Wizards Beyond Waverly Place Season 1, Episode 7 Review: ‘We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Float’

Learning.

We all learn at different speeds and in different ways. Personally, I learn by doing. Some learn by reading. There’s just all sorts of different ways. In this episode of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, this is a lesson that Justin Russo is going to have to learn. And Billie, she’s going to have to learn that learning is something that is of the utmost importance, in order to do things correctly and safely.

We all know that Alex left Billie with Justin so that he can train her how to be the best wizard that she can be. It’s a lot of reading, but that’s definitely not something that she likes to do. She wants to test out spells. She knows that she’s going to make mistakes, but she’s okay with that. Then again, of course she is – she’s a child.

But the thing that you can’t help but love about Billie is that she’s trying to hard and she’s really putting her heart into things. She wants to succeed, but she is also relatable because she’s a teenager doing things on her own terms. I love that even as young as she is – she’s a powerful, fearless girl. It’s good for girls to see that you don’t have to be limited.

Justin is giving Billie a ton of reading and homework and she’s not sure what to do. She doesn’t want to do any of it, which means that she’s avoiding Justin like the plague. She knows that she needs to do the work, but doesn’t want to. TBH, she reminds me a lot of Alex and having a character like Alex is so essential to any Wizards television show or storyline.

Justin Russo want to be a great teacher and I respect that. Where he is failing is that he thinks that every student needs to be like him and learn the way that he does. He takes this load on and he needs to learn to be more flexible.

Billie does finish her quizzes, by cheating. She finds a help like and calls it – manipulating the person on the other end to give her a completion spell.

And that person on the other end is Justin and Alex’s Dad, Jerry Russo.

I love Jerry Russo and have missed him. I knew that we’d get to see some characters from the original series, but if we’re being honest, the way we saw him didn’t feel authentic. Yes, we know that he’s in the wizarding world, but with his family values, I would have thought we’d see at first in more of a grandparent capacity. The Russo’s have always placed family first, so to see Jerry this way just didn’t feel like he would be.

I think that is one thing that I feel is missing from this show. The family values, togetherness, and also seeing the kids interact with friends more outside of school. It feels like the world is their oyster – they live in NYC – and we’re seeing them only in two places.

When Billie makes the school float – well float – it’s the most that we’ve seen them outside of the house. I would have thought with all of the changes that are being made that there would be a glow up with the show.

It feels like they are falling into the same trap that Girl Meets World fell in. They kept the show so young and so isolated to two locations, that you really didn’t feel like characters were growing.

I love the lessons – because hey that’s what I grew up with. However, I want some character development.

And I want things to matter.

Billie wanted to get her homework done so she could be on a float for school – but she doesn’t realize in the mortal world that floats aren’t supposed to actually float. It’s something that I didn’t think that had to be explained, but for Billie it did.

When it was floating, Billie had to try to figure out how to get her, Roman, and Milo down. It would have been easy had she done her homework, but she hadn’t. When she got them down, she realized that she would have been able to fo it easier had she done her homework.

What I did love was that Jerry talked to Justin and told him that he needs to adapt to the way that people learn and that he needs to loosen up with Billie. For Justin that may be the hardest thing.

He needs to take the win while he can.

Wizards Beyond Waverly Place is streaming now on Disney+.

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