Fate: The Winx Saga spoilers follow.
It’s a tough time being a teenager, but it’s tougher when you have the literal fate of the world hanging on your shoulders.
But that’s exactly what Bloom dealt with in Fate: The Winx Saga season two. Thankfully, as Blood Witches began to target fairies, she had a cracking team of friends ready to band together to save Alfea.
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However, that came with a cost that only Bloom could pay – and now as we await season three, the friendship group in the Winx Suite has potentially been changed forever.
So what happened?
Here’s how the finale played out, and speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, the cast tell us what they hope to see happen in season three.
What happened in the season finale?
By the time final episode ‘All The Wild Witches’ started, things were looking bad for the fairies at Alfea. Sebastian and his Blood Witches had successfully staged a siege of the school and were sucking the students dry of their powers using scrapers (these weird, giant woodlouse-looking creatures) one by one.
They’d also taken over most of the specialists, using them as their own personal security guards thanks to their mind control powers.
Basically – it was bleak, with Flora trapped in the dungeons with the rest of the students, a powerless Musa was the only one able to keep an eye on things, with the rest of the gang in hiding outside the school grounds, and Sky trapped in a holding cell.
Formulating a plan with Silva, Riven and Dane, Bloom planned to return to the school and confront Sebastian herself. He wants the Dragon Flame that she possesses, and will stop hassling the others if she hands it over, even though she doesn’t want to.
Despite the others offering to help with their own abilities, fire fairy Bloom refuses it, saying she has to deal with it herself. She then promptly passes out, seeing visions of a mysterious, Slender-man like being. When she comes to, she lies about it, insisting it was just dehydration.
Back at the school, Beatrix has been working alongside Sebastian to take over the school, and corners him asking to ‘hold up his side of the bargain’. Handing her a piece of paper, their deal is done, but she doesn’t seem happy about what she discovers.
In the basement, the fairies are looking more and more worse for wear, with many passed out from their injuries from the scrapers. When one tries to help out, he’s left screaming as scrapers attack him. Wanting to take action, Flora offers herself as the next person to be taken to Sebastian.
Thankfully, Musa uses the training she learned from Riven to stop them in their tracks before Flora can be delivered to him, and together the duo take the blood fairies down.
Silva and his A-Team of non-compromised specialists attempt a rescue mission, but it fails quickly – the Blood Witches already knew they were coming. Dane underestimated the controlled specialists, believing his friend Luke will prove helpful, while they managed to stop a couple, eventually they have to admit defeat and fall back.
It’s then discovered Sky has been taken over and under the control of Sebastian, who calls Bloom and instructs her to leave her friends and head back to the school under the guidance of Grey. When she gets there, Sebastian has Sky tied up conscious and badly beaten. Afraid for his life, she finally agrees to gives up the Dragon Flame.
When the gang realise she’s missing, they head out into the forest to look for her. In doing so, Stella runs into Beatrix, who rather than proving to be a villain, instead gives her intel on Sebastian’s plans. He has intentions to “right the wrongs” of Aster Dell, and plans to do this by getting to the Shadow – an entity that exists in the Realm of Darkness. The Shadow can bring everyone who died in Aster Dell back to life. However, previous attempts nearly destroyed the Otherworld.
Sebastian needs the Dragon Flame in order to work as a conduit in order to open a portal to the Realm. Once open, it can only be closed from the other side.
Beatrix admits the deal she made with Sebastian was to discover why she was at Aster Dell, and to ensure her own survival. The paper revealed she had two sisters, and until then she had no one. Stella tells her she had her, before all this occurred.
Having enough of doing nothing, Terra manages to rile the spirits of the Specialists to get them to act and return to the school before it’s too late. The speech particularly gets the attention of specialist Kat, who she’d been flirting with, and the pair share a kiss before Kat heads off into battle.
Back at the Suite, Flora is struggling with her potions, and Musa convinces her to finally call Terra for help. Flora admits she’s creating a pheromone that will distract the Scrapers, sending them directly to her. Before they arrive, she plans to ingest Eldwyn, which is toxic to humans… but also to scrapers, and would effectively kill them off but would sacrifice herself in the process.
Terra tells her no, but Flora stays strong and insists it will work.
With Bloom and Sebastian, he begins to taunt her about the family history, unable to resist finally telling her the truth about her heritage – her mum previously had the Dragon Flame, which confuses Bloom as it hadn’t been seen in 1,000 years. Sebastian tells her it had been in stasis all that time… with Bloom.
She was born 1,000 years ago, in the middle of an ancient war. Her mum lost control and thousands died. Wracked with guilt for passing the burden on to Bloom, her mum put her in stasis the day she was born to prevent her having to deal with it, before crossing over into the Realm of Darkness forever.
He says when he gets the flame, she can live a normal life.
The final battle
By the evening, the specialists are fighting but losing. Flora injects herself with the toxin and says goodbye to Musa before she’s brutally attacked by dozens of scrapers. Musa joins the fight and in doing so is reunited with Riven, who is impressed by what she does.
At the entrance of the school, Blood Witch Grey runs into his now ex-girlfriend Aisha, asking her to forgive him. He explains his brother died in Aster Dell and he was encouraged by his parents to join the fight as a blood witch against the fairies. She instead scolds him, and doesn’t forgive him.
Back to Bloom and Sebastian, they are in the process of handing over the dragon flame when Beatrix arrives, asking her if she wants to know what he plans to use it for. She says it doesn’t matter and Beatrix tells her “remember you said that”, before cutting the branches holding Sky in the air and letting him drop to the floor. Instinctively, Bloom runs to him, and cuts off the spell. In anger at everything being ruined, Sebastian shoots Beatrix against the wall, and she cracks her head open and dies believing she had saved the world.
In the fallout, Bloom transforms into her fairy form, and Sebastian goads her to get her more angry, just as her friends arrive.
Grey, clearly feeling guilty for betraying Aisha, uses his magic to reignite Sky’s heart, and Bloom briefly changes back to make sure that he’s OK. The problem is she can’t change back to defeat Sebastian, as using that kind of magic leaves her exhausted.
Stella is devastated as she sees Beatrix’s body, and is left raging. Finally, all the girls are able to take into their transformation magic, and join forces to take Sebastian down. He was strong enough than each of them alone… but not together. Within minutes, he disintegrates into dust.
Quickly, things are falling back to normal, with powers being restored in everyone including Musa, who doesn’t seem happy about to be able to feel everyone’s emotions again.
Back in the suite, we find out Grey has returned to his family, and she jokes she’s not ready to swear off boys, responding to the comment with “I did” seemingly marking her coming out.
Stella is feeling guilty about the death of Beatrix, crediting her for saving everyone with her sacrifice.
Later that night, Bloom sneaks out, leaving everyone letters and heading down to the basement – where the portal was open. The magic from the fairies at the school had been enough to open it after all, he just wanted the dragon flame so no one could close it.
Sky gets mad at her for writing a letter to him because she knew he would try to stop her from closing the portal, as it would mean going over to the other side and remaining there.
He begs her not to go into the Realm of Darkness, not even knowing what it is. While she doesn’t know what’s there, she knows that her biological mother is, and she’s not scared because it means that she can finally control her power and keep the Otherworld safe.
The couple share an emotional goodbye and their I love yous, before he lets her go and she walks through the portal into the unknown beyond it.
Abigail Cowen, who plays Bloom, said of her decision: “I think that there is a mix of emotions there. I think that, you know, it's the only way to close it, then I think also she almost wanted to... I mean, there's a mix of things because she's feeling drawn to this place.
"She feels in her heart, 'this is where I need to go and I don't know why but I'm going'. There's that element to it. Then there's another where it's like, 'I'm too dangerous for this world. I'm not meant to be here, and I need to almost like sacrifice myself in order for everyone else to be safe' because she doesn't trust herself. It's almost like a punishment, punishing herself.”
Unfortunately, her late night exit means the girls don’t find out until the next morning, and are heartbroken.
On the other side, Bloom finds herself on a cliff face, which leads to a mysterious castle, where there’s a women hunched over a cauldron by a fire.
Before the show cuts to black, she calls out “Mum?”
What happens next?
So what’s next for season three? It seems that the girls have some things they need to figure out personally, and need to figure it out quick before those creepy shadow figures decide to make an actual appearance beyond Bloom’s visions.
Hannah van der Westhuysen, who plays Princess Stella, told Digital Spy that her character has a new sense of purpose despite her circumstances, starting with laying flowers on the graves of Beatrix’s never-met sisters who died in Aster Dell.
“She’s in her flop era, isn't she?” she laughs. “I think she's [got a] newfound… probably rage and desire for retribution. I think it's that thing of being, for the first time, really driven by love – she's not doing things for herself.
"She's like, 'I want to do things for other people and make the world a better place' which is an incredible place for her to have landed in considering how self-obsessed she was in season one episode one!”
Someone who’s not in her flop era is Terra – who is actually pretty in a pretty good place considering where everyone else is. But she has to be careful not to let that get to her head too much.
“Terra really has come out on top!” Eliot Salt, who plays her, jokes with us. “She obviously is going to be having a really difficult time because their friendship group is potentially irrevocably changed and there's a whole lot of darkness happening.
"So I think that will bring them all together, and I think Terra is maybe in that zone when you've just found out new stuff about yourself and you've got new romance and you've suddenly come into yourself and you're like, 'everything is going to be fine from now on’.
“I think she's going to realise fairly swiftly that the credits haven't rolled yet.”
Aisha has a big decision to make.
“I think it probably leaves her with a bit of trauma to find out the person that you thought you loved, or the person that you loved, is actually not the person that you fell in love with,” Precious Mustapha tells us.
“I think she's gonna have major trust issues after that. Wouldn’t we all?!”
Meanwhile, Musa is dealing with the idea of having her powers as an empath back, which means being constantly invaded with other people’s feelings. While she’s certainly channelling that frustration into specialist training, actress Elisha Applebaum says: “I think Musa needs to find peace in her powers.
"I think that's necessary for her, just so that it comes full circle and she's been able to have this journey of understanding herself and the world around her really. i just want to see her help, want to see her help everyone. Finally.”
But someone who didn’t come out of that battle unscathed is Flora, who is literally physically scarred from almost sacrificing herself and dealing with unspeakable pain as a result of that.
“I think for me, we end the series with her kind of hurt by everything with the scrapers,” explains Paulina Chåvez. “So I feel like there's gonna be some healing – internal healing, physical healing – that needs to happen there.”
Fate: The Winx Saga is available now on Netflix.
Netflix/Left Bank Pictures The Crown season 3 with Amazon exclusive box artwork
Freelance writer, Digital Spy
Tilly is Gold-Standard NCTJ accredited journalist with eight years of experience in entertainment journalism.
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