Mlp Fim Season 5 finale. Alternate Timelines and making sense of them!(Spoilers!!!) · 11:50pm Dec 2nd, 2015
Hello everyone,
I've decided to bring forth my theory on the matter of the alternate timelines seen in the season 5 final and to make sense of them. Comments are appreciated and I would love for others to get involved and tell me what you agree/disagree/think with the timelines!
Without further adieu, let's leap into this messy and yet brilliant idea that the creators of MLP FIM have given us!
The Timelines and how they could be read
I want to start off with tackling one of the more...difficult issues with these timelines and the somewhat annoying process they were presented to us.
As of Episode 26 in the season finally, we have a total of 7 alternate timelines: The Crystal War Timeline, Chrysalis Reigns Timeline, Nightmare Moon Reigns Timeline, Tirek's Release Timeline, Discord's Unending Chaos Timeline, Flim and Flam's Corporate Takeover Timeline, and The Barren Wasteland Timeline.
This is where I call the writers out on sloppiness. All of these were presented as multiple timelines, but it should only be one. Some of you may disagree, but by watching the show we see all of these major events that happen. These will happen with or without the Mane Six meeting. Nightmare Moon will still Return, Sombra will still comeback with his Empire, and Discord will still cause chaos. The Mane Six not getting their cutie marks or becoming the Elements should not affect who comes and when.
So, how do we make sense of all of these events happening in one timeline?
Easy, we use the order in which the show, the canon show, presents the order in which who returns and when!
Let's start off with Nightmare Moon's return and takeover!
So, to star this off I do want to point out the most major flaw in this idea: Nightmare Moon. Eternal night should equal an eternal cold wasteland, but it doesn't because magic or whatever.
So, ignoring that glaring issue, Nightmare Moon returns, imprisons Celestia, takes over Equestria, and eternal night reigns supreme. I can understand other following Nightmare Moon after a while since her only 'evil' goal was to bring about ever lasting night, and with none of them dying due to this change it probably only take a small amount of time to convince that she, the poor younger sister, was sent to the moon for a thousand years by her big mean sister.
This goes on for about a year, maybe a little longer, and than we have Discord and his Unending Chaos!
I want to start off with saying that I love Discord's character, but what I missed about him was that he got shoved into the back when he was reformed. In this episode, we get to see what we missed so much from season 2: CHAOS!!!!
So, to fit this in one timeline we have to look back on Nightmare Moon's reign. When Discord breaks free and no Elements to stop him, Nightmare Moon gets her flank handed to her. Discord brings about never ending chaos and evaporates Nightmare's eternal night.
Some of you may mention that with Celestia in the moon and Nightmare Moon in control, how could Discord be seen messing with them in the episode? Well, the answer is that he freed them!
It makes sense when you think about it. Discord likes to play with the ponies, to mess with them. And out of all of them, Celestia and Luna are by far his favorite toys. So, he frees Luna from her corruption (It's no fun messing with her if she's not in the right mind) and Celestia from the Sun.
Now buckle in, because this is where it gets a little crazy!
So, Sombra and Chrysalis come around the same time. So, Discord probably declares war on them or they declare war on him in order to control Equestria. My theory is that while Discord could beat both of them, I think that Luna and Celestia saw this as their chance to take back their home. I don't know exactly how it could go: A knife in the back, maybe during a battle the two reconnected with the Elements our used some different magic to hit him when he was down.
Now we get into The Chrystal War Territory!
With Luna and Celestia back in charge, Equestria is able to launch a full scale war without the bothers of chaos wrecking their land. We know that at least Celestia is around due to us seeing her lead the armies of Equestria against Sombra, so either Luna is dead, fighting Chrysalis who is working with Sombra, or is somewhere defending Equestria.
With Equestria forced to use every resource at its disposal and the fighting on both fronts, Flim and Flam are able to take over the Equestrian Economy by providing their new machines for both war and resource gathering purposes. The reason they fit into this part of the timeline is that I don't see them being able to directly takeover Equestria, so the distraction of the war is a perfect opportunity.
Unfortunately, all is short lived when Chrysalis is able to obtain the Crystal heart. With her love magic, she is able to defeat a weaken Crystal Empire and Equestria.
Thus leading us to the Reign of Chrysalis!
Are you still conscious? You are? Good!
Here is where things mellow down a bit. With Equestria and the Crystal Empire shattered, we're left with ponies forced to flee into the Everfree and other places of the world. These freedom fighters consisting of veterans of the Crystal War and ponies who worked to help provide success try to combat the changelings. While this continues for a while, no winner is truly decided do to Chrysalis' ego and one of the biggest factors:
Tirek
Oh yes, once Tirek breaks loose hell descends upon this world! Tirek just devours everything and even Chrysalis and whatever forces are left have no ability to stop him. The changelings having as much love as they do only empowers the centaur, who than proceeds to blow the crap out of everything.
We see Tirek leveling the very world in his insane power drunken state, and why he's doing it is a mystery. But this is where the timeline reaches its most messy and mysterious point: What exactly leads to the 7th timeline, the Barren Wasteland with no life to be seen?
Well, there are three possible outcomes we can explore:
#1: Tirek, in his destructive rage, finally exterminates every ounce of life left on the planet, he himself dying due to the collapse of everything.
#2: An even more powerful force, one we have no clue about, comes out and finally puts the world out of its misery. This could become a future villain that the Mane Six have to stop, and I would be interested to see this baddie who ends the world.
#3: This one is the most darkest, but also makes the most sense. After all of the punishment it took: Nightmare Moon's Eternal Night, Discord's Chaos, Sombra and Chrysalis' war with Equestria, the Flim Flam brothers destroying the ecosystem to provided the materials they needed to supply Equestria with their products, and Tirek's destruction finally take its toll on the world. The planet is broken and beaten, with nothing left to support it.
It is sad when you think about it...that it was not some evil artifact that did our beloved ponies in, but themselves and the other species around them. It kind reminds me of the Nuclear threat the world faced, and still faces, during the Cold War. These ponies may not have had guns or bombs, but they made up with this destructive force with the same tool that kept them safe and alive:
Magic
On that sad note, I do wish to inform you that a lot of what I said was speculative and headcanonish at best. It is possible that this is what happened, and it makes a lot more sense than just saying that they were all separate timelines. As I said before, the Mane Six, as important as they are, would not affect Sombra or Nightmare Moon's return, or Tirek and Discord's freedom.
But this is just a theory, and I ask that you interpret it as you will. Leave a comment to let us know what you think about this and how you think is should go!
I wish all merry holidays ahead and I hope to see all of you soon!
Oh wow... That makes a lot of sense in the episode now.
I was thinking there was some kind of connection to the timelines.
I feel like the tree of harmony died in the 7th timeline, so that's why it was barred.
If you notice the table changes little by little in the timelines.
Oh send this to Dr.Wolf please! I think he would really like it
There is one major villain you didn't account for: Starlight herself.
What exactly happens when Starlight takes away the cutiemark of a pony? Could it be she steals all of their magic? Like Tirek does in this theory?
So now we have what Starlight wanted, just a bit more extreme. Starlight left a little bit of magic, Tirek didn't. Still, no more cutiemarks. Earthponies lost their connection to the earth, they cannot care for the trees anymore. They whither, until just a few hollow ones are left. The pegasi lost their connection to the sky, their flight and cloudwalking. They had to produce clouds, so there probably aren't any clouds anymore. The unicorns lose their connection to the astral plane, their magic. Without magic, and with Celestia and Luna probably dead, noone can move the sun / moon anymore. Now imagine what would happen if in our starsystem nothing would rotate anymore. The planets would just crash into the sun. In this case, the planets has the greater gravitational pull, since the sun rotates around the planet. The sun and moon crash into the planet. They help to devastate the world even further.
The wasteland is what happened as a consequence of all the villains succeeding one after another.
😮Wow