Here Lies MLP G5, 2021-2024: A Retrospective · 11:06pm September 25th
Alright, I said I'd do a longer blog about the imminent demise of G5 when I got home from work. Home I am, so here it goes. A fair amount of this will probably be rambling, just a collection of my thoughts about what went right, and, mostly, what went wrong.
(Warning: Long as fuck.)
G5 arguably got the strongest start of any MLP generation ever. Granted, it had an impossibly hard act to follow; MLP G4, or Friendship is Magic, was probably the biggest internet phenomenon of the 2010's. And here we got a continuation of it, G5 taking place within the same canon. The movie even opened with our Mane 6 cast, before being revealed to be Sunny's playful imagination.
The Netflix film was very decent, and is still the best piece of G5 media we got, period.
Why? Because of the potential. Not only because of the charming characters, but because of the mystery and intrigue. That burning question that would no doubt be explored:
What happened in the time gap between G4 and G5? What transpired to take Equestria from the triumphant victory and unity we saw at the FiM series finale, to the beginning of G5, with the tribes secluded, separated, and distrustful?
That was certainly my biggest inspiration. Not even a day after the film's premiere, I was writing the beginning of what would become one of my top rated stories; Forgotten, exploring Sunny Starscout's following in her father's footsteps and delving into Equestria's ancient history.
But when it comes to official content, we saw little to no exploration of that time period. What little we did get was half-hearted and not nearly enough.
So what did G5 get right?
Honestly? Not a whole lot. The Netflix film set us up with a lot of potential, and then Hasbro did next to nothing with that potential. After that, G5 turned into something of a double threat; two series. The 3D animated Make Your Mark on Netflix, and a month later, the 2D animated Tell Your Tale, on YouTube. Make Your Mark did the heavy lifting, moving what little narrative there was forward, while Tell Your Tale was cute and funny. With the 5-minute runtime, it really couldn't be expected to do anything else.
Make Your Mark's start was very rough. The drop in animation quality compared to the film was immediately obvious, the pacing was horrible, and Zipp carried the first chapter pretty much entirely by herself. It wouldn't be until Chapter 2 where we would get one of the very, very few things G5 did right:
An immediately charming, very intriguing minion-turned-sixth-ranger: Misty Brightdawn.
She was cute. She was funny. She had loads of potential to tackle a topic seldom approached in kids media; an abusive upbringing. Did fans attempt to do that? Yes.
Did Hasbro? No, of course not.
But the gap between Make Your Mark chapters was months. Tell Your Tale episodes were weekly for a time, before moving to bi-weekly (and sometimes tri-weekly), but again, did little to nothing to move the overall narrative forward.
After eight traditional-length episodes in Chapter 2, we got another 45-minute special for Chapter 3. Longtime followers of mine have probably already seen my disdain for the longer Make Your Mark "special" episodes. Because the pacing was maddeningly slow. Because for the most part, nothing happens.
In fact, let's break for a moment. Let's talk about what G4 did right: the world-building.
At the start of Season 1, we have Canterlot, and very quickly we have Ponyville. Five episodes in we're introduced to another species (Griffon), and are slowly introduced to other locales, such as Cloudsdale, Appleloosa, and Manehattan. We're taken to these locations via flashback, hot air balloon, or train.
Season after season, the world of Equestria is built, expanded, and fleshed out.
Another thing that G4 got right was using a little bit of star power. Season 2 opens with the amazingly entertaining villain Discord. Why? Because he's voiced by John de Lancie. Later seasons of Friendship is Magic would have guest stars that included Weird Al Yankovic, Patton Oswalt, and Marice LaMarche.
The only cast member of G5 I recognized was James Marsden, who only voiced Hitch in the Netflix film.
What about G5's world-building? Surely, with a decade of lore as a foundation, it can't be that hard, can it?
Hoo boy...
In the Netflix film, we start in the Earth Pony town of Maretime Bay. Once Izzy shows up and freaks the populace out, we go on a trek to the Pegasus mountaintop metropolis of Zephyr Heights. They then hightail it out of there and we go to the unicorn forest village of Bridlewood, before returning to Maretime Bay for the finale.
By MYM Chapter 2, we have a fourth location; Opaline's castle. Throughout Make Your Mark, we almost never veer away from those four locations. We go to the Dragonlands twice. Magically, via portal.
So you mean to tell me that we went from G4, with dozens of locations, down to five?
Wow, I mean, that sounds like quite the story to see how that happened. Especially when the villain who orchestrated it all has a castle that is apparently within walking distance. How did the tribes survive the lack of unity when they should have been wiped out by the supernatural Windigos?
(Want my version of that? Part 2 of my top-rated G5 series: Forgotten: The Frozen North)
You know what? Never mind. Screw it. Let's move on to what G5 got absolutely wrong:
I'm just going to come out and say it. All the fan theories for Opaline, every single one, was better than the half-assed one we ended up getting.
I was partial to her being a vengeful fallen student of Twilight's; someone who became powerful and then showed their true colors.
But her origins, the Alicorn-ruled sovereignty of Skyros, is barely mentioned. We all figured that it would eventually get fleshed out a little bit more later on, but alas, here we are. So instead of someone who was uplifted by Princess Twilight, we have someone who is just as old as Celestia and Luna, banished from Skyros, and is somehow never heard from throughout all the events of G4.
To be perfectly fair, the pre-Disney Expanded Universe of Star Wars, something I view very favorably, has the same problem; just when you think you've beaten the bad guys, there's always another cult of Sith, or another fallen Jedi that survived Order 66, continually popping up for every new book or game or story to be the villain.
But I digress.
I mentioned pacing issues earlier, and nowhere is that more prevalent than the closing episodes of Make Your Mark. We go from eight episodes in Chapter 2, down to seven in Chapter 4, down to six in Chapter 5, and finally, down to four for our finale.
And only three of those are spent confronting and defeating Opaline. Chapter 6 of MYM gives us the long-anticipated appearance of the only G4 character still likely alive: Spike.
Hasbro does fuck-all with that appearance:
We'll probably never get a clear answer as to whether the writing was just that lazy, or they couldn't legally use the second half of G4's lore because Hasbro sold the rights to it.
Long story short, Opaline is magically stripped of her cutie mark, and imprisoned in the roots of the Together Tree that she planted.
Perhaps to emerge later? As a threat? Seeking her cutie mark? Seeking redemption?
Nope. The entire thing collapses seven episodes into Tell Your Tale Season 2 because of a bunch of partying racoonicorns, so who knows what the hell happened to her.
So are we given time to celebrate? Hell no! The final episode of Make Your Mark takes us to Starlight Ridge.
Via magical portal of course, just like the Dragonlands. Gods forbid G5 gives us any sense of scale.
There, we are introduced to the Auroricorns, and we trade out our old purple villain for our new purple villain, Allura.
Honestly, this was the point where I was more or less mentally checked out of G5's narrative. For a series that takes place in the same universe as G4, once again we are introduced to a race that was never mentioned in those nine seasons. I can almost guarantee you that this would have been better received if the Auroricorns were Crystal Ponies instead.
And that is where Make Your Mark leaves us. After that, it was very quietly canceled, leaving Tell Your Tale to carry the torch.
Which it did a rather poor job of doing.
Because you can't carry a compelling narrative with five minute episodes, not to mention insufferable cutie mark chants.
Comet is an adorable addition to the cast, yes, but nowhere near as compelling or captivating as Misty.
The last we saw of Allura and her rabbit friend Twitch, she froze herself in a cave on Maretime Bay's beach, after giving us arguably one of Tell Your Tale's funniest episodes.
I don't know what the last episodes of Tell Your Tale have in store, but I have my hat standing by, ready for eating if it can somehow give us a satisfying conclusion to whatever it has been very weakly building up to.
Because I can almost promise you it can't pull that off.
So no more beating around the bush: for the past three years, the fans made better content than Hasbro. I myself wrote sixteen stories set in the G5 era; my most successful ones utilizing far more of G4 lore than the showrunners ever did. Last I checked, my first two 'Forgotten' stories are ranked #2 and #3 in the Top Rated G5 stories here on Fimfiction, and that is flattery beyond words. Thank you so very much. I'm glad you all enjoyed.
All in all, I really don't think I would blame fans if this is where they jumped ship. Because at this point, who could argue with the lack of faith that G5.5, or G6, or whatever it ends up being called, will be any better, when Hasbro's financial situation in the past few years hasn't really improved? Why the hell should anyone believe that they'll nail the lore and world-building that G4 had, when those things were so absent in G5?
And I say that when I've tried very, very hard not to be a fair weather fan these past three years.
So there's only one thing left to say:
That sums up one of my issues with gen 5, it became yet another rehash that went no where and didn't do anything original in the end.
The greatest irony of all?
Hasbro almost certainly considers this a greater success than G4.
They were never truly comfortable with G4 bronies. By the time they started warming up to us it was almost too late to truly capitalize on us... Nor did they truly put in the effort to do so. The target audience was never teens and adults, especially not the males of them. The intended audience was and remains little girls, 0-10 years.
To them they nailed it this time around. They even sunk the money into full video games, not just a couple mobile games.
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Yup.
A Maretime Bay Adventure.
A Zephyr Heights Mystery.
But this abrupt cancellation robs us of the final entry in the trilogy:
A Bridlewood Brothel.
I think this pretty much sums up my thoughts and feelings. It's abundently clear that no one in charge of G5 bothered to put any real effort into what they did, aside from maybe the voice actors. And with both "Make Your Mark" and "Tell Your Tale", it's obvious Hasbro's sole priority was toy sales, not about making a quality product like they've shown they're capable of doing with many of their other long runnings IPs.
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In the beginning of G4, the reason I bought the brushables was because, at the time, it was the only way of supporting the show.
Now that streaming is everywhere, adult fans don't have to do that anymore.
In a nutshell, this new generation pretty much wasn't given enough time to do well when it came to the writers on how they'd handle things. And though I did enjoy G5, it wasn't perfect, and this post pretty much sums up its goods and bads. In the end, I just hope whatever the future holds for mlp, Hasbro will do better as G5 just wasn't perfect by a longshot. It could've been, but it didn't.
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To be fair Faust did the first season with regular writers rooms, a tradition that declined as time went on... it probably stopped at some point too but by that time it had done its most important act, it established a world and setting that others could build off of instead of having to invent everything.
Also getting back to something the blog said, early pony was wildly inconsistent with its map too, I remember at least 4 "official" maps before S4 had even ended.
I liked G5. I felt it was good, but everything felt 75% done, like the writers weren't given enough time to polish everything up before corporate decided to roll it out. One thing I felt that greatly held it back was that Hasbro tried to piggyback it off of G4.
Friendship is Magic was pure lightning in a bottle. It was almost like the universe conspired to put the right creator, right writers, right producers, right artists, right animators and right voice actors in place. With Make Your Mark and Tell Your Tale, it felt like Hasbro was trying to catch the bolt of lightning in a different bottle.
I feel it would have behooved*elbow nudge* Hasbro to make G5 either separate from the previous generations or set it during Twilight's reign as monarch of Equestria and have the setting happen somewhere out on the edge of Equestria far away from Canterlot...then we could have had the occasional cameo of a familiar immortal character or 2 show up as background characters doing whatever. So when Sunny did her ascension, it could have caught the alicorns and Discord completely off-guard. This could have made Spike's and Discord's introduction as they go out to see what's going on, then to report back to twilight what they found...or in the latter's case, pull off some chaos-y hijinks on the edge of Equestria.
This could have set up Opaline as either a former former protege of Twilight whom she ascended before being sure of her deepest desires, or stole the secret of aliconhood and ascended herself, either way either way that's what got her banished by Twilight from the borders of Equestria.
We could have had a couple of quiet, somber moments where Twilight is sitting down with Sunny and trying to figure out what harmony has in store for her. It could have also been interesting and funny for Sunny and her friends to learn the origin of the two verbs(adjectives?) known as Twilighting and Twileynanas.
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I knew almost from the get go that if Hasbro was trying to get lightning in a bottle twice, that it wasn't going to happen.
Personally, a considerable portion of the intrigue of G5 was the possibilities of what happened between generations. And clearly, I was not alone due to the traffic and ratings that my 'Forgotten' series received.
At the end of the day, they didn't lean into G4 nearly as much as they should have, they squandered both their villains, TYT was cute, funny at times, without the running time to be much else.
And agreed. For G6 to have a prayer, it has to be its own thing. Completely new canon.
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In the past: Hasbro know nothing about My Little Pony (jokingly)
Now: Hasbro know nothing about My Little Pony (Sadly and Angrily)
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I agree that they need to make G6 its own thing. If they try to piggyback it off of G4, they need to set it well into Twilight's reign as sovereign and set it somewhere else in Equestria away from Ponyville. They need to let it breathe and grow as its own thing.
I'm concerned that they're going to make it into G4: Redux.
Can I share this blog to Chinese G5 fans? I think you are right about what G5 get right and wrong.
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Anything will likely be better than this "Camp Cutie Mark" G4-5 mashup I've been hearing whispers of. That would make no sense whatsoever.
Can't help but wonder if they would've been better off creating a whole new universe instead of making this a far flung G4 sequel. This whole time, I was hoping the generation would eventually pick itself back up, but with the G4 rights fiasco, MYM missing the mark half the time, and eventually shifting over to 5-minute minisodes every other week, it feels in hindsight like they've been circling the drain this whole time.
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Now you know how I feel about the Sonic Storybook Series, which I'm sure would've capped off by putting Sonic in the story of Oedipus Rex.
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At least the writers weren't lazy with their work, did the three strike formula all the time, or just not write the characters correctly.
I hope that one day Hasbro revives this project, much better than before because G5 seems to have a ton of potential, but is taken for granted. Specially all of that untouched lore into what happened in-between G4 and G5. I mean, I am pretty sure that tons of theories will pop up, but it will remained unanswered. Hopefully G6 though is much better than G5, and hopefully it is a good project.
I also realized, we the writers will probably keep G5 alive, making fanfictions about it.
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It certainly won't get the attention G4 did... which IS a shame since stuff like what Miles here wrote made G5 look far better than anything Hasbro did post movie.
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The worst part of it is I don't feel like I did anything that was like a stroke of genius.
It was just directions that Hasbro didn't go in. If they leaned far more heavily into the lore that G4 established, and explored what happened between G4 and G5, I feel that their content would have been better than fan content.
And I'm already considering revisiting story ideas that I hesitated on because of how MYM developed.
It had a lot of great ideas, but it's obvious everything behind the scenes was a mess. Switching and firing studios and giving the new studio next to no resources, their was so little screen time for anything. I'm just glad they were able to at least focus on Misty's story and give her a proper character arc, even if no one else managed to get their own.
Also, you'll know there's no Comet fans left when I'm cold and dead.
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So many threads are going to be left dangling, and only diehard fans are possibly going to pick them up and run with them.
Skyros.
Sunny's mom.
Allura's brother.
That's just off the top of my head. There's no way that's going to be wrapped up in 2 or 3 TYT episodes.
More of a question in general, but...
If you could, would anyone bring back an unbutchered G5
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You might want to narrow that down a bit.
Unbutchered how?
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What I mean is basically fix anything you think is wrong that Hasbro abused.
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Honestly, that's what dedicated fans do here with fanfiction.
That's what I did with Equestria Girls.
Hasbro didn't finish Sunset's story arc, so I did with 50,000+ words.
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Exactly. (Lol about the +50,000 word worth of Sunset stories. BTW: Love the stories)
Never watched a minute of G5 honestly and glad i didnt. For what its worth, G4 will have no equals other then Fan services.
I leave the franchise permanently after my stories are done and ill search for another that will hopefully be just as impactful and as important as G4. Hopefully we find one close like it.
I still get the feeling Hasbro resents us. They just want to make simple little 20 minute advertisements to sell colorful toys to little girls, and while they're very happy to take our money they also really don't like the sort of... ick factor MLP fandom has among the broader population.
Most of the artists, writers, and actors likely get why we like G4 so much- they're there to make art, after all, and by now there could be people working at Hasbro who grew up watching Gen 4. But the suits who are only there to make the line go up? They probably think we're gross freaks and don't understand why we like this stupid cartoon for toddlers. I agree with KMCA, the fact G5 didn't become popular outside of the target demographic was a big success in the eyes of executives.
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To me its i thinj they were scared of having to really go in fepth with FiM in regard to G5. IE lockijg newcomers out
So much wasted potential.
I saw this coming a mile away. Goodbye, G5, I never liked you but I do not wish you never existed.
Though for what it's worth, these blog posts have arguably been the most reliable place to talk about G5 on this site. The TYT and MYM episodes never made it to the site posts, and as best as I can tell, the most populated group about G5 is a shipping group at less than 200 members (... probably shouldn't mention shipping and members in the same sentence).
Hell, per miles' research, there are less than 1,500 fics about G5 across the site. Now to be fair, G4 has had much more time to flourish. But I'm pretty sure each of the G4 Mane 6 has more clopfics than G5 has total stories.
Man, what a shame. My favorite part of the first movie was getting me to wonder, "Wow, what could have happened to make Equestria divided once more after Twilight's utopia?"
One scene that stood out was Zipp staring at the old Wonderbolt poster. Once a famed team of the best flyers Equestria has to offer, now merely a memory. That's what really drove it home for me.
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Leave it to Hasbro to botch something that could have been great.
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