Review of Princess Twilight Sparkle

Late, I know but I intended to watch it after buying it on iTunes but it never showed up, so I broke down and looked it up on youtube. Anyway, a long, point-by-point review:

For starters, I came into this episode utterly neutral, as I have been with the whole alicorn Twilight thing, but that lasted only until Twilight started crashing. Hilarious! Never mind the sweet animation! Anyway, after that I wondered about Twilight's having to stay in Canterlot, and even now I don't think that was completely necessary, aside from giving Twi an excuse to stay away from Ponyville.

The gag about Pinkie reassuring her that she wasn't missing anything also fell flat for me, though the apology scene helped make up for that. Celestia's reassurance about Twilight doing fine was nice but her description of the Summer Sun Celebration managed to contradict, or at least confuse me about, the first episode about the defeat of Nightmare Moon. Also, is it just me or did Pinkie end up pretty flanderized throughout the episode with her focus on frosting and coloring? Skewed priorities jokes are fun and all, but still, can't we keep the character development intact please?

The disappearance of Celestia and Luna and the growth of the Evergree Forest added a nice, if out of place, feeling dramedy vibe (To be fair, I love dramedy anyway, but it seems odd to put it right in the middle with MLP). Watching the vines growing and messing with the Apple family and the clouds and magic screwing with Rainbow and Rarity was great, if slightly disturbing. Twilight's arrival put the pendulum back closer to comedy than drama, where it stays for a while, with Discord bathing, and giving my favorite call back (to Winter Wrap-up) which was hilarious, as was the rest of his scene. However, after the comedy minute with the chaos god, it goes straight to drama with that potion. Not that that's a bad thing. I just prefer it not in the middle.

The flashbacks to Celestia and Luna's final battle, battle with Discord, and finding The tree of Harmony were...damn. Never mind the implications. I'm trying to figure out if Luna's transformation was completely willing or not based on what I saw, though, but I didn't see anything to suggest anything either way.

As to the five non-princesses going on without Twilight, it reminded me just how much exposition was in the episode (not a bad thing), and bugged me because it didn't make sense to me. It was like the writers were finding any reason to get rid of her and give her a reason to come in to save/be saved by the others. And what do you know, when she goes back into the forest, she needs saving, which we realize when we see they need her (though the Spike fainting bit elicited a guilty chuckle from me).

Anyway, let's get to returning the elements to the Tree of Harmony. It's going to be a big change, but I think it's for the best. They were a giant deus ex machina that could be called on anytime things were going wrong, so now they will have to be more creative in finding solutions and that's always good, and the revelation that Discord was behind all this (if 1000 years ago) gives me so much material to work with (what else does he have up his sleeve?). The six locked chest and the seeming one final dose of the potion (she didn't drain it with her final dose) are such great Chekhov's guns that I can hardly resist.

I will only say one thing about the celebration at the end: it completely screws up my headcanon timeline (Help me!). I always thought each season was about 10 months long (A year if I ignored Secret of my Excess), but this seems to suggest that it's only been a year since Luna was reformed as it's a celebration of that. This isn't helped by Twilight mentioning that the Grand Galloping Gala was coming up in Green Isn't Your Color Sweet and Elite which takes place in season 2.

Overall, I would give the episode an 8.1 out 10. Very good but nowhere near Hurricane Fluttershy or Luna Eclipsed good.

Edit: episode confusion