Make Your Mark Chapter 6 and Tell Your Tale Episode 68 · 1:02pm Nov 24th, 2023
Warning: Incoming novel. Make Your Mark Chapter 6 spoilers after the break!
Alright, so... Where to begin?
Well, Make Your Mark Chapter 6 is the shortest cluster of episodes yet, coming in at three 23-minute episodes and one 45 minute special, Secrets of Starlight. The pace is absolutely breakneck as Opaline's plans are brought to fruition, are thwarted, and with next to no downtime whatsoever, we are thrust into a new area, with new lore, and a new pair of villains that are honestly really hard to care about.
So I think for the first part, I'm going to focus on what I believe to be G5's biggest flaw; Opaline.
As someone who has almost always bowed to canon when it has come to developing fan content for an in-progress show, I'm just going to come out and say it: I think my version of Opaline as a fallen student of Twilight is better than anything G5 has given us thus far.
Why? Because so much is left unexplained. Not to mention that I believe the best villains are the ones whose motivations you can understand, the ones who believe they're doing the right thing. When it was revealed that Opaline was not some ex-magic student with a grudge, and is actually nearly as old as Celestia and Luna, that's it; the show doesn't explore it any deeper. In six chapters, we've had just about two sentences mentioning the "alicorn land" of Skyros, and that Opaline was banished.
As I said before, the pacing is absolutely freaking nuts. Not a single second is given to the cast being aware that something is happening to cutie marks; Opaline goes from one cutie mark and no dragons at the end of Chapter 5 to dozens/hundreds of marks and two dragons at the start of Chapter 6... And then breaks into song about how she's the literal villain.
Then when we finally get a G4 character in the flesh, Spike, his memory is foggy, so again, the absolute bare minimum explanation of what happened between generations.
So for all the unknowns, all the planning and contingencies that Twilight put in place to protect Equestria and the dragons from Opaline's machinations, it is wrapped up incredibly fast. With an escort of dragons, Opaline goes on a cutie-mark-snatching spree until only Sunny remains. For everyone else's part, we go from "stay close to the trees" to "stay away from the trees" back to "stay close to the trees".
It results in a page being taken from Fern Gully's book and Opaline is stripped of her own mark and trapped within her Together Tree as it demolishes her castle.
And then there's next to no downtime as the Mane Six stare at the tree for a few hours until a portal opens, and we're taken to The Crystal Empire Starlight Ridge, where we get a new species of pony, and a new pair of villains are almost immediately introduced.
So with how badly Opaline was written, am I supposed to have any faith that this snow leopard and rabbit are going to be any better?
If Make Your Mark is not renewed, and we shift over entirely to Tell Your Tale, we're going to need a very considerable shift in tone if Allura and Twitch are going to be taken seriously.
Now don't get me wrong, there were some fun moments. Izzy vs Opaline was hilarious, Misty finally stands up to her as well, and the new character Comet is all kinds of precious. Spike was done considerably well, as the end of episode three showed us just how more powerful his teleportation fire has gotten.
But for the most part, personally, I think there has to be some drastic changes for G5 to improve. If Make Your Mark is not renewed, Tell Your Tale has some heavy lifting to do. That may be the right move, if the pace is slowed a bit and it is given the runtime to explore everything that was glossed over here. But right now, we're two for six; Sunny has her heart necklace, and Izzy has her portal crystal thing. That's a lot more trinkets that need tracking down.
I don't know. I really don't want to sound like a hater and cynical asshole, but I really was not impressed with Chapter Six. It dawned on me last night that Make Your Mark has not inspired me to make any new content in nearly six months. I've spent half of 2023 working off of ideas that were born from Chapter Four and back. There's just so much lacking. A lack of backstory, a lack of buildup, and also a lack of scale; it's all been portals and sparkly tunnels from one vista to the next. Any chance of a map?
Anyway, so on that note...
This week, the Mane Six enjoy a ball, Sunny wonders if she's hearing things, while our ever-vigilant detective repeatedly goes, "That new formidable villain from a few weeks ago? Yeah she's like, totally not coming back."
I totally agree with everything you share. I 'somewhat" enjoyed it. I like some parts like Spike returning, Misty standing up to Opaline, and Comet going to Equestria. But by the end of it, I'm starting to see the cracks forming when it comes to G5. Its had good moments within the near 3 years it's been going, but honestly, I have little hope with its future, which is how I feel about the MCU too, but that's a whole other topic. Still, unless someone at hasbro decides to do something to fix the problems and overall mess TYT and MYM have done, something tells me there might be a chance it'll get cancelled. It'd unknown atm, but I do feel like if something isn't done soon, cancellation will become a reality. And I'll be honesty here too, I pretty much enjoy a lot of the G5 fanfics I've read, including yours Miles and it's probably some of the best I've read thus far, to which is something I thank you for doing.
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First of all, don't bet on a cancellation any time soon: the shows are still popular with kids. You know? That demographic that some bronies forget exists.
As for Opaline herself. On the one hand, hammy villains can be entertaining and she got really hammy at points in this chapter for me. Sometimes, a one-note villain who enjoys being a villain can be fun to watch. Unfortunately, the writers didn't give her enough wild stuff to do to make her consistently entertaining, which would make up for her being so one-note.
Like, if you're gonna make the big bad have only one dimension to her character, at least let her do all sorts of wild villainy stuff! She's hilariously stuffy and snobby, yes, but she needed more than that.
Yes, the dynamic between Misty and Opaline was solid writing overall (Sunset would be so proud of Misty!) and kids definitely need to see what a controlling toxic parent can look like. But, so much more could be done with Opaline as a character.
As for her simplistic backstory...
Look writers, I get it: You can't pull from Season 5-9 of FiM without incurring the wrath of two companies (Hasbro and Warner Discovery)! You're very limited in terms of what you can take from canon material and you have to somehow respect nine seasons' worth of canon because someone in Hasbro's legal team and executive team bucked up big time. It's why you gave Spike memory trouble and I understand that. You could still give Opaline a backstory that was simple enough to account for the pacing and legal junk while still giving fans something interesting to chew on.
Even so, I'm glad that it is inferred by Spike's tale that G4's Mane 6 had kicked her flank so many times that she had to resort to magical cheating to get the upperhoof. It sure beats them being utter failures, which is what so many of us had feared. And no, the comics are not canon to the shows due to them breaking from show continuity way too much for their connection to the shows to make sense. So, Discord doing Discord things can be safely put aside lore-wise.
As for Allura: She's Opaline with a talking bunny and vocal hypnosis magic. Her having a more villainous brother seems interesting though. But, let me just call it here: He's manipulating her Opaline-style and it will take Misty to push Allura to break free from his grip. That's not a knock against the writing, I'm just making a guess.
All in all, I'd say this chapter was very much built to speed through the Opaline arc and set things up for future stories. I think the writers had a funny feeling that they may not get more episodes for MYM greenlit during production, so they had to drop some of their story plans to speed things along so that the show ended at a spot where TYT could take over.
But... if MYM is greenlit for more episodes, then at the very least, I can give those doom and gloom grifters on YouTube the finger with a smug grin on my face.
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I'm still absolutely dumbfounded if that's the case.
What the flying fuck is Warner Discovery going to do with half of a franchise's lore?!
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Ik, but Netflix and hasbro could if they can't fix it. It's slim, but you never know what'll happen.
5756431
I could be WAY off base with my claim by Warner and Hasbro in general, to be fair.
I mean, I don't exactly know what deals Hasbro had made with Warner Discovery to get The Hub going in the first place.
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To be clear: While Hasbro produces MYM, Netflix simply provides it to viewers. A producer-publisher deal where Netflix has streaming rights, if I have this right.
Hasbro is likely to not cancel any G5 shows, given their success with kid viewership (I don't know the figures though). Netflix, given that MYM consistently trends on the app/site whenever a new chapter pops up, may not be quick to cancel it either.
Still, this is the same company that is all too quick to cancel their own shows before they can truly pop-off (Netflix I mean)...
5756435
Fair enough.
I honestly liked a lot of Chapter 6, but the pacing was WAY too jarring.
We jumped from all hope being lost to utterly defeating the villain in about two minutes. Even FiM, with its notorious "give a speech and BOOM! Rainbow lasers!! The villain is defeated!" resolutions gave the story more time to breathe. They should have done more with Misty. She was the best part of Make Your Mark.
I freaking LOVED Spike. He felt like a believable and natural evolution of the character we knew in FiM for ten years. I even liked his new voice once I heard it in the episode. I liked the new dragons. The actors who voiced them did a great job, and they were well-written. They came across like I would expect the Dragons to be if Spike led them for centuries. A bit gruff, but generally good-hearted. I don't like Sparky in Tell Your Tale, but he's fine in Make Your Mark. In Chapter 6 he was really good. He saved the other dragons but did it in a way that felt believable and clever.
Hitch was awesome. He put up a hell of a fight against Opaline and showed a lot of courage. Izzy's battle against Opaline was hilarious and felt totally in-character. It was great to see Misty finally stand up to Opaline. Sunny's fight scene with Opaline was good, though not as good as the one in Chapter 4. Pipp and Zipp's battle with Opaline was pretty funny.
To me, the writers made Spike's memory trouble feel more like "all of my friends are dead and gone now. I don't like to think about it much. Remembering is too painful."
When Sunny was telling Hitch about how Spike was the baby dragon from Argyle's stories, he looked back at her with a sad expression.
In the end, it was Spike, not Twilight, who outlived all of his friends. Poor guy.
I agree with this review.
This show has the same problem later seasons of G4 and EG had, reusing the same type of plots and villains over and over again.
And this is yet another example of why this show should of been it's own thing with no connection to G4, especially if the legal issues turn out to be true.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think the show would have benefited NOT being connected to G4 in anyway. With how it seems they can not directly touch on G4 easily and leave it vague it's had issues linking to it in the first place so a total clean slate would have only benefited the show/
Opaline is as generic a villain as you can possibly come up with. Her entire personality is just "Mwhahaha, evil!", which is not enough to make a competent or compelling villain. It irks me that right when MYM showed signs of finally going somewhere, Hasbro abruptly pulls the plug on it, thus resulting in this rush job of a finale.
It was disappointing that my fear came true with Spike falling victim to Opaline.
They actually did him really dirty
I didn't like any of it, tbh.
The story was rushed through it all, the dragons were like super weak and cheesy, and poor Spike was useless.
He also can now call ponies and send them across the world at a whim(?).
I'm glad it's over. There were more flaws than complimentary moments from a long time fan's perspective.
I loved the chapter the most out of everything, wanna know why? "YES! FINALLY! ITS OVER! IVE SUFFERED THROUGH SIX CHAPTERS AND COME OUT ON TOP! OPALINE IS DEAD! GONE! YESSS!"
And then that leopard thing came.
She's the villian.
Are you fricking joking with me right now?
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Aaand she has a mysterious brother.
The mediocre ride never ends.
Finally got around to watching it this morning. And honestly?
With Opaline, I honestly don't know what you were expecting from this finale. Even before Chapter 6, Opaline has basically just been Queen Chrysalis at home, but with Tirek's MO and a hint of abusive stepmother. And I hate to say that you shouldn't expect much from a kid's show (after all, plenty of kid's show raised that bar, including FiM, but even stuff from our own childhoods). Especially considering what G5 managed to do with Misty over time (hell, Misty's character arc is probably the single best thing to come out of Opaline). But Opaline is very much a kid's show villain, and Chapter 6 was never going to change that.
Hell, even then, after the last couple of years, I'm not even sure what's wrong with seeing cartoonishly evil villains anymore. Some people in real life are cartoonishly evil villains. There's a group Let's Play channel I watch on YouTube where one of the co-comms has joked about how real life has really bad storywriting. And even besides that, let's talk Freedom Planet. Brevon is a cartoon supervillain (murder and torture tactics notwithstanding), to the point where I'm pretty sure he knows he's evil, but doesn't care. But his actions, the damage he does to the characters we care about, and how personal he makes it by the end is what makes him interesting. Don't get me wrong. None of this makes Opaline a good villain. Even by that metric, that just means Misty was the best thing to come out of her. I'm just saying that the bar for Opaline should never have been set very high.
(For the record, Misty agreeing to go back and spy on Opaline in Chapter 5? Nothing ever came of that.)
As far as Spike goes, um... weren't fully grown G4 dragons a lot bigger? The unique dragon magics were neat though, and Spike's skill with teleportation fire was pretty cool. As far as him getting convenient amnesia or whatever, that seemed more a case of him not having his morning coffee, and then things being too busy for him to share stories. Also, the damn ownership/usage fees for G4, probably.
Other than that, didn't seem like much more than a G4 two-parter. And not even one of the good ones. I'd wished MYM would have done more with the story beats after TYT spoiled the climax, and it only kind of did. What's really disappointing is that this could be the finale of Make Your Mark, and this is how they decided to go out.
As far as Secrets of Starlight and Allura, I'm mildly amused. They named the special Secrets of Starlight for a villain that's just Starlight Glimmer at home. So she took over a town and traumatized its inhabitants for some selfish reasons? At least Starlight's motives could fill a manifesto, but with Allura, we won't really know why she was trying to escape Starlight Ridge until we find out who this brother is and what they want.
I do agree that they seemed to cut out her backstory which during chapter 6 it felt like when Misty & Sunny was telling Opaline she doesn’t need to be alone or afraid she is alone and going to be forever alone that it felt like we should had seen like an episode of just exploring Opaline’s past.
I’m like one fan who actually likes the idea of a land of the Alicorns called Skyros which is separate from Equestria. But man… we barely heard much of anything and the only image we saw was in Spike’s story.
I do agree that Opaline’s character is like all over the place from being a comedy, evil step mother, almost murder, and to become those villains or people that “Want Power or riches from the world but forfeits their soul” which I think reason for the chapter delays was because they might had changed things due to fan reactions. TYT really spoiled everything the weeks leading and don’t forget it’s meant to be canon as well.
It’s true that this is the last MYM for the time being. I don’t blame whoever watched the TYT show on YouTube since those were really made for children who can enjoy 5+ min episodes which man… season 2 isn’t going to be easy to have a story plot for that timeframe
I recently watched Dr. Wolf’s review and I agree with him. I’m not sure MYM is worth rewatching again like with G4 and even older generations for me. I watched Tales more times this year than watching MYM again.
I wish they had made MYM show into films instead. Oh yea, I’ve heard that Discovery somehow owns most of G4 and reasons for lack of the lore of G5 was because they would have to pay money to them which Hasbro was trying not to? It’s weird story going around and that is a possibility of why MYM was not good.
Not sure why they went with a villain who likely may or may not be use to be reform to beat her big brother
oh I won’t be surprise since she looks like Twilight that her brother might look like Shiny Armor 
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They were honestly bored when they created that character,
Terrible design; voice that doesn't match her well; colour scheme which as been previously used by another character; most random, out of nowhere appearance a character can have, yup, "Allura" seems to check all the boxes
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I know right! Why are you keeping HALF of it?! You don't have the backstory, you DON'T have the seasons many people love the most, you DON'T have so many good villians, this thing has almost only COZY GLOW