"Molt Down" Afterthoughts: Why Equestria grows Dragonsneeze Trees · 11:39pm Jun 29th, 2018
I rewatched "Molt Down" today to finally do my afterthoughts on the episode, and I discovered an interesting connection to something we've seen in another episode. If you think back to "Princess Spike" in Season 5, you will (if you weren't busy complaining about another Spike episode) probably remember these:
The Dragonsneeze Trees. During Season 5 and after "Princess Spike" aired, I was thinking that the Dragonsneeze Trees have been recently planted in Canterlot to protect the capital city from an attack of the Dragon Empire that is soon going to happen and wrote this down under the Episode Followup on Equestria Daily (link does not work correctly; you need to open it in a new tab, scroll all the way down and switch to Page 1, then go into the address bar and replace "#idc-cover" with "#IDComment979809635", hit Enter and you will be forwarded to the comment).
An attack by the "Dragon Empire" did never happen, and probably won't be anymore for the foreseeable future because of Ember's rule, but in "Molt Down", we saw Smolder suggesting Spike to terrorize a village after Twilight kicked him out, before correcting herself and saying that's off the table because ponies and dragons are friends now.
Regardless if dragons still do that these days (some renegade dragons who don't live in the Dragon Lands, but in caves scattered over Equestria, might still do that as they don't feel bound to the Dragon Lord's orders), this means that Equestria had problems with dragons attacking villages, towns and cities in the past. Which now gives us the answer for why the Dragonsneeze Trees have been planted in Canterlot.
It might not have been because of an attack by the "Dragon Empire", but I was right with it that the trees have been planted to fend off dragons who try to attack Canterlot!
Makes sense.
Oof! Continuity LOL :D
4892004
Indeed. MLP: FiM is very huge on continuity since Season 6 (and even had a sizeable amount of it in Season 5 already) and particularly this episode is. It refers to past events four times.