‘Wednesday’ Meets ‘Charmed’ in Disney+’s Newest Supernatural Teen Drama, According to Creator

Published Oct 5, 2026, 4:00 AM EDT

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Editor's note: The following contains major spoilers for Coven Academy.

Summary

• Coven Academy channels CW-style YA witch drama: dark, witty, set in spooky New Orleans.
• Moved from Disney Channel to Freeform to embrace darker, more mature themes.
• Love triangle fuels yearning slow-burn romance; Briar, Sasha, Tegan form a coven with open questions.

Widely regarded as the most haunted city in the U.S., New Orleans is the perfect setting when you’re telling a story about teenage witches and warlocks at an elite magic school. The Freeform/Disney+ series Coven Academy follows Briar (Malina Weissman), Sasha (Jordan Leftwich), and Tegan (Ora Duplass), as they figure out how they work as friends and as a coven. When you throw Briar, the new girl in school, into the middle of a love triangle with Jake (Malachi Barton), a warlock with a taste for black magic, and Ollie (Louis Thresher), a new vampire who is reluctant to drink human blood, and you reveal that there are some major secrets involving her family history, you have the makings of a deliciously fun supernatural drama with endless possibilities for the future.

After screening the 21 chapters that make up Season 1, Collider got the opportunity to chat with creator Tim Federle (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series) about all of the big twists and turns and where that could go in a possible Season 2. During the interview, he discussed recreating The CW formula for a new generation, why the series ultimately moved from Disney Channel to Freeform, the joy of casting Tiffani Thiessen and Devon Sawa, the moment during filming with the coven trio that made him cry, the Briar-Ollie-Jake love triangle and why it’s so hard to choose, the kiss that didn’t make it to the final cut, the possibility of a cure for vampirism, and all the questions he’d still like to answer. He also talked about his love of working with such talented young ensembles and watching Olivia Rodrigo’s career skyrocket into the stratosphere.

‘Coven Academy’ Is Looking To Recreate the CW Formula for a New Generation

"I pitched it as 'Wednesday' with witches."

Image via Freeform

COLLIDER: I grew up on all The CW shows. I loved all The CW shows. I miss all The CW shows. I really loved how this show really has that kind of vibe. It also has the same blend of new younger cast with older familiar faces. Were you hoping to fill that void with this series? Was that something you thought about at all?

TIM FEDERLE: Candidly, it was the exact target. I pitched it as Wednesday with witches, but I grew up with Dawson’s Creek and Charmed and The Craft and Hocus Pocus and Practical Magic. I really wanted, in some ways, to recreate some of the formula of those shows for a new generation, and it was a direct target.

It makes me so sad that there’s a generation of kids that don’t get those shows because they no longer have a home on The CW.

FEDERLE: I’m hoping it re-sparks some. There’s a lot of YA right now, which I love, that’s very grounded, whether it’s in the sports world or it’s just a more grounded mystery, and it’s fun to do something in this Buffy adjacent space.

Did you include any specific nods to any of those shows or movies in this? Were there any ways that you wanted to pay direct homage to any of it?

FEDERLE: Maybe not visually. I feel like the production designer of the pilot, Jennifer Morden, is herself very young and witchy, and her set decorator (Victoria Pearson) is young and witchy. I know that they studied like crazy everything we just talked about, and I think there are visual cues throughout that very much point to it without actually recreating something from those shows. I think there are other ways, whether it’s a tribute to those or not, that we’re just trying to be Disney but not Disney, with needle drops and a soundtrack that hopefully feels maybe a little more modern or at least like something people don’t always tune into Disney to expect. So, there are lots of signals throughout, like with some of the casting. Tiffani Thiessen and Devon Sawa were my childhood. They’re frankly not much more senior than I am. That’s a full Gen X legacy play because they are still so fresh and relevant as performers, but certainly there’s a generation who may not know them from Final Destination or Saved by the Bell. That is a very joyful part of this job.

Was there something about witches, in particular, that you found appealing when it comes to telling stories?

FEDERLE: I’m always looking for metaphor. When I tell musical stories, it’s like a character’s emotions get so big they have to sing. What I recognized as the access point for magic was, when your feelings get to be too big to express normally or in a typical way, you can do a spell, you can make something blow up, you can shift time. When I started digging into what I felt like as a high schooler, which was misunderstood or an outcast in some way, I started thinking about what I truly believe as an adult storyteller, which is that everything that sidelined me when I was young is what I lean into now, whether it’s a quick wit or seeing things differently. As a gay guy who grew up in the ‘90s, one of my superpowers became observation because I would sit quietly in rooms and try to figure out where the dynamics were so that I wouldn’t get beat up, frankly. Ultimately, witches felt like a really rich territory. I also just think Disney actually has a history of some really fun witches. It’s been a while since one of these, I hope, classic YA witch shows has been on the air, and it felt like an opportunity to reclaim some of that space.

‘Coven Academy’ Was Set To Debut on Disney Channel Before Making the Move to Freeform

"I like the idea of a headline that’s, 'Watch the show that was too risqué for Mickey.'"

Image via Freeform

This was originally set to premiere on Disney Channel, but it’s been said that the move to Freeform was due to its mature content and themes. Did you always know that this show would get a little darker? Did that evolve as you got deeper into the storytelling of it?

FEDERLE: I like the idea of a headline that’s, “Watch the show that was too risqué for Mickey." Yeah, from the beginning this was an idea in search of the exact perfect platform. There were executives at Disney, particularly Ayo Davis and Charlie Andrews, who championed this show from the very first dinner we had in Pasadena two summers ago. Ayo was like, “I want to play with format.” And I said, “I want to do something with witches.” And I went home and wrote the first chapter of the show that night. The second we got into blood, making out, some of the language, some of the themes, and some of the depth of family questions and first love questions, I think it was pretty clear this was not a Disney Channel show.

At the same time, I’m sitting on the Disney lot right now because I’m editing the Romy and Michele sequel. I think something that’s exciting about working in the space of Disney is that the brand is actually quite flexible with how far you can go, as long as it retains like a central core about friendship and aspiration and choosing goodness even when darkness is at your doorstep. For those reasons, it still feels inherently Disney, even if it’s not quite what people maybe are expecting.

You’ve also talked about what a dream it is to launch stars. What did you see in these three young women at the center of this, that make your trio of witches? What made Malina Weissman, Jordan Leftwich, and Ora Duplass your Briar, Sasha, and Tegan?

FEDERLE: I have not told this story, but there was a moment during the pilot where the three young ladies shot the seance scene that happens in Chapter 3, and they were so plugged in and so emotional and they so had each other’s backs. I remember pulling them aside – and I created the pilot and directed the pilot, and I was tired – and I just started crying. I was like, “When I wrote this show six months ago, you were the three that I pictured, and I can’t believe how you’re bringing it to life.” In created these characters, I actually imagined that Briar, Sasha, and Tegan would very much look like these three actors, but that ends up being the least important thing.

Malina has a Brooklyn girl, cool thing that’s so authentic and so real. She is a young woman of today who styles herself for interviews and wears her badassery on her sleeve, and that is who Briar is. For Ora, this is her first big job. Hundreds of young women auditioned for Teagan, and Ora was the only person who did it straight. Because she was so straightforward and earnest about it, that’s what made it funny. And there’s an innocence to Ora. She’s the youngest cast member and there’s a non-jadedness that was really important. And then, Jordan is a runway model who has so much depth and who did her homework and who came in with a notebook full of questions for me. From the jump, when she came in for Sasha, she was so dialed into this character who can read others but is still trying to understand herself. We did a chemistry read with all three of them, which is when you bring in a combination of different actors to see who ultimately vibes, and there was something electric when they read together. It felt undeniable, and that has been the case since day one. It’s really special. They really became like sisters.

Tim Federle Launched Olivia Rodrigo With ‘High School Musical: The Musical: The Series’ but She Would Have Been a Star No Matter What

"I opened the door, but she would have become Olivia Rodrigo."

Image via Disney+

You also launched Olivia Rodrigo’s career in a huge way with High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. What did you see in her at that time? Are you surprised by just how meteoric her career rise has been?

FEDERLE: Look, there’s no predicting a meteor, but if anyone was going to do it, it was Olivia. Because I care about all those kids so much, I probably should hasten to add that it’s been fun to watch them all. Julia Lester has gone on to be a Tony nominee. Matt Cornett is starring in a new Prime show (Every Year After). And Frankie [Rodriguez] is so amazing on Chad Powers. They’ve had these blossoming careers. But for Olivia, it was about authenticity. Season 1 of that show, we had all these incredible songwriters pitching on the show, but Olivia was posting these Instagram songs from her bedroom with no makeup that were rough drafts. It was piano, camera, send, and it was so unfiltered and so plugged in.

I’ve always grown up a music lover. I grew up with the sound of folk music in our house, and I don’t think Olivia even knows this. This is something I’ve actually never talked about, which is that I went to Olivia and said, “I think you’re an incredible songwriter. You’re 16. You’re studying for school right now and starring in this show, but if you have time, you should take a shot at the song about Nini choosing between these two guys, and ultimately where she falls on that.” So, a week later, Olivia turned in “All I Want.” It didn’t have a title, but the lyrics were really plugged in. Olivia’s first drafts, in my experience, have always been extraordinary, and I remember listening to it and saying, “Oh, I think you should call it ‘All I Want.’” And she said, “Okay, cool.” And so we called it “All I Want.”

What I think Olivia maybe doesn’t know is that one of Joni Mitchell’s first really major songs was called “All I Want,” and at the moment when I first heard her rough draft, I felt like she was plugged into something so real and so goosebumpy that I was like, “She’s going to be Joni Mitchell.” I pitched that title because I thought it would be a really cool universe inside joke that I saw for her that she was going to be a songwriter for the ages, and she’s become that. You said I helped launch her. I opened the door, but she would have become Olivia Rodrigo. A lot of the themes I write about have to do with fate and choice, and are you going to become your parents or not? Are you destined to first love or not? In both of these shows, there’s some DNA in that. But Olivia has always had this electric talent. She kept her brilliance close to the vest. She was very subtle. For all her background as a theater kid, she was actually, in some ways, the really calm one on set. She was like the old pro on High School Musical. She’d already been a series regular. It’s pretty incredible, it really is.

We see Briar torn between these two guys, Ollie and Jake. That puts her friendship with Sasha in an interesting place because Sasha has previously dated Jake and she also hates vampires, so there’s a lot going on there. Was it important to you that both of these guys offer something interesting and different, and that we see the good and the dangerous in both of them?

FEDERLE: Yeah. There’s no doubt about it that this show has the DNA of a lot of shows before it, but I wanted to do something with maybe a little fresher idea around vampires, which is that he’s not 70, he’s not 100, he’s not 300. He’s 17 and he was just turned. I liked the idea of, in some ways, the vampire is the angel and the warlock who goes to school for witchcraft and has this inherent power and he’s surrounded by good mentors and good adults, like Mr. Cole and Miss Graves, is the one drawn to darkness. There was definitely a play of the dark and light there.

Love triangles work for a reason. I think they can get audiences talking. I ultimately secretly think this is a show about sisters, but boy, those two guys are fun to write for. You’ve got Louis [Thresher], who had practically almost never been on a TV set before, and then Malachi [Barton], who’s grown up going to craft service in his diapers. It was really fun to play with the duality of that and the difference of that. With both of them taking it so seriously, I’m just very proud of them.

Everyone Involved With ‘Coven Academy’ Has an Opinion About the Love Triangle

"It's about chemistry that you can't know until you see it in hte cut or on set."

Image via Freeform

When you are creating and writing a love triangle like that, is it hard not to pick between them? Do you have to force yourself to stay neutral?

FEDERLE: Yes. And then, I have a writers’ room and we have these wonderful, very opinionated, strong-hearted writers in the room. And I have co-showrunners, Todd [Slavkin] and Darren [Swimmer], who ran Shadowhunters and Smallville. Everyone has a hot take. The cast has a hot take. In some ways, it’s about chemistry that you can’t know until you see it in the cut or on set. I’m not sure if Gina and Ricky were the original endgame of High School Musical, but in Episode 5, I saw Sophia [Wylie] and Josh [Bassett]’s chemistry and it became pretty obvious. Some of that has to play itself out. I think fandoms, particularly for genre shows, in my experience of observing it, can get extremely opinionated about things. My job now is to release the show and step away and not put my ear to the ground because you can go a little bit nuts. But I have suspicions about endgames across all the characters.

Ollie and Jake get dragged deeper into their worlds throughout the season. We see Ollie struggle with drinking human blood, and Jake gets deeper into practicing black magic. How did you figure out just how far you wanted to take those characters and how far you wanted to push them? What made you decide to have Ollie save Jake after how much they clashed?

FEDERLE: That was a writers’ room pitch. With Todd and Darren, we holistically looked at the whole season and were like, “Where are the places we can pivot and surprise the audience?” We might historically think of vampires or villains, or anyone who you other and monster, as doing all bad things or all good things. The opportunity with a show like this is to actually exist in the gray space. Briar has her bad days, Briar has her good days, and so does everyone.

The best villains – which is not what I consider Ollie or Jake – believe they are the protagonist. They have to believe, at the end of the day, that they’re doing something noble. So, the chemistry between Louis and Malachi was undeniable. It was fun to see these young men acting in such a heightened environment. You would think Ollie would lunge at Jake and kill him, and instead he does this very noble thing, which I think is a great act.

And then, in terms of the level of darkness, we went as dark as we could with S&P notes. They were like, “Just be sure when he bites, it doesn’t look too gruesome.” And I’d call my Disney exec and be like, “You know they’re killing each other, right?” It’s always a balance. I think it is one of the reasons we ended up on Freeform.

Things really escalate toward the end of the season, as the witches and vampires start to clash. Did you always know that you were going to have this reveal of Sasha learning that her brother is a vampire now?

FEDERLE: By the way, Nathaniel McIntyre, who’s the star of All American, I truly believe he’s on a Denzel [Washington] path. I think he’s an astounding actor. It’s fun to write characters with secrets and also reveals for those characters to learn in real time with the audience. I want this to be a multi-season show. We’re in New Orleans. I made a mistake on High School Musical, which is basically every character was an only child. With this show, I was like, “Okay, people need to have some siblings.” And then, when we started doing the math around the rules of what would happen if you were in a family where your parents both had these magical abilities and you’re born with it, but a sibling is not? That felt like some rich territory. I grew up in a family with an older brother who was so saintly and so brilliant, he literally became a priest. And I was this class clown musical theater kid who ended up in the principal’s office, where I would make the principal laugh. It sometimes felt like, do we have the same DNA?

Those are some questions that I think are interesting to answer in a show like this. We wanted a big reveal. And also, Jordan Leftwich has such a range as a young actor and she grew every single day on set, Season 1. I wanted to see her play those scenes of, what do I do now that I know my brother is alive but has turned? What does that mean? I think there’s probably some metaphor in there around themes of addiction and themes of how you love people even when they reveal themselves to be different than you expected or take a different path than you expect. So, yeah, we always knew that there’d be something in that sphere.

I love that you didn’t just leave it at the reveal, and that we do get that conversation afterwards.

FEDERLE: They’re so good and he is so fun to write for. Nate is really fun to write for and Jordan is astonishing to write for. When you’re casting a show, you’re always like, “Please let them all have a big range.” Sometimes people have an amazing audition, and it doesn’t show up on set. I have been very blessed, and this is a cast that brought it every single day.

Did you know from the beginning who was responsible for the death of Briar’s mom, and the how and the why of it all, especially with all the layers to that story?

FEDERLE: No. I had suspicions and I felt like it was an external force. But the more we ultimately realized there was a real story to tell with Jake, Jake’s legacy, and Jake’s apparently missing father, the more it felt like there could be a deeper story that interwove these different generations. I also didn’t want the adults in the story just to be passengers, for lots of reasons, including that I’m hoping to attract a Gen X audience and people watching with their kids and that it’s multi-generational. I always had a suspicion it wasn’t some random person in New York City and that it was something much closer. And then, as the room got together and we started really breaking stories and looking at casting and thinking about all these chapters we have, it became clear that it should be tied somehow to Jake’s story as well, so that there’s a deeper connection between Jake and Briar going into, fingers crossed, Season 2.

‘Coven Academy’ Leans Into the Yearning of Its Slow-Burn Romance

"To state the obvious, should we get a Season 2, there are stories to tell there."

Image via Freeform

What led to the moment with Briar and Jake at the end, getting closer while Ollie is watching from outside the window? That’s the most incredibly tragic, teenage love story thing that happens.

FEDERLE: It’s a slow burn. It’s yearning. I really wanted to foreground yearning in this show. Sometimes, as a modern storyteller, you feel like you have to tell every single story at once. What I didn’t want, and what none of us in the room wanted, was that Briar finds out the truth behind Jake’s dad and her mom’s death, and it turns out Ollie can’t be with her, so maybe she’ll just kiss Jake. I didn’t want it to feel flighty or flaky, so we made that choice. Rumor has it that we also shot a kiss version between Briar and Jake, and ultimately, we watched it and were like, “No, this isn’t actually where Briar’s head is.” There’s an undeniable attraction and chemistry there, but she is so sitting in a space of just reconciling with all the reveals that we didn’t want it to feel like a pivot out of circumstance or convenience rather than a real choice. To state the obvious, should we get a Season 2, there are stories to tell there.

I was in London working on The Greatest Showman (the stage show) during a lot of the shooting of the show, and I remember writing to the EPs and being like, “Please guys, get an alt. I know the execs are asking for a kiss to have it and to have that heat, but have an alt that protects Briar as well.” Ultimately, I’m really glad that we aired that one.

The way that it is, Ollie is clearly upset seeing them together.

FEDERLE: He is, and he has a real thing with Briar. There’s a genuine thing that he and Briar both share, and there’s a goodness to Ollie and a normalcy, in some strange way, despite what’s recently happened to him. I think Ollie is heading off to figure out his next move. He knows he’s a primal danger to people but ultimately wants to figure out if there’s a way to bypass that, which maybe there will be in a show about magic.

Did you always want to give yourself an out, as far as there maybe being a way to reverse the whole vampire thing?

FEDERLE: What Sasha is left doing at the end of the season is that she’s like, “F-it, I’m at a magic school. I’m pulling some books off the shelf.” I think she’s starting the journey of, is there something I can do to rescue my brother from this fate, whether he wants it or not, which we haven’t fully landed on. And then, I would think that will have some spillover into Ollie’s predicament as well.

There’s also Tegan and McKenna, who are only just starting to build a new relationship, and then you have this reveal that McKenna has been bitten. What did you want from that relationship and what made you want to take McKenna down that path?

FEDERLE: You can’t tell a modern story about modern young people without exploring all sorts of identity, including queer identity and the discovery, in real time, of what that could mean. This is the beginning of their story. I ultimately do not want to play into a tragic queer trope. I’m queer, and I grew up either seeing myself only represented as an AIDS victim or somebody who is a joke. I will always keep the long view of an arc that I think protects these characters and gives them, if not necessarily a happy ending together, because we’re not there yet, then something virtuous that they can ascend to.

At the end of the season, we learn that Briar is actually Miss Grace’s daughter, and that clearly is a bigger mystery that we don’t know more about yet. What can you say to tease where you want to take that and what will happen there?

FEDERLE: What I learned in running High School Musical was that people really wanted to understand the family life of these kids and not just what happens between lockers and classrooms. So, bringing Briar’s immediate family closer to her, as a bio mom, is a really interesting story. And then, I think there’s probably something in the coming darkness around the idea that if two witches are related by blood, they’re even more powerful. There’s something very threatening about that that feels like we’re going to want to explore that in the future.

Creator Tim Federle Has a Bunch of Questions He’d Like To Answer in Future ‘Coven Academy’ Chapters

"Where do Briar, Tegan, and Sasha go, now that they’ve officially anointed themselves as a coven?"

What are the questions that you’re most excited about answering in another season? What would you be most looking forward to exploring?

FEDERLE: Where do Briar, Tegan, and Sasha go, now that they’ve officially anointed themselves as a coven? What are they battling next? What side quests and adventures can they have that aren’t always so deep and dark? What does Miss Graves do now that Mr. Cole is returned to his rightful place and there’s a vibe there, and now that her birth daughter knows the truth? What is Ollie going to do with all these feelings? What is Jake going to do now that he knows his propensity for dark magic can lead to real darkness, but he still has the choice to choose the light? What is McKenna going to do? Is she going to turn hybrid and is she going to tell people? What’s Sasha going to do about her brother? Is she going to tell her parents? Is Tegan going to come out? Does she even need to come out? Those are the top questions. And then, is there anything that we can explore with the fact that it’s an international web of schools, without blowing it up too much and going to too many places too fast?

Coven Academy airs on Freeform and is available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.

Cast

• 

  Malina Weissman

  Briar

• 

  Malachi Barton

  Jake

• Jordan Leftwich

  Sasha

• Ora Duplass

  Tegan