While most people may split their Disney+ time between animated movies and Blueyfor the kids, and Star Wars and Marvel for the adults (well, most of the time), there are many shows that fall in between. One of them is airing now, and has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic score.
Coven Academy is now on Disney+ as of Oct. 2, a series about witches, you might guess, that critics are enjoying quite a bit in early reviews, given its100% Rotten Tomatoes score. Here’s the synopsis:
“In the haunted heart of New Orleans, three teenage witches and their warlock peers attend an elite magic boarding school where power is currency, secrets are lethal and attraction is a liability.”
If Coven Academy sounds like a YA novel adaptation to you, you would be…wrong, actually. It’s a series created by Tim Federle, who also madeHigh School Musical: The Musical: The Series,which aired for four seasons and led to the breakout success of now pop megastar Oli
Star Malina Pauli Weissman previously starred in A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix, and played young Kara Zor-El in the CW’s Supergirl. Other stars like Malachi Burton have Disney pedigrees, as he appeared in Camp Rock 3, Zombies 4, Under Wraps 1and 2,all on Disney. Others like Jordan Leftwich (appropriate name) are new faces. The only name I recognize in the cast is Tiffani Thiessen, which my generation, of course, knows as Kelly Kapowski from Saved by the Bell. In the mid-2000s, she went on to star in 81 episodes of White Collar.
Coven Academy has 21 extremely short episodes, ranging from just 11 to 23 minutes each. Is this some sort of Gen Z attention-span-holding plan? It would seem so. When the show first aired on Freeform a day before its Disney+ debut, it had 10 25 to 43-minute episodes, but when it went to Disney, those were split in half. I wonder if we’re going to start seeing this with more and more shows aimed at tweens and teens. Of course, shows for younger children already have very short episodes, from Blueyto Paw Patrol.
The witch school series comes almost three months before HBO Max’s blockbuster Harry Potterseries, arriving on Christmas 2026, and covering the first book. That show will air for 10 years, and no matter how many other supernatural school series there are, there will be little to compete with it. The biggest contender is Netflix’s Wednesday, where Nevermore is a school for monsters and misfits, but even there, viewership has dropped significantly between seasons.
This is Disney, and Coven Academy doesn’t need to do huge numbers to return for more seasons, and we’ll see how it goes when the numbers shake out.
Follow meon Twitter,YouTube,andInstagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels theHerokiller seriesandThe Earthborn Trilogy.
This article was originally published onForbes.com
