My Review of MLP: FIM season 8 episode 15 The Hearth’s Warming Club · 8:57pm Oct 14th, 2023
Grading Scale:
A (fantastic episode)
A- (an excellent episode with at least one flaw)
B+ (a great episode with a couple of flaws)
B (a good episode which still could have been better)
B- (a good episode with numerous flaws but still rewatchable)
C+ (a decent episode)
C (eh... it’s not terrible but not good either)
C- (it’s not worth rewatching although it does have good elements)
D+ (a bad episode with a few good things in it)
D (a really bad episode with wasted potential)
D- (a terrible episode with badly written characters and butchered moral)
F (horrible and unwatchable)
Greetings, everyone. This is Mr. J back with another MLP episode review for today. This afternoon, I will be reviewing the fifteenth episode of season eight called “The Hearth’s Warming Club”. Now to be honest, this episode wasn’t bad at all. While it was certainly a breath of fresh air after the last episode, this wasn’t really that interesting either. Overall, it’s a meh episode that can easily be skipped, and you wouldn’t miss a thing.
The episode begins with every pony and every creature finishing up school in preparation for the Hearth’s Warming Holiday. Sandbar is quite excited for it although some of his none-pony friends don’t particularly share his holiday spirit. As everyone leaves for the holiday break, the Young Six return to their dorms to pack up their stuff. Twilight, Spike, and Rainbow hang out for a bit until a mysterious hooded figure appears from above.
He showers the friendship heart with powder goo until it exploded into purple sticky slime, messing up the whole room. The trio are shocked by this and try to figure out what exactly happened. Rainbow deduces that it wasn’t an accident, judging by the evidence she found. Then they spot the hooded figure who was running off outside. As they chase him down, they noticed that the door of the student’s dorm closed.
As they enter inside to catch the culprit, he was already gone. Calling him out, the Young Six open their doors one by one as they were curious about the commotion. That’s when the teachers show the students all the mess the perpetrator created—ruining the holiday for everyone else.
Because neither of the students confess to the wrongdoing, Twilight explains the punishment: she will interview each of them to give them a chance to confess; if none of them admits it, then they will all spend the holiday at the school cleaning up the mess and taking extra friendship lessons. Thus, they begin cleaning up as Twilight first takes Gallus for a one-on-one talk.
Now here is the part where many people took issue with. Fans had a problem with Twilight “unfairly” punishing the rest of the Young Six for what one person did by cleaning up the mess and not spending the holidays with their families. Umm, have these people never been to school before? If they have, they should know that is exactly how it works in an academic environment. If a student does something wrong behind the teacher’s back and none of the other students confess to the misdeed, then the teacher will have to punish everyone by either not having recess, no free time, getting detention, and so forth.
Same thing applies in a school bus; if a student misbehaves and no one owns up to it, then the school bus driver will have to write up more than one person. That’s how it is in reality. So this is probably one of the few times where Twilight is in the right.
As Twilight talks with each of the Young Six one by one, the remaining members share stories of how they celebrate the holiday in their own cultural way. I personally found their stories to be quite…uninteresting to say the least. I just find them to be boring and forced; it’s like they had to do all this to expand the runtime of this episode and nothing more. I guess it all comes down to my personal dislike of the Young Six, so again, I found it hard to relate to them in any aspect.
Gallus however has an interesting background which is more than I can say for the others. Tired of his friends arguing and pointing fingers, he shouts at them to stop and revealed he was the one who did it. He wanted nothing more than to spend the holiday with his friends since he has no family which is why he did what he did. Wow, buddy, I didn’t know you had it in you, but you do have a soft spot after all, hm? His friends are his true and real family to him.
As Twilight and the others saw this, they were pleased with his honesty and had him stay for the holiday. His friends volunteered to join him to give him company and support; therefore, Twilight invited them to join her in their holiday dinner after they finish cleaning up. Thus, they have a much more joyous time of the night for Hearth’s Warming.
So overall, I liked that it reinforced the lesson about truthfulness and spending time with those whom you consider family—understanding that no matter the circumstance, we must always stick together in true friendship. But I didn’t like how the episode wasted time in needless backstories with some of the Young Six members like Sandbar’s and Yona’s. Again, I never liked the Young Six, and I still don’t for personal reasons. That’s just my opinion.
With all that said, I will give this a C. Not bad, not terrible, but not good or memorable.
Peace.
Never thought or imagine you disliking the Young Six before?
Out of all the stories that the Young Six told in this episode, Ocellus story is my personal favorite because it gave me a good laugh
In retrospect, I think there were many opportunities that the writing team seemed to openly pass over after Gallus is revealed to be an orphan. Like, did he always live alone or have a one-on-one guardian?
Sometimes, I even thought about how cool it’d be if Gallus was adopted by a pony family so that he could be closer to the school, the biggest candidates in my mind being Rainbow Dash’s parents.
5750545
5750557
Yes, I’m well aware of your hatred for them. However, I think what they need is the right story to help them improve and learn as parents. Besides, it’d be better than using Scootaloo’s sorry excuse for lesbian aunts.
Just out of curiousity but umm who was the culprit? Who was that random guy in a cloak? I just wanted to know please.
5750688
……you haven’t seen the episode??
5750689
Well no but as soon as I saw some random clips of this episode on a youtube channel Letupita725 and reading the plot on this, I didn't like it. The writers had made a Hearthswarming episode look so horrible. The other episodes based on this holiday is better than this like the first one and the one focusing on AJ and Pinkie Pie's family. I mean who would even dare ruin Hearthswarming by some kind of slime jelly explosion?
5750691
Okay, well, if you actually read the whole review, you will notice I mentioned Gallus being the one who did it.
Now throw some stones at him if you wish.
5750693
Oh... Ohh... So it was Gallus all long... Though I don't know did the writers and animators did this sudden twist where it doesn't make any sense? You see I rewatched the first clip in the episode and from what I saw it looked like an invisible ghostly figure in a cloak. There wasn't even any claws shown so how would someone hold that properly without slipping or dropping the object? There wasn't a beak that was shown on the hood of this cloak nor there was any other clues like a feather. Does Gallus suddenly have the power to turn invisible now?
This doesn't make any sense. So after Gallus and the others leave with the others in this one clip and then after less than a minute the writers are telling me that went to get some slime object, put on a cloak that also turns him invisible for some reason because apparently he can use magic and then they just put in a twist that Gallus did it in the end? Without Twilight's reveal I couldn't even tell if that was a Griffin in the first scene in the first place!
static.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/c/cb/Sandbar%2C_Yona%2C_and_Gallus_leaving_the_lounge_S8E16.png/revision/latest?cb=20180806221259
static.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/1/1f/Cloaked_figure_pours_goo_powder_on_the_tree_S8E16.png/revision/latest?cb=20180806225454
5750698
That’s just cartoon logic for you. Blame the animators for being this silly
5750696
Although, I suppose they wanted to be subtle. If there were griffin features shown earlier, it would’ve been a dead giveaway of his identity and then it wouldn’t be a twist.
So it was basically intentional.
5750702
Lol being subtle, I didn't know Gallus has the magical power to turn invisible. They could have made it so that the culprit was never found but then it was revealed to be Cozy Glow. I would believe that turn of events more haha.
5750704
I thought of that too, but it would’ve served no purpose in Cozy’s grand scheme of things.
This is easily The Best Episode of Season 8 and its not even close to the S tier episodes of the show (maybe at the lower end of it, but nothing short of it).
It made me like The Student 6, the traditions and what we learn of their culture fascinated me and it made Gallus my favorite Student 6 character.