Nightmare on Mane Street Review · 4:22pm Sep 22nd, 2023
So it is that we come to the end of what could be the penultimate chapter of Make Your Mark, assuming it is indeed ending for good and that nothing is coming to take its place. I probably don't have to say it by now, but just to be safe.
The previous episode was a filler episode that had nothing to do with Misty, and without spoiling too much this episode also is not a Misty focus episode. At least we're getting a Halloween episode relatively close to the holiday. Did this episode allow Chapter 5 of Make Your Mark to end on a high note the way "Missing the Mark" did for Chapter 4 and to a lesser extent "Have You Seen This Dragon?" did for Chapter 2? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Hitch giving a speech outside his office, touting various activities he's set up for Maretime Bay on Nightmare Night. Weirdly, however, he mentions one activity as trick or treating even though that was never what they called it in G4. Between this, cutie marks only appearing on one side of a pony (to match the toys), and cutie marks glowing at will, it highlights an unintentional problem with G5. If it were its own separate universe not tied to what came before it, all of this would be perfectly acceptable. But by setting it in the same universe as G4, even if it's way into the future, it feels like they're changing the rules on a whim. That would be like if you were to suddenly say that in our world the sun raises in the west and sets in the east even though we've known for thousands of years that the opposite is true. You can't just rewrite the rules when you want to.
Anyway, Hitch decides to drum up interest in his activites by annoucing that he'll hide a golden pumpkin somewhere in the town. And whoever finds it first wins an unspecified prize. After everypony disperses, however, Hitch realizes he forgot to hide the pumpkin. You might think that's going to be the focus of the episode, or even at least a subplot of it. But it isn't, Hitch just plants it in front of the tree that grew back in "Growing Pains", and then it disappears. We will get a small subplot of Rocky and Jazz trying to find it, competing against each other, but that's the extent to which the search for the golden pumpkin is at all relevant to what goes on in this episode. I mean, Rocky and Jazz's interactions are pretty cute, but you could easily swap them out for any two side characters and nothing would change. At least Jazz got her day in the limelight in the previous episode, poor Rocky got nothing.
What we have instead for our main plot involves the mane five helping Pipp to decorate the Brighthouse, which she wants to turn into a haunted house. Something to note is that Sunny's costume is different compared to what she dressed up as in a Tell Your Tale episode centered on Halloween. In that episode, she dressed up as Nightmare Moon. But here, she isn't dressed as any historical pony, not even Twilight Sparkle. It kind of feels like Sunny has been losing much of her identity. Looking back to when Twilight's message first popped up, Sunny didn't seem at all intrigued by it despite growing up on her father's stories about Twilight's reign.
Pipp also finds out that because of her time working with Opaline, Misty isn't so easily scared by things like spiders or ghosts. But Pipp takes it upon herself to scare Misty by the end of the night, though this too ultimately fizzles out into nothing beyond a few brief gags of Pipp trying to scare Misty, and Misty not being phased in the slightest. In one such gag, Misty even unintentionally locks Pipp in a closet, but we don't see how Pipp got out.
The rest of the mane five busy themselves trying to decorate the Brighthouse, which devolves into a case of "Too many cooks spoils the soup" when all of the things they've done end up counteracting each other. And there's also something of a subplot of Sunny trying to make Nightmare Night themed foods, only to be overwhelmed when there's nopony to guide the ponies through the Brighthouse.
Meanwhile, as if we don't have enough subplots that go nowhere, Opaline ends up discovering the pumpkins that Hitch planted by the tree in Maretime Bay. Apparently, Opaline has a unity tree of her own that she planted, and realizes that she can use it to teleport to Maretime Bay whenever she wants. And that's exactly what she ends up doing, popping up right in the middle of Nightmare Night activities.
However, everyone thinks Opaline is just wearing a costume. And her attempts to make others "fear" her go nowhere. Surprisingly, she doesn't take advantage of this opportunity to look around or even see about finding Sunny and the others. Instead, after she happens to bump into Posey (who apologizes, by the way), she somehow manages to steal Posey's cutie mark. Posey runs away terrified, but nopony else notices this and Posey never goes to tell anyone.
And what does Opaline do now that she's managed to steal a single cutie mark? She gives up, saying that stealing everypony's cutie marks will take too long. She just goes back to her castle and decides to do what she vowed to do at the end of Chapter 4, go to the dragon lands and hunt down the dragons. So what was the point of her coming to Maretime Bay and stealing a single cutie mark? Give Starlight Glimmer credit, she actually did something with the cutie marks she stole.
The Brighthouse ends up being shut down for the night, and Pipp never actually succeeds in scaring Misty. Then, the next day, Sparky's scales begin to shine and he breathes fire on the old map Sunny and Zipp found last episode. It turns it into a map to the dragon lands, and Misty and the mane five quickly decide they need to go there to warn the dragons about Opaline. But considering what we just saw of Opaline, I'm still not convinced she's a credible threat. She feels like a villain on par with King Sombra or the Storm King, she lacks any sort of power behind her threatening appearance.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, it feels like a jumbled mess of ideas that were all just mashed together very poorly. None of the plots have a satisfactory conclusion to them, and most of them could've been dropped without scarificing anything of substance. Even Opaline coming to Maretime Bay doesn't feel like it's a big deal, even though it really should be. Why not make that the focus, or even just have Opaline's presence be enough to scare Misty for real? And why does Posey not tell anyone when she loses her cutie mark? For the record, why does it have to be Posey who suffers? She didn't do anything to deserve it, and she's already had it bad enough being harrassed by Izzy in Tell Your Tale because the writers think it's funny.
At the least they could've made Sprout the victim seeing as we saw in "Top Remodel" that he still has his speciest views of unicorns and pegasi, even if he's toned them down a little. Then maybe they could make Sprout a case of crying wolf in that after he twice stirred up false fears of pegasi and unicorns, no one believes him when he tries to warn them about Opaline. It feels like they wanted to do a Halloween episode just because they could, but had no idea on what they could do for a story that would last twenty two minutes. In the end, this episode gets a flat C-. It's not as bad as "Cutie Blossom Bash" abruptly hitting the reset button on the status quo change, but like with "Mane Smelody" it feels like a waste of an episode slot. Wow, two filler episodes in a row to end Chapter 5. Maybe it's for the best Make Your Mark is wrapping up for good if this is the best they can do (or maybe it's like Equestria Girls in that they wanted to do more, but Hasbro pulled the plug on them without warning).
Well, we won't get Chapter 6 (which apparently will be the special "Starlight Secrets") until Thanksgiving Day. Supposedly, that's to try to draw in more views, but I don't see how that works considering many people travel for Thanksgiving and many more will be focused on food, family, and football games. In the meantime, I can at least update the episode rankings for Misty, and the episode/special rankings for Pipp. So expect those in the next two days. Kind of a shame that Izzy, Hitch, and Sunny didn't get a single additional episode this chapter. Weird that Izzy ended up being the least focused on character throughout Make Your Mark, though maybe that's for the best considering what they've done to her in Tell Your Tale, a far cry from what she was in "A New Generation".
Just goes to show how much the show staff cares very little about Sunny.
Don't you mean "unicorns and pegasi"?
You know, between this and giving both Luna Eclipsed and Scare Master an E in your re-reviews, I think it's safe to say My Little Pony and Halloween is not a winning combo in your eyes.