#also king of weird little girls. A+ character designs. the animations were stellar and the MUSIC AUGHHH

[srapsodia]

ghost trick really is such a great game I GET THE HYPE NOW I GET IT!!!! IM RIGHT THERE WITH YALL!!!!

[moonlightreal]

Winx Club season 8/6

In which positive Winx thinking flops

6 Doom of the Lighthouse Star

I thought some more about Musa and Riven’s drama last episode and realized that they are acting totally in character.  They’ve both always been bad at opening up about their feelings.  So points to the writers for keeping them in character!  I’m still going to call them boneheads when they are boneheads though!

And something I found out: season 8 has a prize in the bottom of the box: ICY gets some BACKSTORY! Backstory!  Eight seasons and fifteen years and we know basically nothing about where the Trix come from!  They just turned up wanting to rule the magic dimension just because.  But now, backstory!  Of course it looks like pretty dumb backstory, and Darcy and Stormy don’t seem to get any-- but it’s still wonderful!  It’s still new canon!  And it might be the seed for season nine or the fourth movie; I can imagine Icy might try to get the Winx to help her with the stuff from her past and that could be a story.  (and if Rainbow doesn’t use the obvious plot opening then I can, so it’s a win either way...)

Anyway, no spoilers yet, we’ll get to that in episode twenty-whatever.  I can’t wait!

Meanwhile in the episode at hand, Twinkle and the Winx are following Orion’s ship to help save his star.  Twinkle has a friend who lives there.

In his ship Orion says he wouldn’t have been allowed back on his planet if he hadn’t brought the Winx along.  Hmm, was the dude banished?

They approach the star… or planet? It is a planet, but it may be supposed to be a star since here in season 8 it’s clear that stars are in fact solid bodies that lumens live on, rather than masses of incandescent gas like in our universe. So are ALL stars powered by lumens?  Magic dimension physics are weird.  

The heavenly body is dark and the girls are upset.  Stella feel sorry for the lumens of the star, and Flora worries that the planet’s plants won’t grow so people will go hungry.  Stella reassures her that Cosmix power can fix that!

Everybody flies down to a cool tower, the Winx land on top and Orion docks a little lifeboat ship.

This must be Irridia, because it’s populated by lumens-- purple ones with blank green eyes.  They hang back, and Stella says she was hoping for a more cheerful welcome! but when Orion arrives and points out the damage to the star’s core—it’s cracked, with pieces missing-- he gets swarmed by pissed-off lumens!  Turns out star-eaters drained the core and when Orion tried to fix it…

Orion: “it was...’

Musa: “An epic fail?”

Orion: Un...fortunately you’re right.”

Love his expressions!  Orion is so cool, I wish it wasn’t half ‘cause he’s a stolen character design, but still, he’s just so great!

Twinkle and the Winx reassure the lumens that they can totally fix the core, so the lumens let them try.  Cosmix zapping!  

...fail!  

This star core is too damaged to hold the energy!  The Winx apologize; they didn’t know how bad the damage was when they said they’d help.  But Orion freaks out and yells, he’s “had enough of your worthless promises!”  Dude, it was only one promise and they didn’t have all the facts.  Still it was a little overconfidant of the Winx to be so sure they could handle it!

And we cut to Valtor’s fortress! He’s watching and he thinks this is great!  Obscurum chortles on about the fortress he’s going to have when he’s king of Lumenia. He says he’ll have a throne room “greater and more comfortable” than Valtor’s!  Valtor growls and tosses him through the endless portal a few times, with a stop on the tongue of a strange giant crocodile. Ok.

I… kinda remember Valtor having more dignity than to have such a dumb minion.  With Kalshara at least it was her brother.

But before he can rethink his life choices too much, Valtor is distracted by his magic-TV.  Twinkle is bemoaning their sad and sorry fate.

Orion is still pissed off.

Stella sensibly says just because their first try failed doesn’t mean they really failed; they just have to try something else!

Flora wants to abandon Irridia and go to the planet to save the plants there.  The others don’t want to abandon the lumens.

Tec gets the idea to build a machine to fix the core but Musa reminds her that Orion trying to fix it caused this mess.  Tension among the Winx!  Musa suggests they split the party but calls on Bloom for the final vote.  Bloom says they have to stay together and fix the star, she does the “I know we can do it!”

But Orion is not convinced, he says he’s hearing lots of promises but no plans.  He feels betrayed!  He storms off!

Bloom does the, ‘Together we can do this!  Who’s with us?”

The purple lumens all turn and leave.

Ahahahaha!

The girls walk through the lumen city—this tower is actually a lumen city, the lights on it are windows of lumen dwellings.  The girls look very nuetral-faced, enough that I’m noticing that the animation style doesn’t have much emotional range.  It seems like they should look and sound more upset after this failure plus getting ditched by their new friend and a bunch of lumens.

Musa gets a text from Riven asking how things are going with “Orion the thief”.  Stella suggests maybe don’t answer until things start going a little better.  Heh.

Orion has jetted off in his wonderful ship to go steal some more “light rubies” and solve the problem without any help.  When he gets a call!  A portal opens and there’s Valtor calling with a proposition!  He’ll fix the star if Orion gets rid of the Winx.

Orion hesitates but is convinced by an image of his planet flourishing again.

“That fool will help us get rid of the Winx once and for all!”  Says Valtor, and I wrote it here because I am now counting times a villain says that.

Back on Irridia Twinkle’s girlfriend appears!  Ok, her BFF Lumilla who greets her with a glomp.  It’s pretty adorable.  Flora says, “I don’t think I’ve ever been that happy to see anybody.”

Then Orion appears.  He’s back with an apology and a plan!  Aisha’s skeptical but Orion has a gizmo—a “light enhancer” that will help the plants grow.  The girls can take it to Perlisha and set it up.

Musa texts Riven that Orion is a good guy after all.

On the ship Helia asks Riven what’s up.  Riven’s still mad at Orion who did after all steal a bunch of rubies and send the boys all over to return them.  The rest of the specialists tease Riven about being jealous.  Sigh.

Twinkle and Lumilla in a lumen house! It looks… about like you’d expect, like a fairy house.  Round table, stools that almost look like they were made from drawer knobs. Lumilla makes tea.  He tea bags are star shaped and so are the sugar cubes!  It’s adorable!  Lumilla has a kitty!  A white kitty with a star around his head, named Lumino.  So there are lumen animals like there are pixie animals?  A whole stellar ecosystem?  Also, this scene was cute and I want star shaped tea bags.

The girls are in their space clothes. They land on Perlisha, which has a lot of geysers.  The gizmo isn’t giving them much direction so Tecna reveals her newest invention: “Winxboards!”  Stella jumps on and immediately falls off.  

Hoverboarding montage!

There’s a fork in the path and again a fight.  Flora wants to go one way to try to help plants; Stella wants to go the other way which looks easier and safer.  Flora caves, but she’s still mad.  But a second later they’re giggling while hoverboarding so all is forgotten.  A second after that a geyser nearly knocks Flora off her board and she grumbles about it not being safer after all.

Then Orion’s gizmo beeps, they’ve found the right place.

It’s full of dying plants, and Flora gets upset.  She tries to help the plants with magic but can’t, guess they need real light.  This fight between Flora and Stella feels super forced, but it is nice to see Flora’s connection to nature coming up as a weakness, I like that.

Bloom activates the gizmo to provide light, but instead the ground starts shaking and… killer grabby robot arms from the ground!  The Winx get grabbed!

Stella and Flora are the only two not grabbed as the episode ends!

This episode wasn’t much except for the lumen house scene, but I’m watching ahead in Italian (because who isn’t!) and the next episode looks really cool.  Summary when the English appears, whenever that is!