the stones once again to give the four Winx in Alfea dreams to set them on the path to realising something is missing. Or rather some people.
They split into teams of two and go after Bloom and Aisha.
The season continues to run two parallel plots, as Damien and Robin try to find Vexius and stop him, and the original season trying to correct itself, and the Winx trying to figure out why they remember somethings that never happened.
Where the two plots meet, Damien and Robin are learning so many new things about the women they’ve known their entire lives as they see whole new sides to the famous and untouchable Winx Club. (acting as audience vehicles for learning/relearning the Winx Club characters while they struggle with the “it’s just so common we don’t really think of alternatives being a possibility” gender norms of the Magical Dimension, despite “only girls are fairies/only boys are specialists” never having been a hard set rule. They have historical documents to prove it!)
(Bonus for the lulz: neither Damien nor Robin know who Diaspro is, she hasn’t been seen in the og timeline since season 8. potentially one or both of them actually noticed her as they stepped through time, but they cannot for the life of them reconcile this Diaspro with the woman that helped them, because they don’t really understand just how dark the bad future was.)
and this is where I run out of fucks to give again.