Give me an eternity, I'll give you an update!
Yeah, that's the vibe I got by the end of it.
As for the episode itself...I did not like it. I thought it was okay as goofy, if apocalyptic, time-travel fun...but then they did what they did at the end, and...no, I cannot accept this. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
...
History abhors a paradox.
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Funny you mention the paradoxes, because my mind kept flashing back to the various bad Paradox Endings of Final Fantasy XIII-2.
If it wasn't for the god damn ending, I'd have rated this among my top three of all time. Alas, it will have to suffice with being somewhere in my top twenty or so.
My initial views of the ending were negative but I'm starting to review that viewpoint.
Nonetheless there is just this feeling of something missing. There should have been this one dramatic Wham! that got through to Starlight Glimmer. One single instant in which she changed rather than Twilight wearing her down. Maybe Twilight could have given her hope by drawing on the example of Moon Dancer or something - Their destinies tore them apart but they were able to rebuild.
3574620
In the words of a man whose opinions I often agree with, a fellow called Pascoite (you might know [of] him):
"She saw what had become of the world and at first thought it was a trick, but then didn't care. If they cut out that second step to where she was immediately horrified once convinced, I could see a quicker conversion, but she's hard-core once that's established, and then she goes for the quick friendship sell. It's pretty jerky."
It was to be expected that they'd pull a villain reform card. They seem to love doing that a lot. However I think it's alright except for the fact that it was rushed. The fault lies in the fact that they rushed Starlight Glimmer's character reformation and gave her the easy shortcut of having everyone instantly become her friend and that's fucking terrible. I would have been fine with the ending leaving off at Twilight offering to become Starlight's mentor, or maybe let Starlight find her own path to redemption and let her come back later like Trixie. Idk. Anything but what we got today.
I thought the ending was fine, myself. A little rushed and it could have been fleshed out more but it still worked in the grand scheme of things.
Makes me want to plig in my NGC and play Timesplitters.
3574654 I would've gone with her being locked up for a short time (a month at the very least) with community service before she could be reformed. Then, maybe we would have a slightly better ending.
Eh. I guess I have no strong feelings either way... or not yet, the whole episode needs to "sink in" first.
It certainly was leagues and bounds better then what I was afraid was going to happen.
At the end, Twilight keeps talking on about how Starlight has EXTREMELY high magic, and that "even one friendship can make Equestria more powerful", and that Starlight never made a single friend after loosing her first one.
And the Starlight started singing.
You know what that reminded me of?
Magical Mystery Cure.
(And Crusaders of the Lost Mark I guess, I kinda saw it coming at the last moment that they were gonna get their marks --- because of the unusually high amount of musical numbers in the episode.)
Do you know what I thought this meant?
This blasted rumor going around of "Starlight Glimmer turns everypony into an alicorn / gives everypony wings", and that the episode involved time travel... So I naturally was assuming it was gonna be an alternate timeline where everypony (somehow) turned into an alicorn... maybe by having Starlight intercept the blast from the Elements during "Magical Mystery Cure" to divert it at everypony in Ponyville or even Equestria.
Not only would that have been disastrous from a fandom-perspective, it also would have completely destroyed the meaning of alicorn-ascension.
AND, bizarrely enough, from an in-universe perspective it would have raised the question "how come Celestia didn't try to do this? Why WOULDN'T they want everypony to be an alicorn...?" Brrrrrr.
So when the whole time-travel plot is resolved, and nopony had turned into an alicorn yet --- and THEN Starlight Glimmer started singing...
I was cringing the entire last 5 minutes of the episode, until it mercifully cut off to the credits with nothing disastrous happening.
Damn, I f&%%&ing hate spoilers. And fake spoilers are somehow even worse.
YOU CAN'T DO THAT
YOU'LL CREATE A TIME PARADOX
Time - Bomb.
Starlight > Twilight ?!? Unicorn > Alicorn ?!?
System fault error: Core cannon paradox detected. Engaging temporal purge protocols.
Well don't this just suck.
No SIr, I didn't like it.
Over all the ending was ... rushed, and Starlight, though now canonically empowered, fails as a protagonist for being revealed to be a hollow, petty, sham.
3574618
I agree, too bad an episode can't take a mulligan.
3576585
Conflicted.
One the one hand, I've always quietly hoped Alicorns aren't the end-all, be-all of powerful magic users. So, seeing Twilight struggle with a 'mere' Unicorn was good.
On the other, I didn't like Starlight from the beginning. I thought she was a boring version of Sunset Shimmer.
Plus, even with the battle of Starlight against Twilight, it still shows that the writers can't think of a way for a villain to be truly dangerous without magic. So it always comes down to Unicorns or other magical creatures. All three tribes of ponies being equal sounds nice when it's obvious only one really has potential by themselves.
3577009
I'm going to have to agree with you on all points, though I don't think Starlight can even really be compared to Sunset Shimmer beyond the idea that they are powerful mages, they are too radically different and Starlight is so poorly fleshed out that it's rather embarrassing.
Honestly I did not like this episode. When I examine it I find a laundry list of writing problems that seem so common in the series. I could go on for a bit about the sudden retcon of how time travel functions, the fact that once again we have a season final centered almost entirely around Twilight, or even the nonsensical way the timeline change randomly spawned half a dozen alternating Bad "the villain won" Futures for no good reason rather then just one (likely the Discord or maybe Tirek timelines as none of the other villeins could conceivable hold a candle to them in terms of power levels). Instead I will address one trend that has irking me since season 3: The way the writers seem to drop the ball on redemption arc's/episodes.
I can see what they were trying to do with Starlight, create a villain "for the season" that would come back and Twilight could show them what she had tried to at the end of S05E02 and redeem them ect. ect. However not only was it executed in the most trite, lazy, sloppy, tacked on manner imaginable, but in a way that I kind of find strait up insulting and wasteful. Basically for quite a long time I have been of the stance that if the show wanted to do a redemption arc for a character and actually do it well then they should do a two parter, as one of the main problems I found with those episodes was a lack of time to execute it believably. I sincerely feel that MMC should have been pushed back an Keep Calm And Flutter On should have gotten another episode and could have (if done properly) served as a much more satisfying season final. As it is Discords redemption has flavors/hints of a arc that could have been good compelling and believable but due to time constraints feels incredibly watered down, simple, and poorly executed.
The only redemption episode that I feel did it very well was Trixie's, and that's in part due to the fact that it starts out like one of the bad "Trixie is a evil dog kicking maniac" fanfic's that were so common back then, before turning around and saying "no, that is so ludicrously OOC for her that she MUST be under the control of dark forces". It also gave her a legitimate reason for seeking out power to get payback rather then pride, the misdirected blame from the town at the end of Boast Busters destroyed her life, she had every reason to hold a grudge. Still there are many loose threads surrounding her that beg for a follow up episode.
Even the episodes that were at least passable/decent feel like they would have benefited from the extra ~28 minutes (Sunset dosn't fall victim to this issue really as she has film length time to work with). DT's shift was rather sudden and felt like it needed more build up, and Gilda's felt somewhat oversimplified and it was missing a number of scenes going farther into her character, while at the same time the episode was laced with some MONUMENTALLY stupid writing decisions (the Griffin's problem boiling down to not having friends/friendship and the stink of "the white man's burden" that rears it's head in places), and I LIKED Lost Treasure of Griffinstone.
So to say I'm irked by the fact that when they do the ONE redemption arc with 2 episodes not only is it for the one character that practically no one was interested in seeing get one, but then they shove the entirety of the redemption plot and character background/pathos for her INTO THE LAST ~10 MINUTES OF THE LAST EPISODE!!!!!!!! is ya a understatement...
I am sorry FIM writers, I am, but really seriously truly: what the fuck is wrong with you?
3577009 I'm in agreement with you. They did invoke the "Star Swirl Spell Clause" of sorts, with Starlight coattailling Star Swirl's power via the spell. In the Season opener Starlight is no match for Twilight once she has her cutie-mark back, but in the finale is now more? powerful and may always have been? (Twilight mentions this in council with the M6 at the end of the episode).
It does tread awkwardly close to cannon in some ways ... Twilight completed StarSwirl's final spell to become an Alicorn, so why not Starlight here. Well, she only modified a spell not discovered a new form of magic.
Plot fault/ Plot hole - Starlight's lost friend Sunburst = cop out. Their friendship is irreparably broken when he gains his cutie mark and is sent off to CSGU, never to be seen again. But Starlight also gains a magical talent cutie mark, but didn't? attend CSGU and reincounter Sunburst? Odd.
Yet somehow studied the old masters (again mentioned in the season opener, I believe), and learned cutie mark removal magic? (Possible new school/type of magic, but no alicorn elevation? - err?)
Personally, I was hoping the CMC's would have been the ones to redeem Starlight, with their shared destiny somehow untainted by Starlight's temporal tampering.
Next season is going to involve a lot of explanations I think.
Oh, and an alternate future appearance of AJ's parents might have been nice. Just saying.
3574654 yeah pretty much , should have taken her back to the present with twi every time so she could give her initial reaction that it's just a trick by twi to change her mind but after each time the present is different she doubts that a little more until she realizes that those were all futures she was causing with her actions and then it would have been a much better way for twi to then give her little speech and starlight reforms.....
......also the entire problem of her life could have been avoided too since she showed she could go back in time to when her important event happened and she could have just stopped that and fixed her childhood and everything would have been fine......you know , kind of like a thinking creature would rationalize to do instead of that elaborate revenge plot.......
also the writers totally blew the chance to do a corrective time travel narrative that was successful by making the episode about twilight going back to the tragic time where starlight gave up on friendship (which would be different than the scenario shown in the episode) and her doing different things to try and be friends with her until she realizes another thing that makes friendship magic and shares that with star and she see the light kinda thing......
.....oooor alternatively another far more interesting and impactful narrative that i just though of after the last paragraph that they could have been tried where instead of going through a bunch of timelines while fighting each other they could just go back to 1 ruined present equestria and then have some key plot thing happen that keeps them stuck there and they have to work together to make it through this new ruined world to stop nmm or whatever so they can go back and stop this mess from happening , and over the course of it twi does her best to talk about how great her friends are and tries to do her best to take care of starlight even though she's still resisting any friendlyness by her perceived enemy , and then in the final confrontation star makes the faithful decision to refuse temptation with the evil and instead save twilight from certain doom and they both escape and fix everything....................man i should write fanfics while in this mild stoned state.....
hah , that is of course not to suggest that what the writers came up with for this episode wasn't fanfic level material , cause it was , rather bad fanfic material i felt......
3639255 I have nothing further to add. Your ideas are pretty good.
3639454 that's a first :o .....
actually i even made a blog on my account for it heh...
http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/578895/hey-i-have-watchers-that-will-see-this-right-well-how-bout-some-thoughts-on-the-season-final