'Coven Academy' Now Streaming on Disney+
Class is in session at Crescent Veil and we're here for it all. Coven Academy landed on Disney+ just in time for October. Witches, a New Orleans boarding school, and a love triangle that knows exactly what season it is.
October needed a school story, and Disney gave it one with a lock on the door.
Coven Academy premiered October 1 on Freeform, as part of 31 Nights of Halloween, and dropped the next day on Disney+ and Hulu. Creator Tim Federle — the writer behind High School Musical: The Musical: The Series — built it as a tribute to Charmed, Dawson’s Creek, and The Vampire Diaries, then aimed it at a Disney audience that is old enough for secrets and still young enough to believe a spell might work. It was first developed for Disney Channel, then moved to Freeform. That shift shows. This is not a cartoon lesson. It is a teen drama with teeth, rated TV-PG, and it knows when to turn the hallway lights down.
The school is Crescent Veil Academy, an elite magic boarding school in the haunted heart of New Orleans. Power is currency. Secrets are lethal. Attraction is a liability. That is the official line, and the show mostly earns it.
Briar Roberts, played by Malina Weissman (Violet Baudelaire in A Series of Unfortunate Events), is a sharp New Yorker sent south after her mother’s death. She arrives with questions the head of school, Miss Graves — Tiffani Thiessen, glamorous and not finished telling the truth — says will be answered in time. Her roommates become the coven: Sasha Baptiste (Jordan Leftwich), book-smart and able to read minds, and Tegan (Ora Duplass), good-natured and time-bending in a way the school has not fully explained.
The boys arrive on cue.
Jake (Malachi Barton) is the rebellious warlock already leaning toward dark magic. Ollie (Louis Thresher) is a newly turned vampire who is handsome and not sure he should be trusted with a pulse. Devon Sawa guests as Mr. Cole, the charismatic warlock professor. If you grew up on Charmed and Final Destination, that casting is a wink.
On Disney+ and Hulu the season is 21 short chapters, most of them between 10 and 22 minutes. Freeform airs longer cuts. The short form is the argument critics are having: some say the cliffhangers yank you out, some say that is why you press play on the next one before the credits finish. Early reviews landed warm — Rotten Tomatoes had it at a perfect score off a small pile of notices — and the complaint that keeps repeating is the one you can live with in October. The effects are not always big. The feelings are.
What works, if you are watching it the way we are, is the found family. Briar does not want a coven. She wants an answer about her mother. Sasha and Tegan hand her both, whether she asked or not. The love triangle is there, and it is not shy, but the show is better when the three girls decide who gets to be trusted in a building full of adults who already know the ending. New Orleans does the rest. The city is not a backdrop. It is the reason the magic feels old.
No jump-scare. No lecture. Just a boarding school, a dead mother, a cricket-sized conscience wearing a vampire’s face, and a headmistress who smiles like she has already read the last chapter.
Stream it with the lights low. Class is in session.
And we're here for it all.
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