Winx Club S2 E2

## Plot

At Alfea, Layla is having nightmares about what happened to her. It's pretty clear that she has PTSD from the ordeal. Bloom is worried about Layla. The girls stay up all night talking about her, and classes start that day. Brandon and Stella have officially started dating, and so have Bloom and Sky. At Lightrock, the Trix haven't been rehabilitated. In fact, it's driving them crazy, especially Stormy. Bloom can't stay awake in class. Professor Wizgiz is teaching the students about yin and yang. Opposites, good and evil, stuff like that. Musa and Flora are watching over Layla, who briefly wakes up, says some stuff, and falls back asleep. She's been sleeping for four days. Stella and Bloom come in. She wakes up again. They explain that she's safe at Alfea. She's glad that Piff is okay. She had a dream about her, but in the dream, she suddenly left her all alone. She tells the others about the pixies. She discovered the pixie village when she was a kid. I think that was from the 4Kids dub, plus Glim is called Blinky here. In this version, she says that her family has always been friends with the pixies. When she went to visit them this time though, the village was empty. This is contradicted later in the season, but whatever. Only Lockette and Glim made it back. They told her that the pixies went into the woods to perform a nature ceremony, and strange creatures attacked them. They followed the trail of tar the creatures left behind, and found a huge underground castle. Yes! I knew it was a castle! They found Darkar, and he transformed from a phoenix into something like a man. She, Glim, and Lockette were captured. Layla is devastated, because she doesn't know whether or not the pixies are still alive. There were only a few left. She freed them, but couldn't take them with her because of Darkar. The Winx offer her their help in finding and freeing the pixies. Darkar's bat, spy, minion thing informs him that the Codex is in four parts. One of them is in the pixie village. Darkar figures out that the rest are hidden in the three schools of Magix: Cloud Tower, Red Fountain, and Alfea. I mean, we learn that there are at least dozens of schools by the time season 6 rolls around, but whatever. Darkar attacks Lightrock to free some familiar prisoners. He gives the Trix new powers, called Gloomix, as long as they serve him. They break out of the monastery. He informs them that there's power out there even greater than the Dragon Flame.

## Review

This was such a great episode. Layla having to deal with her issues isn't something you see in every kid's show. It's like how *Girl Meets World* dealt with real issues, like bullying, Asperger's Syndrome, and people like Maya trying, and ultimately failing, to forgive a parent who left them, when in reality, they have to forgive themselves, because it wasn't their fault. It was much more sophisticated than an average children's television show, and that's one of the reasons it had such a large periphery demographic, myself included. Of course, then season 3 of *Girl Meets World* happened, and it was canceled. However, *Andi Mack* was another Disney Channel show about a teenage pregnancy and how it affects all of the characters and their relationships with one another. And that's just the stuff the title character and her family have to go through in the first season, never mind everyone and everything else. I highly recommend it. And if you're into animation like me, then I suggest Elena of Avalor, especially season 2, which also deals with a strong, independent, young woman of color struggling with PTSD. You could also make the argument that Aelita from Code Lyoko also suffers from PTSD, or at least has trouble getting over a past trauma. Granted, they never actually say that's what's happening, because kid's show, but it's as blatant as they can get without having these poor girls go into actual therapy, which doesn't seem to exist in fantasy adventure shows. Or animation in general. Literally the only time the word therapy is mentioned is when the teenage male character Kion from The Lion Guard is undergoing one of the last parts of his treatment for an injury he received in the season 3 premiere. And even then, while the injury and the healing itself had more to with his mental state, I don't think he suffered from PTSD or any other kind of trauma. Although he was also the only character that basically had to take medication for the physical and mental pain his injury caused him, at least until he started his healing journey. There's also Yang Xiao Long, and arguably every other main character in one way or another, from RWBY, but starting with the middle of volume 3, that show was designated as, "not kid friendly", shall we say. Despite all of the examples I've gone through, ***none*** of these characters are solely defined by what they went through, nor should they be, and not just because they're main characters. They're like real people; that's why we relate to them and care about what happens to them. They're complex and multifaceted, just like real people.