Coven Academy (2026), Pilot
1/5. Wikipedia entry for the series.
Teen witch dramedy from Disney (Freeform, Disney+ and Hulu), created by Tim Federle. A trio of witches-in-training guarding New Orleans from ancient evil. I watched the pilot. I won’t be watching the rest.
Up front: this is YA, it’s Disney, and I’m not the demo. Finding out it was a Disney show explained a lot. Some of what bugged me is probably just the show being for someone else. But a lot of it would be a problem for anybody.
What worked
I’ll give it two things.
It opens on a multiple murder. Good. That’s how you start a show about dangerous magic.
And Ora Duplass. She plays Tegan, the cute blonde in the tunnel who tells the new girl “Congratulations, you’re a witch.” Yes, that line is lifted pretty directly from “You’re a wizard, Harry.” It still landed. Tegan is also the student who bends time, and Duplass is the only believable person on the screen. Not her fault the script breaks Tegan’s own rules ten minutes in.
What didn’t
- The widest alley I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The opening alley is basically a four-lane road. Small thing, but it’s the first image and it screams soundstage.
- Adults LARPing as kids. Everyone playing a teenager looks like they’ve got student loans. I looked it up: the actors playing high schoolers are 18 to 23. I know casting adults as teens is industry standard, because minors are harder to employ. I still don’t like it. The gap between a high schooler and a college-age adult is huge, and it’s one more thing that makes the show unbelievable, on top of the silly magic effects.
- The New Yorker stranded in another city. Cliché as fuck. We’ve seen the fish-out-of-water New Yorker a thousand times.
- Fingerless gloves. Feels like a 2006 emo costume choice. Maybe they’re back. I’m not the demo, remember. But what the gloves really say to me is older people trying to write and costume a young person’s show. The creator, who wrote and directed the pilot, is in his mid-forties.
- A cast built from a checklist. The plus-size best friend. The mixed Black boy. The ball-busting Black girl. Each one is a type, not a person. Representation is good. Writing people as their category isn’t.
- The worn-down mansion. Of course the witch school is a crumbling old mansion.
- The secrets scene. One character demands to know another girl’s secrets, then literally reads her mind, and the show plays it as cute. For a high school show in 2026, that’s pretty tone-deaf about privacy and consent.
No foreboding
There’s almost no sense of dread. They’ve got an Uber driver who could be a villain, which is a good setup. Then the show confirms he’s the villain before the first 23-minute episode is even over. You don’t have to tell me yet. Let me wonder about him for a few episodes. That’s half the fun of a supernatural show.
The plot hole that did it for me
The show sets a rule: Tegan (Duplass) can only bend time when it’s critical. About ten minutes later, she bends time to get a better look at a hot boy. That’s not a loophole. That’s the show forgetting its own rule inside the pilot, the very first episode, and once you see that, it’s hard to care about any other stakes it sets up.
Verdict
1/5. A few cute moments buried under clichés, zero suspense, and a magic system the pilot can’t keep straight for half an hour. If you’re fifteen and love witch stories, maybe it works for you. I’m out after episode one.
Research and drafting assistance for this review, including checking the cast’s ages, was provided by Claude (Anthropic). The opinions are my own.