.png){kind=link}
“But as of today, you and I will be together. Bound by... magic!”
Darcy and Riven are a couple featured in Winx Club. Despite amounting to a short fling, both parties seemed to fall and care deeply for the other initially and spent almost all their time together. Somewhere along the way however, Darcy had fallen out of love with Riven and began using this relationship as a means of keeping him under her thumb as her spy.
Overview[]
Initially drawn to the inner darkness she sensed within Riven during their run-in in "Friends in Need," Darcy always had an eye out for him with the hopes of getting to use him as an ally to her and her sisters. However, on the Day of the Rose, these feelings have grown into a full-blown crush on the cold Specialist, to the point where she gets directly involved in swaying him to the side of the Trix. As for Riven, after getting himself hurt during the Race for the Rose as a part of the Trix's plans, he falls for Darcy at first glance; captivated by her beauty and the fact that she saved him. In fact, he keeps Darcy at his side when he finally decides to leave his squad of Specialists and is shown having started a relationship with his beautiful rescuer by the episode "Betrayed!".
From there, Darcy feeds into Riven's deep-seated feelings of frustration at his talents and real worth going unnoticed (in favor of Sky who had assumed his squire's name at the time), as well as his own feelings of inadequacy at the possibility that he has none of the talents he thinks he does, by insisting that he would be treated in the way he deserves so long as he sticks with her and her sisters. With a magic link formed between the two of them, Riven goes on to work as a mole for Darcy and her sisters by spying on the Winx and his former squadmates to uncover weaknesses the Trix could exploit and reporting them to her in the hopes of pleasing her. Eventually, their relationship distorts into one that is solely exploitative on Darcy's end as she falls out of love with Riven at some point and keeps the relationship going to keep using him until she and her sisters acquire the Dragon's Flame and begin conquering Magix.
It is through this relationship that Riven learns how much evil he is capable of doing if it means having what he believed to be his true worth as a Specialist recognized, which ironically allows him to properly reflect on himself and change for the better. Additionally, it also helps his friends learn how to deal with Darcy's illusions due to having seen so many of her tricks firsthand.
Series[]
Season 1[]
Darcy's first encounter with Riven.
Darcy and Riven have their first run-in in the episode "Friends in Need," where Riven is knocked through a wall and falls unconscious in another corridor after trying and failing to face a rogue minotaur by himself. Darcy and her sisters, Icy and Stormy, eventually come across the unconscious Specialist during their search for the Dragon's Flame, and Darcy finds herself drawn to him.
Upon closer inspection, Darcy realizes that she was drawn to Riven due to his inner darkness, which she believes to be on par with that of the Prince of Darkness but, aside from that, she leaves him be to continue searching for the Dragon's Flame, with Icy claiming that Riven could be of use to them at a later point.
This later point comes in the following episode, where the Trix use the Day of the Rose as their opportunity to ruin the blossoming relationships between the Specialists and Winx.
After seeing Riven blow up at his friends for laughing at Bloom humiliating him in public, Darcy finds herself smitten with him. Despite acting embarrassed and offended when Stormy suspects that she has begun to fall in love, Darcy voices concern for Riven he gets their special helmet from Bloom, who got it from Knut (disguised as Timmy), and watches the Race for the Rose unfold with a worried look on her face. She tries to downplay her growing affections by insisting that she finds Riven to be nice and nothing more when Stormy calls her out yet again for being soft, though, by this point, both her sisters are aware of her little crush and tease her for going "schmaltzy" on them.
Riven waking up to Darcy revealing herself as his rescuer.
- Winx Club - Episode 109
- Winx Club - Episode 110
- Winx Club - Episode 114
- Winx Club - Episode 119
- Winx Club - Episode 120
Season 2[]
Comics[]
Season 1[]
Season 2[]
Trivia[]
Darcy's additional info page in a Winx Magazine (in Italian).
- Due to one scene in the episode "A Friendship Sundered," the entirety of this relationship is still perceived as ambiguous by many.
- In the 4Kids dub of the series, Darcy explicitly uses hypnosis on Riven to get him to leave his friends for her under the excuse of healing him.
- Even in the Cinélume dub (and possibly the original Italian dub), Darcy uses magic to heal Riven and his first reaction of being smitten with her can be seen as being wildly out of character for him by that point. However, the rest of the season goes on to show that these had been actions Riven had done so willingly, even with him admitting his foolishness for thinking Darcy really cared about him during his moment of self-reflection during the War for Magix in "Storming Cloudtower."
- An official magazine page containing additional information on the Trix specifically notes that Darcy used dark magic to "conquer Riven," which could further imply that Riven's romantic feelings were the result of Darcy's magic to ensure that he would return her feelings.