Is Maleficent a Good Witch or a Bad Witch? Good, but only if she's a mother

In modern pop culture, rather than be outcasted from society and burned at stake for being heretics and not conforming with heteronormative expectations, witches can be depicted as good as well as bad, or a mixture of both. We, the audience, are jealous of them, watching witch and wizard characters go to training schools to harness or teach advanced spells. This can be seen in shows in movies like Harry Potter, Wizards of Waverly Place, Legacies, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. While the 2014 Maleficent does not go to Hogwarts, she does have her own magical realm and acts as a maternal figure and magic teacher to Princess Aurora, whose mother is mostly absent from both the original and newer films. As a result, Maleficent, despite her initial mistake of cursing Aurora, is seen as a Good Witch and Fairy Godmother by the end of the story - despite the film telling you that she is neither. However, Jeana Kadlec argues that by "making the witch a mother" who abdicates her throne, Maleficent becomes less frightening, in exchange for losing the power and individuality that once defined her as an independent queer-coded Disney icon.