Episode Re-Review: Hearth's Warming Eve · 5:11pm Feb 24th, 2021
They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, but Merriweather Williams sure seemed determined to try. After "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" didn't go over well, Merriweather had a chance to indicate whether it was a fluke or not with this episode. In fact, this episode and the two immediately following it were moved around in episode order so that this episode could air in time for the Christmas 2011 break, the first such instance of an episode being one number in production order and another in airing order. Considering we'd seen a pony equivalent to Halloween, a pony equivalent to Christmas made sense. But did Merriweather manage to turn things around or only prove that she just wasn't working out for the show? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with the mane six on a train to Canterlot. They arrive at the station and it seems that the titular holiday is in fact a pony version of Christmas. We see a lot of winter stuff including a snowpony, an eight foot candy cane (which Scootaloo has her tongue stuck to) and gingerbread houses. But what does any of this have to do with the episode? Nothing at all. The episode proper begins with the mane six backstage at a theater in Canterlot, getting ready to put on a play. They're all getting into costume, but Rainbow Dash is too wrapped up in herself to even bother to close a window and Fluttershy is so nervous she ends up hiding inside a box. It should be noted that Twilight's scream is recycled from "The Ticket Master" since Tara Strong wasn't feeling well during recording and couldn't scream. But again, none of this has any real impact on the play. This play is meant to tell how Equestria was founded, and it basically is what the whole episode will be about. So everything up to this point was completely unnecessary.
However, the play itself has a glaring flaw. We have no way to know what is actually part of the story and what's just the mane six's interpretations (if any). We don't know how accurate the play is to what unfolded, we're never told anything. So this entire episode is just a play that could be the most accurate thing ever or a completely fictionalized story that never really occurred. We don't know, and if that distinction is not made it's impossible to get invested in the play. Any details it mentions could be fact or fiction, but it never bothers to explain what's what.
According to the play, before Equestria (and before Celestia and Luna since we don't see them at any point and are to assume this is before they were around) the three pony tribes were divided. The earth ponies grew crops to give to the pegasi in exchange for favorable weather, and to the unicorns in exchange for the bringing about of day and night. Then one day, a freak blizzard seemed to come from out of nowhere, forcing the tribes into starvation. An emergency summit was called where each of the three tribes' leaders would try to come up with a solution. The leaders are: Commander Hurricane for the pegasi, Princess Platinum for the unicorns (they mention a king but no explanation as to why he didn't attend) and Chancellor Puddinghead for the earth ponies. And the roles are played by Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Pinkie Pie respectively. The only leader we know for sure is female is Princess Platinum since princess is a title that can never be given to a male leader. Commander and Chancellor are not explicitely tied to one gender, but they do usually tend to be associated with male leaders. Anyway, the leaders basically start shouting at each other and accusing each other of contributing to the problem.
So the summit ends without a solution or resolution and the three tribe leaders come back to find everything in disarray. Each has a subordinate: Hurricane has Private Pansy (played by Fluttershy), Platinum has Clover the Clever (played by Twilight) who is revealed to be a student of Starswirl the Bearded and apparently can see the future and Puddinghead has Smart Cookie (played by Applejack). Again, none of these roles are necessarily female by default, and we would later learn that Clover the Clever was male (and I believe Chancellor Puddinghead would be identified as male too, leaving both pegasi and Smart Cookie unidentified). Anyway, each of the leaders decides there's only one thing to do: Strike out on their own and claim a new land. We subsequently see them abuse their subordinates in various ways while traveling, such as when Princess Platinum forces Clover the Clever to carry her or when Chancellor Puddinghead gives Smart Cookie the map so the chancellor can have "relief". Eventually though, each tribe leader finds fertile land that suits their needs and claim it for themselves under the names of Pegaspolis, Uniotopia and Earth (originally called Dirtville). Except they find out they all staked a claim in the same area, just in different parts.
The three tribes start fighting again only to suddenly realize that the blizzard they sought to escape has followed them to their new land. They're forced to take shelter in a cave, and the leaders continue to fight as they literally draw lines marking their territory. This fighting seems to cause the cave entrance to freeze over and yet even as the tribe leaders themselves are encased in solid ice they refuse to stop fighting and blaming each other.
The subordinates meet in the center and indicate that unlike their leaders they have no desire to fight each other. They decide to meet their fate together as Clover the Clever identifies the source of the problem: Windigos, which are horses of ice that feed off of hatred. I believe windigos have an actual existence in mythology, though I don't know if they feed off of hatred. Anyway, the three subordinates join together, and the tip of Clover the Clever's horn creates a powerful heart of fire that drives the windigos away. The songs they sing around the fire become carols, and eventually the leaders are thawed out alive and they see the error of their ways, agreeing to forge a new land together called Equestria.
With the play over we're treated to a song called "The Hearth Carol" which I guess is supposed to be some kind of national anthem equivalent, except "Equestria, The Land I Love" fits the bill much better. Also, for some weird reason, when the cast takes a bow Pinkie Pie is next to Rainbow Dash and Applejack is standing beside Fluttershy despite their roles. Not sure if this was an animation oversight or a layering error but it feels really jarring. After the song ends, we get a brief scene backstage that's the same as before, really, except it implies the windigos might be real. And yeah, we'd ultimately learn at the very end that they were but at the time the episode leaves it vague.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? I'm not kidding when I say it's perhaps the most pointless episode in the entire show. The play is the only thing the episode focuses on and it takes a good couple of minutes to even launch into it. It wouldn't so bad if not for the fact that the play provides us with no concrete details. We can't tell what's real and what's just interpretation by either the writers or the actors. The backstage stuff is completely irrelevant to the episode, and it led to many people saying that Merriweather Williams "likes to write assholes" since between that and "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" it seemed like the only thing she was known for (like how Polsky was a comedic genius, Larson was a fan favorite, McCarthy brought about mental breakdowns, Morrow was good at drama but keep trying to go for comedy and Fullerton seemed to struggle with contrivence). This highlights a big problem with Season 2, with established characters it now wanted to try and build the world and the lore. Except it didn't do it in a very good way, making a lot of mistakes and making the world and lore look less interesting because of stuff like this. If they wanted to leave it open to interpretation that's fine, they just needed a different framing device since a play can be either fact or fiction. By not deciding which the play was we're left with more questions than answers.
There's also the nature of the holiday, which the episode itself also fails to provide any clarity on. We're to assume it's meant to be the pony equivalent of Christmas, but the play suggests it has elements of Thanksgiving and Independence Day since it's a story about how a nation was founded and the principels on which it was based. We don't get to see how the holiday is celebrated, which even "Luna Eclipsed" for Nightmare Night gave us that honor. Yes, subsequent episodes would more or less confirm this holiday to be the pony equivalent of Christmas, but in doing so they showed us how the holiday was celebrated and why. This really feels like a first draft or pitch. The kind of thing you would propose just to see if anyone was interested. I'll assume that the decision to bump the episode up cost Merriweather time she needed to work on the script (especially since it wasn't her only one), but then why wouldn't she have someone else come in and try to revise it into something that could work? Much like "A Bird in the Hoof" it feels like they just forgot about this one and then came back to it when they needed to fill a deadline on short notice. Heck, the show itself would do a play episode again several seasons later, and that one would actually provide us with a story and some idea of what the play would be about. Everything this episode tried to do, other episodes would do better or ultimately fill in the blanks for it (and so would some specials). So this episode gets an E. I can't give it an F since it's not doing anything offensively or horribly bad, but you can skip over it and you wouldn't miss a thing.
So, next up we have "Family Appreciation Day", arguably the most forgotten episode of the entire show.
Even though I agree that this is probably the most pointless episode of the show, I enjoyed watching the play enough that this is more in the middle of the season for me.
The only good episodes Merriweather Williams has ever written are Wonderbolts Academy and Bats!
5460631
In terms of the episodes she wrote for Season 2, most people would consider this her best, or least bad, due to it not being as mean-spirited as the other three.
Well, IF you go by the Journal of the Two Sisters chapter book written by Amy Keating Rogers (which I really don't, given some of the stuff in it), especially where the good Commander and Clover are concerned), Private Pansy, Smart Cookie, Chancellor Puddinghead and Princess Platinum were all mares, as was Clover the Clever (bear in mind that the book was published in June 2014... 4 years before Forgotten Friendship was released in 2018), and Commander Hurricane is listed as being a stallion.
The only one among the Founders, pre-Forgotten Friendship, in fact.
Me, I headcanon them all as being mares. I juts like it better that way.
And YES, that IS post-Forgotten Friendship.
As for me, Hearth's Warming Eve is one of my favorite MLP episodes, bar none.
I thought it was good. Also we this is just to introduce Hearth's Warming eve. Later episodes show how they celebrate it.