Netflix’s live-action Fate: The Winx saga takes its inspiration for a magical story of female bonding and saving the world from a Nickelodeon animated series. There are many other shows and movies that follow the same themes. Hidden magic, female empowerment, and a search for identity are all found in Fate: The Winx Saga.
Netflix’s Fate: The Winx Saga was canceled after two seasons, but those first two seasons packed a lot of story into a short time. Bloom (Abigail Cowen) discovers she’s a fire fairy and attends a boarding school where she makes friends with different fairies who each specialize in different elements. The group of young women bond despite their differences and end up saving their school – twice – as well as the world of magic altogether. There are many other movies and shows like Fate: The Winx Saga that incorporate those same ideas that fans will also enjoy.
15 Nancy Drew (2019-2022)
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Available to stream on HBO Max
If the idea of a group of young people solving fantastical mysteries is part of the appeal for the audience looking for shows like Fate: The Winx Saga, Nancy Drew is a good companion series. The characters are a little older than the Alfea students, and their world is full of ghost stories rather than fairies. Inspired by the Carolyn Keene novels named for the girl detective, the show takes place in a small seaside town in Maine. Friendship is forged between coworkers who are all suspects in a murder while Nancy (Kennedy McMann) uncovers secrets about her past, not unlike Bloom searching for secrets about her own.
14 RWBY (2012-)
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Available to stream on CrunchyRoll
At first glance, the animated RWBY from Rooster Teeth might not seem like it has much in common with The Winx Saga. It does, however, center on a group of young women with extraordinary gifts who don’t always get along, and who each have their own secrets. Over time, the show expands to include other teams as well, but Team RWBY remains the focus. Just as the fairies and specialists of Winx train to use their abilities offensively, those with Semblances in RWBY fight to protect their world from dangerous monsters. Both shows also develop their own interesting mythologies that are somewhat inspired by fairies or fairy tales.
13 Vampire Academy (2022)
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Available to stream on Peacock
When The Winx Saga’s second season premiered, Vampire Academy began streaming its first episodes as well. Though the two have very different characters, they have an awful lot in common. Their boarding schools and provinces are divided among those with elemental powers and those who work to protect them. The difference is that in Vampire Academy, those people are vampires or have at least one vampire parent, while The Winx Saga characters are fairies. Both series involve the young characters unraveling mysteries about old magic no one talks about anymore, and both feature storylines involving royalty in their societies. They each put a different spin on very similar ideas.
12 Motherland: Fort Salem (2020-2022)
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Available to stream on Hulu
Female bonding and magical soldiers are the name of the game in Motherland: Fort Salem. That’s because this series doesn’t take place in a fairy boarding school, but a dystopian society in which witches are drafted to fight for their government. The relationships between the women at the center of the show, much like Winx, are what make the stories compelling beyond the magic and the mythology building.
11 Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)
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Available to stream on Netflix and Paramount+
Like Winx, there is a definite focus on how the different elemental gifts make people different in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Unlike Winx, however, the Avatar can actually utilize all elemental gifts, which does make for an interesting contrast. Though the characters in The Last Airbender are much younger than the Winx characters, they all have the same central goal: to save the world from someone whose power could destroy it. Each show boils down to a group of kids working together, inspiring confidence in adults, and saving the day. Netflix also has a live-action version of the show on the way.
10 Bewitched (2005)
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Available to rent through AppleTV and Vudu
This 2005 movie is based on a popular TV series and Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman takes on the iconic role of Isabel Bigelow/Samantha which Elizabeth Montgomery had portrayed throughout eight seasons. Meanwhile, her love interest, Jack Wyatt/Darrin, is portrayed by comedian Will Ferrell. Bewitched is for the Fate fans who like the magic, but want a lighter tone. The magical worlds unknown by humans in both stories are very different, but both have solid foundations for the use of magic and the rules regarding it. This version of the story leans into the comedic aspects of the original series, making it definitely not as dark as Fate: The Winx Saga.
9 The Good Witch (2015-2021)
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Available to stream on Netflix
When it comes to shows like Fate: The Winx Saga, The Good Witch is probably not the first to come to mind. Both series, however, examine magic as a naturally occurring phenomenon that is simply a part of some people more than others. The Good Witch is a Hallmark show that started out as a series of movies, which readily showed off Cassie Nightingale’s (Catherine Bell) magical abilities. The series essentially follows Cassie’s life following the death of her husband, Jake Russell.
On the show, Cassie and her now-grown-up daughter Grace (Bailee Madison) attract the attention of new neighbors – Dr. Sam Radford (James Denton) and his son, Nick (Rhys Matthew Bond) – who move in right next to the Grey House. Needless to say, Dr. Radford and Cassie eventually fall for each other become Middleton’s newest ‘it’ couple.
8 Practical Magic (1998)
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Available to stream on HBO Max
It has been over two decades since Practical Magic was released in 1998. Since then, the movie’s two lead stars, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman have become among Hollywood’s biggest stars. In fact, both women have gone on to win Oscars and they’ve also been keen to pursue television and film projects onscreen and from behind the scenes. In the movie, Kidman and Bullock star as witch sisters who are dealing with a curse that may stop them from ever finding true love.
Movies like Fate: The Winx Saga are few and far between since movies don’t explore magic, especially fairy magic, in the same way. Practical Magic does have an interesting type of natural magic among its characters, much like Fate, though. It also stresses the importance of the bonds between women, which is something it definitely has in common with Fate.
7 The Order (2019-2020)
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Available to stream on Netflix
In The Order, a university student named Jack Morton joins a secret society and discovers magic and monsters in the process. Granted, the show is a little darker than Fate: The Winx Saga. Nonetheless, it deals with similar themes and of course, witchcraft. Like Fate: The Winx Saga, Netflix also canceled The Order before all of its storylines could be resolved. According to the show’s creator, Dennis Heaton, things could have taken a darker turn had The Order been renewed. He tweeted, “Jack was totally going to raise Alyssa from the dead, but she was going to come back wrong. Like, Pet Sematary wrong.”
6 Percy Jackson Movies (2010, 2013)
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Available to stream on Disney Plus
Percy Jackson may be a demigod instead of a witch, but he certainly went through a similar phase in life as Bloom when she started attending Alfea. As fans may recall, Percy wasn’t aware of his abilities (or true identity) when he started attending Camp Half-Blood. He had to train, and he had to learn how to master them just like the fan-favorite Winx Saga fairy. After releasing two films, it seemed that Fox had forgotten all about its Percy Jackson franchise. Fortunately, news has emerged regarding plans for the franchise’s revival on Disney+. The series has the blessing of original book writer Rick Riordan as well.
5 The Magicians (2015-2020)
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Available to stream on Netflix
The Magicians is a Syfy fantasy show that revolves around a group of students that get recruited into mysterious Brakebills University where they make the frightening discovery that magic is real. Based on a series of novels of the same name by Lev Grossman, the series starts just as a graduate student named Quentin Coldwater arrives at the school which regularly train magicians.
And just like Bloom, Quentin also quickly makes some new friends, and together, they discover the most amazing (and dangerous) things in the magic world. The series splits its time between a fantasy world and the world where the main characters reside, and Quentin and his friends save both worlds more than once. The Magicians is one of the few shows like Fate that is able to spend its time equally developing its magic, romantic relationships, and the bonds between the friends.
4 Fantastic Beasts Movies (2016, 2018, 2022)
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Available to stream on HBO Max
The Fantastic Beasts are essentially a prequel to the highly successful Harry Potter movies, although its first two films were only released in recent years, and its third in 2022. These movies delve further into the world that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling had magnificently created. However, it is set around 65 years prior to the events of Harry Potter and the central character is a creature-loving wizard named Newt Scamander. In the franchise’s second film, fans would also come across a younger version of Professor Albus Dumbledore.
The expansive world of the Fantastic Beasts movies, one that is separate from the human world, but still manages to overlap is where the movie and Fate: The Winx Saga have common ground. Both see the conflicts of the magical world put the human world in danger as well.
3 Legacies (2018-2022)
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Available to stream on Netflix
This CW drama is a spinoff of popular teen dramas The Vampire Diaries and The Originals. This time around, fans discover other young Mystic Falls residents who also possess supernatural abilities. These include Klaus Mikaelson’s daughter, Hope, and Alaric Saltzman’s twin daughters, Josie and Lizzie. And as fans of the whole Vampire Diaries universe may expect, these girls had been attending The Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted.
In Legacies, though teachers and other adults may inhabit the world, the story belongs to the teenagers at the center of the story as they deal with magical conflicts. The same is true of Fate. Though the adults around them have their own agenda, the teenagers at the center of The Winx Saga largely deal with the perils of their magical world without alerting adults to their efforts.
2 Harry Potter Movies (2001-2011)
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Available to stream on HBO Max
It’s no surprise that the Harry Potter films would be compared to Fate. After all, Fate: The Winx Saga did make a reference to Harry Potter early on in the series. For anyone who hasn’t watched these movies yet, there are eight of them, starting with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which sees Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) begin his time at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry shortly after discovering that he is a wizard. Soon enough, the movie also introduces the audience to Harry’s friends for life, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson). The trio spends each movie solving mysteries, saving people’s lives, and fighting one of the greatest evils in the wizarding world.
The Harry Potter movies have the benefit of slowly building the bonds between their characters and their magical conflicts over several years. It’s likely The Winx Saga would have been able to do something similar if it had more seasons since both movies center on one magical person (Harry and Bloom) whose power outweighs that of their friends and makes them a target for dark forces.
1 Charmed Reboot (2018-2022)
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Available to stream on Netflix
CW made the decision to revive the Charmed universe in 2018 with a completely new cast that included Melonie Diaz, Sarah Jeffery, and Madeleine Mantock. Just like the older show (which featured Holly Marie Combs, Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, and Shannen Doherty), these women also play three sisters who only discover that they are witches upon their mother’s death. Also like the original series, the Power of Three found itself compromised when one of the main actresses left the series, creating a curveball for the show.
While Fate: The Winx Saga didn’t see the same kind of curveball thrown its way, Charmed, like many similar shows has a lot in common with it. The intricate magical mythology, the sisterly bonds, and the allies who might walk on the evil side are all things the shows share.
