Mary Rooke Commentary and Analysis Writer
The upcoming Netflix animated film “Steps” is the latest salvo in a decades-long cultural campaign to erase moral absolutes from children’s entertainment. But at what cost?
Netflix is known for its subversive content that tells its viewers what’s bad is good and vice versa. So, the streaming platform’s reimagining of the classic Cinderella tale from the perspective of its traditional villainous stepsisters, now portraying them as kind and misunderstood, is anything but new. It’s a washed-up trope that Hollywood has been using to hide the reality that it’s incapable of making fresh, imaginative content.
And it’s so much more than that. By painting the wicked stepsisters as the unfairly maligned outcasts, the movie explicitly inverts one of the oldest cautionary tales in Western civilization. It opens children’s minds to the idea that the classic, obvious character traits of evil people should be ignored.
First look at ‘STEPS’, a new animated film that follows Cinderella’s evil stepsisters who are actually depicted as kind & misunderstood
Starring Ali Wong and Stephanie Hsu as the stepsisters
Releasing in 2026 on Netflix pic.twitter.com/sseTqeFaKt
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) December 8, 2025
Traditional fairy tales served a vital purpose. They were used to protect children and teach them that evil exists. Thanks to these stories, children learned from an early age that villains often wear a smiling face and that cruelty has consequences. In Cinderella, the wicked stepmother and stepsisters were not complex, misunderstood characters who deserve second chances. Instead, children were shown the truth, that they were abusers who tormented an innocent girl for years. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
These stories allow a child to develop the moral understanding they need to spot potential predators in real life. If we teach them instead that every villain is secretly a hero, we raise an entire generation of children, especially girls, to feel suicidal empathy for abusers. The result is that they can no longer confidently determine whether a person is dangerous, because they have been trained since preschool that labeling anyone as “bad” is an unforgivable sin.
When we tell kids that no one is really evil, we rob them of the tools to keep themselves safe https://t.co/oh9CPhwK9n pic.twitter.com/2zSyBtUmc6
— Niels Hoven 🐮 (@NielsHoven) December 9, 2025
Additionally, it erases personal responsibility. These children are taught that they can excuse any of their behavior by claiming to be a victim. They can identify with the evil characters in these movies without worrying about the consequences of their actions.
If the wicked stepsisters were actually good the whole time, then their years of emotional and physical cruelty toward Cinderella become … what? A misunderstanding? A failure of communication? It’s actually Cinderella’s fault for not noticing their hidden kindness sooner, dontcha know. All their acts of malice were good works disguised by a false understanding of right and wrong perpetrated by traditionalism. (ROOKE: The Left’s Favorite Wine Mom Encapsulates Their Suicide Pact)
The message Netflix wants to send is clearly that traditional morality is suspect, biblical notions of good and evil are outdated, and the only sin is judging anyone else’s behavior. Through children’s entertainment, they are subverting parents’ ability to teach their children to discern wolves in sheep’s clothing and are actively grooming kids to become susceptible prey.
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