5 Years Later, let us talk about The Ending of the End · 11:54pm Oct 13th, 2024
After 5 years and an 18-chapter rewrite story… today, I close this book. Get comfortable, folks.
For the obvious preface, I say none of what I’m going to say down below with any ill-feeling towards the people who created this episode. After all, they didn’t do anything wrong, or to me personally, they just made a piece of fictional, animated storytelling that didn’t come out well in my opinion. Chances are there were some behind-the-scenes reasons for the poor outcome, too.
Over its 9 year run, there have certainly been bad episodes of this T.V. show; Canterlot Boutique with its overbearingly depressing vibe and stupidly ineffective attempt at shoehorning in some moral, The Mean 6 with its deliberate wasting of potential both in story and laughs plus disservice to series-long camaraderie, Where the Apple Lies with its baffling priorities on character motivations and assassinations of personality and logic, Fame & Misfortune for its baseline Idiot Plot, Yakity-Sax for exacerbating the worst way of writing my favourite character, Parental Glideance for simplifying a conflict with palpable right and wrong on both sides, and School Daze with its pathetically introduced status quo change and the most arbitrary antagonist in the entire series.
And yet, for everything they screw up, and all the grief they’ve been to watch, as odd as this may sound, I don’t hate any of those episodes. I’m not really the kind of guy who really gets incensed much from watching T.V. shows or movies. I feel mild levels of irritation at most.
As a matter of fact, for nearly the entire run of Friendship is Magic, from Season 1 - Episode 1 all the way to Season 9 - Episode 23, and through all the Equestria Girls material, The Movie and Rainbow Roadtrip, there genuinely isn’t a single piece of MLP G4 animation I despise. Each bad episode and special, for the longest time, has had a silver lining that keeps them from being irredeemable to me, even if they are unskippable. Not a single stinker that I can single out as outright insulting… until we’re talking about this one. One that puts their big problems all together for one grand, mortifying failure.
I know this episode is beloved by others who remain big fans of G4 to this day, and believe me, I wish I could love it too. It’s a shame that I wound up coming to the conclusions about it that I did. As I watched every new episode of Season 9, I spent most of 2019 wondering how everything they had set up was going to pay off in this final epic they were planning to close out the show with. It was as big for me as Avengers: Endgame, and I could hardly wait (literally; I’ll admit I watched leaks of a foreign language version before its prime time premiere on the fateful day).
For all the bad that came with the good across the 9 seasons, I never stopped liking Friendship is Magic. I get substantial enjoyment from all of them, even Season 8, which is the only one I consider truly bad, so I didn’t go into this finale with a cynical outlook. I wasn’t like one of those people who blatantly fell out of love with the series years ago and only kept going to the end with “sunk-cost fallacy” or some vague critic’s obligation as their only excuse left, or have a “let’s get this over with” attitude when I reached this point. I cared about the show for 7 years and was on the edge of my seat anticipating an ending most deserving of MLP’s most important brand.
Also, I really enjoyed the arc episodes setting the finale up, for the most part, so I wanted to enjoy that finale as well. I wanted this to be good! In fact, when I watched it that first time with a language I’m not fluent in, I thought for a short time it was good. Then I reconsidered, and I soon became aware of the English script and all it entailed.
The saddest part is that the following epilogue episode, The Last Problem, is alright. Once all was said and done, that was the main discussion piece for the following months. The two episodes before it were just a fleeting fart outside of certain Internet circles, and I say it was for dang good reason, looking back. Perhaps you could say I got my hopes up too high, and fair enough. But no matter how much I raised them, it was shocking to see how this wonderful incarnation’s final string of stories’ moment of truth shaped up.
Now, I won’t go as far as to say it is the absolute worst thing ever made to bear the My Little Pony name. There are definitely products out there that are objectively of lower quality, but that’s a long list of features outside my interest. I don’t give a rat’s tuchus about a movie that came out before I was born, or some 2000s toy promo that nobody talked about when it was current, or a comic in a line that barely piqued my curiosity, and I’ve drifted too far from the G5 circle to get too upset by any of its bad outings. I cared about this thing, its world, its characters and their progression, and right at the finish line, they tripped (before briefly getting back up, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).
Alright, you already know after all those text walls what I’m talking about. I’ve delayed the inevitable long enough.
Call it beating a dead horse… no, violating a horse’s grave, but after half a decade has passed, the burn resonates. I will never, ever hate another part of this franchise the same as I do…
Season 9, Episodes 24 and 25: The Ending of the End
To start, just so I’m not complaining the entire time, is there anything in this that I like? At least anything that I don’t immediately follow up with a huge “but…”? Yes. Even in this travesty, there are, but they’re nothing that carry the episodes.
Pinkie Pie’s Party Bazooka and Rarity throwing debris at that one moment in Part 1, which was a funny growth for her character. That’s it. Faint praise, but it’s all you’re getting from me, because I say, no hyperbole, and after all this time digesting and reflecting on these two parts of the whole, this is the Street Fighter V: A Shadow Falls of My Little Pony. Yeah, I said it!
It goes the whole 9 yards: pay-offs to non-existent setups, irregular pacing, follow-ups that are inconsistent with past stories, setups without purpose, drama contrived to the Netherworld and back, characters getting terribly misunderstood, ineffectual developments thrown in for no reason, and those nearly fine moments begging for better thought-out execution.
Let’s get the Draconequus in the room out of the way, because it’s nowhere near the end of the problems with the episodes. The “Grogar is Discord” twist. Besides the facts that it makes acknowledging Grogar’s existence in the G4 world, giving him a background, making an artifact that belonged to him, and heck, namedropping the guy at all this season completely pointless in the grand scheme of things, especially since there was never any intention by the show’s team to do a darn thing with him or what he was implied to have brought to the lore, it also assassinates the character of Discord. Yes, I do think he was ruined by this two-parter… but not in the way certain folks have been saying he was.
How was he done filthy? My answer: the team seemed to overlook one little detail about this guy when planning the whole arc and his role in it out over years of production. A small, but still noteworthy fact that doesn’t take a genius, or even someone of above average intelligence, to explain.
He. Is. FREAKING! DISCORD!
Seriously, why did the Lord of Chaos who can shape all reality as he pleases and create life forms and whole places in a split second do what he did? Seriously, it’s bad enough that he disguised himself as the long-gone Grogar, brought a band of Equestria’s greatest enemies to a position where they can recover from their past defeats, gave them the knowledge and location of a powerful artifact of dark magic, forced them to work as a team through intimidation, and just expected them to not lie to him or double-cross him, even making an empty threat once (“I don’t trust anything any of you say."). But why did he go through with this approach anyway?
Yes, Discord is chaotic, but he’s proven that that descriptor is not synonymous with stupid. He’s been naïve and misguided, granted, and certainly a loose cannon when left unchecked, but not full-on stupid. He knows his powers, so why shapeshift into a fake Grogar instead of, I don’t know, constructing a fake Grogar, using it as an avatar? Why not send the villainous trio after something that’d turn out to be a placebo? Really, in general, was there not a more hands-off, but still perfectly in-character way Discord could’ve enacted this plan, if he needed to do it for the story?
The only reason they made Discord take the dumbest route and included this plot twist was just as a convenient way to remove him as a threat to Tirek, Chrysalis and Cozy Glow in the ultimate battle. And after the beginning of Season 9 made it a point that Twilight Sparkle needed to grow fully confident as Equestria’s future leader and come to terms with the fact Discord was not simply some automatic Win Button she could just press if she complained enough about things being too hard. Going by that, the dude wasn’t even going to be a problem for the evil trio anyway, because Twilight and company accepted whatever came next was their fight to win.
So yeah, the twist is totally worthless. It doesn’t add anything to the plot, it takes things from past episodes away, it isn’t used for any semblance of further character development, it just serves a redundant purpose and provides a little shock value the writers probably thought the show desperately needed to spark fan base discussions before it concluded. Nothing more. So underwhelming that what sets the (allegedly) most epic conflict of the show in motion is a character as overpowered as Discord not just forgetting who a couple of backstabbing villains he has dealt with before are, but forgetting who he is.
I didn’t want to spend too much time on this part, and I hope I’ve made my opinion on it clear in a succinct enough manner. I’m not even going to get into the behind-the-scenes justification they had for this whole idea when it comes to who the Mane 6 would be ultimately fighting. Oh yeah, let us begin the next section with that little grievance.
The fact the name “Mane 6” was acknowledged in-universe, even with the mocking name of “Lame 6”. That’s dumb! And I don’t buy Twilight Sparkle or anyone else using that as the name of the team consisting of her, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. Out of universe, it’s fine for the sake of convenience when they’re the subject. But within the show? It sounds egotistical!
It’s a title that says “Oh yeah, we’re the main ponies of Equestria, everything literally revolves around us because we’re the only six worth salt, and so we look down at the rest! Ha ha ha!” It’s also way too late anyway, as The Last Problem comes up with a much more humble, suitable and logical name for this group: The Council of Friendship.
I know this is a nitpick, I really do, and I may have thought about it harder than anyone else would, but for me, this is a case which proves that some fan nicknames should stay in the real world. And yeah, I know it was only mentioned by one of the bad guys, and I sure hope it was only their idea.
Okay, now back to addressing some real issues. The villains. Tirek, Chrysalis, Cozy Glow, what did they do to you? They were great in Frenemies and The Summer Sun Setback (the issues of the latter aside), and then when it came time to invade Equestria, they lost their groove before they began.
For starters, Tirek, while not affected as egregiously, has devolved into a dull, unmotivated whiner who only gets by for one reason: muscle. Chrysalis, who had been restored to her former, cunning, intimidating glory this season, was reverted to the pathetic, all-talk has-been she was in Season 8’s The Mean 6. Her threat to pull off Spike’s wings in the climax rings all the more hollow for how much of her savage menace was stripped off by then. And Cozy? Oh dear Cosmos, look how they massacred my widdle gorl.
To get it out of the way, I’m happy she was turned to stone. Elated, even. She deserved to be, without question. But I think that for the wrong reason. The reason being that Cozy’s character was broken into a million pieces. I know she was power-crazy in School Raze and the previous Season 9 episodes, but she was also crafty wordsmith, capable of using her unassuming appearance and smooth speeches to deceive and get her way (unless it was an off day). The appeal is that she was an all-brains villain. Not only that, but for all her craziness, and with her delusions on how much she “knows” about friendship, she seemed to want to be liked and seen as cute as she looks.
The tiny alicorn with the exact same name we see in this two-parter is a lucky, senseless, beam-spamming idiot who has no character left beyond “cardboard cutout evil”, only has any success because everyone around her is hit with the cartoonish incompetence bug, and she turns out as lackadaisical as the other two by the second part. You may argue that this was meant to be a battle, so Cozy’s tactics didn’t have a place here, and she needed something to put her on equal footing with Chrysalis and Tirek. To which I say: that just means Cozy doesn’t belong here. They wrote themselves into a corner with her inclusion.
She was not the same psycho filly prodigy I came to like up to this point. When the punishment came, it wasn’t even a case of “I love this character, but oh yeah, they had this coming.”, because somebody else clearly took her place between episodes. Somebody who was too much of a departure from everything that made this character the least bit interesting, and have made me properly root against her in the big showdown. The real deal was already out.
And speaking of other things regarding the villains, real quick, I get the fight between Tirek and the Pillars of Old Equestria was meant to show how powerful he got from the magic in the Bewitching Bell, but really? Star Swirl and his allies get jobbed that easily, and by third form Tirek? The way it plays out, the scene doesn’t come across as Tirek having gotten too powerful, but as the Pillars being as much bumbling losers as the royal guard by the plot's demand. They deserved a much better showing than that. Star Swirl can conjure a portal to another dimension, for crying out loud!
And Chrysalis fighting Starlight? This is one of those “I could compliment this, but…” moments I alluded to. Starlight gets to have some funny action one-liners around here, but Chrysalis, apparently so blindly enraged at the sight of Starlight, can only beam spam, until suddenly she smartens up at the last minute? And why didn’t Starlight ask for help against this one threat? Trixie could've helped wonders while Sunburst took care of the students. To me, it feels like the action scenes in this two-parter were done by the animators while they were wearing blindfolds, replicating a child’s play session with action figures in their thoughts and outlining it on paper.
And finally, what the hell was that prison cave scene? Why did they worry they couldn’t absorb Celestia and Luna’s magic without also taking Discord’s uncontrollable chaos powers? Pretty awkward when it was shown later they could be expelled one at a time just fine. Why was Chrysalis concerned about the stone pieces of what was once her throne cancelling her magic? Nothing before ever said or implied they were modified to do that to even changeling magic now. Or did the Bewitching Bell downgrade hers? And why, oh why didn’t Tirek drain the prisoners to make sure, in the event their cages were broken, they could use any magic abilities to get away?
This is also home to one of the scenes I so badly want to like. Discord, when demanded by Tirek to teach him and the other bad guys how to use his magic, blows him off, remembering how Tirek stabbed in the back way back in Twilight’s Kingdom. It was this close to being a good moment, but unfortunately, this had to take place shortly after Discord HAD ALLOWED HIMSELF TO BE PLAYED LIKE A CHUMP BY THE SAME HORNED MALEFACTOR AGAIN! Yeah, Tirek had two helpers this time, but still, sorry Mr. Lord of Hypocrisy, you don’t get to call him out on his untrustworthiness now.
And I mentioned that this episode has “irregular pacing”, didn’t I? Well, the shining example of such is that the main characters just jump around from Canterlot, to Ponyville, and then all the way to the Crystal Empire and back as a cold storm was beginning to pick up, and apparently they faced zero opposition in a time where all the ponies are against each other and secluding themselves in their own corners of Equestria. Are they teleporting somehow? Did Rarity learn how to do it? I’m confused. And how much time was passing in these two parts?
Oh yeah, the ponies being divided and hating each other. What a conflict. The three pony clans, Earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns after more than a millennium of no such events like this happening, are split. And they… do nothing but hide away in Ponyville, and Cloudsville, and the School of Magic in Canterlot, and feel cautious. They don’t fight, they don’t mean to hurt each other, they aren’t actively causing anything to cement the sudden animosity between one another, they just want to be left alone in their respective domains where they feel safe because of rumours. Really had the impression the Windigos were drawn down in the past for more than that.
This is a piece of ancient Equestria lore that this two-parter got wrong, and G5’s A New Generation later got right (though the Windigos appear to be definitively gone by then anyway).
And furthermore, why were the Windigos even in this? All they did was darken the sky, blow a little wind and look scary. No blizzard, no harm done, no advantage to offer for the villains, their presence was pointless. Just another testament to the pacing problem; this needed to be more than two parts. Making this is a three or even four-parter would’ve sufficed to make the stakes feel as real as they thought they were and allowed the Windigos to have the effect they should. This doesn’t feel like the ultimate battle, just a slightly-more-inconvenient-than-usual afternoon.
Next up: the scene at the Crystal Empire, where Spike and the other Council of Friendship members reunite with Twilight. And she’s reading for a solution. Like, no joke? She went all the way to this safe zone so far away from home, where her brother and sister-in-law are, the same she sent to letter to, requesting they act as a last line of defense, and now, in this time where the Pillars are defeated and the School of Friendship had to be closed, and her friends are captured, she doesn’t seek her family for some backup? Why not?! These are desperate times!
Oh yeah, and I can’t forget the contrived reason she’s even by herself for some time in the first place. She teleported away from Canterlot while her friends, Discord and the royal sisters were holding off the trio’s combined beam attack with a piece of debris, and her deciding to leave him behind while she “goes to get help” is meant to be a hard, heartrending decision, but knowing what her teleportation magic is capable of, it unintentionally comes across as a moment of cowardice instead. Again, we have a moment that’s proven to be ludicrous by a later scene.
Back to the main topic here, I see no reason why Twilight Sparkle, when she needed them most, couldn’t have enlisted Shining Armor and Cadance’s aid to storm Canterlot and fight back against the evil trio. Just put Flurry Heart in the castle’s most secure room, surrounded by every guard they have, and join together to retaliate as a family! Instead, the idea somehow fails to cross Twilight’s mind, and they leave them behind, citing Flurry Heart as a vague “last hope” for Equestria that doesn’t go anywhere. As Anton Chekhov famously suggested, if the gun you mentioned earlier is going to do nothing but hang on the wall and never go off, you shouldn’t have brought it up.
And I’m sorry, this drama they’re going for with Twilight feeling defeated and hopeless does nothing for me. I know you can end up not thinking clearly when in an emotional state like this, but to begin with, isn’t she blowing everything out of proportion? Nothing she and her friends ever did matter because of Discord setting up a challenge for you, which was only in this very season? Plus, Discord didn’t have anything to do with you guys fixing the final Summer Sun Celebration when it went wrong, did he? Also, he didn’t destroy Sombra. With his encouragement, you did.
What’s more, this scene is home to two of the worst lines in the entire season. First, one from Applejack: “Bad things happen. No matter what you do, there’s never going to be a time where everything’s perfect! But that don’t mean you quit trying!” Gee, doesn’t that sound like what Twilight was spending Season 9 learning?! Did they really go through the story of making peace with the impossibility of perfection again?! After The Point of No Return told that story, and The Summer Sun Setback showed the fruit of that development? Hell, Equestria Girls’ final full-length special provided the same general narrative, just replacing Twilight with Sunset Shimmer! It wasn’t interesting or meaningful anymore!
And then there’s Twilight’s line: “We don’t have the Elements of Harmony anymore.” Hey, you know what Discord essentially taught you to give you the drive to crush Sombra in the season premiere?
YOU GUYS ARE THE ELEMENTS OF HARMONY, REMEMBER!?
For all of his "grand" plan's blatant flaws, gotta give some sympathy to Discord here. Back in The Beginning of the End, he wanted to give Twilight and her friends the confidence they needed to eventually take Celestia and Luna’s places. However, not only did they not immediately do so after Sombra’s defeat, but even his lesson about them holding the actual power of the Elements within them was retconned out of their memory. What a waste. It’s one of those things that makes me think this script was for an earlier version of Season 9, where Sombra was defeated a different way and the Tree of Harmony was never resurrected, and they had no time to revise it before the premiere date. If that's truly the case, I want confirmation.
Then there’s the pep talk scene. I know people love this scene to death. For many, it feels like the ultimate, emotionally-charged culmination of the friendship they’ve had for 9 real world years. I want to sing my own praises of this moment, but I can’t. I swear I’m not made of stone, but from my point of view, it sounds like they’re feeding Twilight platitudes. “I feel less scared with my friends”, ‘We believe in you and us”, “Our lives wouldn’t be the same if we hadn’t met”, “We’re doing it together”, “Don’t worry, this is like Tuesday for us”, okay, that last one’s heavily paraphrased, but you see what I mean? At this particular low point, the banality is through the roof, and it cheers her up way too easily.
To comment on the Pinky and the Brain reference: it’s cute, but I wish it wasn’t in this confounded episode.
I have little to say of the battle scene that takes place between the Council of Friendship and the evil trio outside Canterlot. Even Pinkie messing around with Chrysalis doesn’t give me so much as a titter (though that may be just because I want to stop playing the episode at this point). But, I do have to give special mention to the part where Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy and Spike are trying to get the Bewitching Bell while Twilight, Pinkie and Rainbow are distracting the villains, and despite Applejack being a lasso wizard who could snatch her target out of the air in a second, which even Part 1 demonstrates (to give it begrudging credit), they show the fliers needing to carefully lift it up and wrap it around the Bell, from less than a foot away.
I know I’m picking another nit, because it’s brief, but I need to get it out of my system. NO! You have to try to screw up your continuity this bad! You don’t make your characters so inexplicably incompetent by accident! They chose this to contrive their already busted plot! One of the single worst moments in Friendship is Magic (Top 3, for sure)! Kill that idiotic shot with fire!
Ahem… now, after all that. We get Chrysalis doing the wing plucking threat with Spike, Twilight and company stand down, and then they give Spike back, giving them a chance to escape, but they don’t teleport away because they have to be morons for drama’s sake, and then comes to the signature shot of the entire two-parter. What is considered a moment as triumphant as the Avengers assembling in Endgame, I consider the representation of this travesty’s priorities.
The unearned worldwide army. You know all that commotion among the ponies that apparently got so bad, the Windigos descended? It was taken care of like it was nothing, and they threw in a flashback to give the illusion that the resolution had a setup. Oh yeah, and after only really being part of this two-parter as a cameo, the Student 6 got the ponies and the non-pony tribes together to help out, practically off-screen. They had an end point, forgot the beginning point but managed to shove it in at the literal final second, and then left a whole middle part unfilled.
But the fanservice makes it all worth it! /s
And that’s another issue I take with The Ending of the End’s whole story. It hardly has one. That’s not to say it’s bad and therefore shouldn’t be considered a story, I mean it doesn’t have anything in the way of structured storytelling to take away from it. The Best Night Ever, A Cutie Re-Mark and School Raze may have had poorly told stories, but they were legitimate stories all the same. One is about the dangers of setting expectations too high. One is about realizing the pointlessness and self-destructive nature of revenge. The other is about how evil can have even the most innocent face and you shouldn’t be so narrow-minded of who your potential enemies are. This is just a series of checklist boxes for spectacles, fanservice pieces and manufactured progression to animate.
If it’s not that, the episode is just restating things that don’t be to be restated any longer. I wish I could cheer seeing Tempest again in this moment, but the “story” hasn’t earned me doing that. I wish I could applaud the Student 6 for making this grand alliance against evil a reality, but that hasn’t been earned either. I wish I could see this as a satisfying pay-off to much hardship, like the writers wanted it to be seen, but it had to earn that, and failed to. I don’t feel jack from this moment. It tried to replicate Avengers: Endgame’s awesome moment of togetherness without knowing why it was as powerful as it was.
Oh sure, it tries to have a theme centered around fear. But, what point did it honestly make about it other than the pat, trite notion of "Goodness and togetherness is greater"? Additionally, I scoff at everyone who criticized The New Generations' story for "Recycling The Ending of the End's pony division and tensions plot", because that's the difference between the two. A New Generations is a story about the division and tensions between the three pony clans. Here, it's an inconsequential event happening in the back, and even calling it such is being charitable.
Then they defeat the villains with the exact same thing that defeated Nightmare Moon. And Discord. And Sunset Shimmer. And Tirek. And the Dazzlings, I guess. Ironic, Twilight’s like “The Elements were only symbols, this right here’s the real magic of friendship.”, and wow, the true magic which eclipses the Elements…. IS THE EXACT SAME THING THEY ALWAYS DID! Yeah, all they were supposed to be learning, how far they’ve moved past friendship being just a weapon, and it all comes down to the easy win rainbow beam from Season 1. Get out of here!
Furthermore, why didn’t they save some runtime and petrify the villains right then and there if that’s going to happen to them anyway?
Also, how did the villains get held off in the least by depowered beings? That Bell freaking sucks!
I gotta calm down. But I’m not done yet. With all of these problems I’ve gone on and on about, there are still the crippling cherries on top.
First, the obvious one: this two-parter is impossible to skip. It’s not just part of a finale, but the series finale, so saying it doesn’t matter in the greater My Little Pony saga could get you easily mistaken for an insane asylum escapee. There are few things I would love as much as to confidently write it off as filler and state that it’s just as insignificant as episodes like Spike at Your Service and Friendship University, but because this two-parter’s events are mentioned in The Last Problem, that cannot be done. It’s regrettably an important, must-watch chapter of the series as a whole.
But even worse than being unable to skip it on a full viewing of the show, or just this one seasonal arc, is a terrible, carelessly committed act of madness I hoped I’d never have to say about an episode of a show I love. Something that never happened before, and so far hasn't happened again. It may be the most heartbreaking epiphany of a piece of media I've ever had in my life.
The Ending of the End rendered my viewing of the rest of Season 9… A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME!
As bad as The Cutie Re-Mark and School Raze got, they weren’t disrespecting all the time I invested in Seasons 5 and 8. They gave natural conclusions to plot elements that were established well before, even if the conclusions could’ve been written better. This fumpster dire doesn’t even have that luxury. The Council of Friendship learning that the true power of the Elements of Harmony slept within them, and not in some old gemstones? Undone. The Tree of Harmony coming back to life after Sombra destroyed it? Didn’t matter. Twilight growing up and overcoming her flaw that had been a running gag for the longest time? May as well have never happened. The villains perhaps seeing a few values to camaraderie themselves? Money for animation frames poorly spent.
And going back to Grogar, why was he involved in this in any shape or form, even as a Discord disguise? Why did the Bewitching Bell need to be his? Why did you spend more than ten seconds on the guy’s history, and bring this fascinating expansion to the mythos regarding the monsters, recurring obstacles since Friendship is Magic’s premiere, when you had every intention of doing nothing with it? That worldbuilding for worldbuilding’s sake may have been fine in the early days, but this was the final season of the show! G4 was ending, and they knew it! If it wasn’t going to factor into the plot, then you had zero reason to spend a precious script page on this junk.
And why did they even need to get an entire book to use Grogar’s Bewitching Bell, when all they were going to get from it was a magic draining spell? Another magic draining power, after Tirek, Human Twilight Sparkle’s amulet, the Storm King’s staff and Cozy Glow’s relic spell. It may as well have just been a scroll. The least you could’ve done was have the trio figure out they can use the Bell to control the monsters in Tartarus, then set them free to build an invasion force.
I know they always say “Review what you got, not what you want.”, but it’s the show staff’s fault for planting all of these teasing seeds of ideas in there, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect those things to be there for more reason than… well, none. And hey, even though I would’ve preferred Grogar to be real, since what they pretended to set up was more interesting to me than what they were actually going for, I don’t doubt that this could’ve been a good final two-parter even with just Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy Glow. If it had to be that way, just those three in the villain spotlight, and the staff would’ve fought to have it that way, fine. If it had to be two parts, no longer, okay. That can work.
All I’m saying is that they shouldn’t have spent so many minutes on throwaway garbage.
Take out Grogar and all allusions to him, have the three villains unite on their own, have them learn about the Bewitching Bell from some books or some legends they pass around instead of being told about it by someone, maybe have Discord point them in the right direction from the shadows, keep the Tree of Harmony destroyed, and most importantly, have them actually be competent when the time comes and allow Twilight Sparkle to continue her development instead of making it all go around in a big, fat circle. Just from those adjustments alone, you’d have had more room to make the stakes feel genuine, the story both compelling and consistent, the action more inventive and interesting, and actually make me care about the low points the heroes reach, get excited for the world's unification and root for them to gain their happy ending!
I’ve made it clear since the earlier part of this review that I never hated a Friendship is Magic episode before The Ending of the End. However, one past bad episode I mentioned, Canterlot Boutique, was the first one where I considered quitting the show after I watched it. Of course, that didn’t happen, and I continued watching because I enjoy the show that much. If there wasn’t nothing left past here but the epilogue episode, if there was even one more season produced after (a real Season 10), then this would’ve been the episode to convince me to stop watching, because it retroactively made me feel like a whole season was basically valueless.
And that’s this two-parter in a nutshell: valueless. Television shows are meant to be entertaining and engaging, and that should never be a tall order. I know you're thinking "Bro, it's a show for the female child demographic, weren't you expecting too much from it?", to which I say "You know what iteration of My Little Pony this was, right?". It's the one that surpassed all expectations of what a little girls' toy show could be when it first aired. So, it's fair to call out how hard it dropped the ball here. I expected better not just from the finale of Friendship is Magic, but from Friendship is Magic, period. This cartoon changed the My Little Pony franchise, and for the better (and sometimes for the worse). It has my been my biggest source of happiness in the 2010s, notably getting me through what I call, bar none, the 7 most miserable, health-challenged months of my life (late 2016 to early-to-mid 2017). That was a time where I was uncertain I was even going to live to see this show wrap up.
In the end, all I could’ve asked for was a great episode that would make it all the harder to say good-bye to this show. Instead, it made me glad it was over, even with The Last Problem trying to make up for its mistakes. It’s not a story, it’s a cheap thrill. It’s not an organic end to the last big seasonal arc, it’s a safe, haphazard, empty bag of fanservice and forced emotion. It’s not a bad episode, it’s an atrocious episode that wasn’t anywhere close to ready. It may not be a product in bad taste, and there are definitely worse, more frustrating experiences out there, but the way I see it, this is, uncontestably, and as far as I’m concerned, the barrel bottom of My Little Pony G4.
The saddest part of it? I think this set a terrible precedent for the series going forward into G5. Now, I’m not blaming The Ending of the End for the things wrong with the G5 material, but I can see parallels between this two-parter and how things would shape up after A New Generation. If I’m not mistaken, Make Your Mark goes for the cheap fanservice, tries to win over emotions with unearned thrills, doesn’t tell stories that make a lot of sense, even being inconsistent with itself, and pretends there were setups to what would’ve been proper payoffs in better writing. Sound familiar? And yet, what was cheered for in 2019 was naturally derided in the 2020s.
So, my point there is that Friendship is Magic ended giving the worst showcase of how to handle an adventure and conflict between good and evil, and the makers of Make Your Mark doubled down it. No, I am not trying to defend Make Your Mark, because I left its viewership quite a while ago and don’t like how it badly rewrote aspects of its direct cinematic predecessor. Don’t get it twisted, eh?
Okay, I’ve really got to calm down, because I think by now, I’ve given you all the details of what drives me crazy about the subject of this review.
I won’t blame any of you for scoffing at me for creating this post. I know what you’re thinking; some variations of “LMAO, is this guy still bitter about a finale that came out 5 years ago?” and “This finale was 5 years ago, dude, why are you making a venting blog about it now?”. And if you read The End of an Era, you may be asking “Didn’t you kind already review The Ending on the End in your Author’s Notes?”, to which I say, “Yes, I did.”, but regardless of that fact and how long it has been since October 12th, 2019, I typed this up for a few reasons.
First, I wanted to collect all the thoughts I’ve had over the years and sum everything up in one convenient, easy-to-see spot, together in a single streak rather than spread out over multiple walls of Author’s Notes.
Second, I wanted to make sure I could explain everything I think to you all and the details on what infuriates me about the episode while I could still remember those well.
Third, I felt I had to do something to commemorate the Friendship is Magic finale turning a half-decade old. I did have a Bottom 16 list in mind, followed by a Top 16 list, but I’ve cancelled those, and I felt I had too much to say about this two-parter for a list entry.
Fourth, I wanted to say my final piece on The Ending of the End, offering some points I haven’t even brought up yet. I may have repeated some things from a year or so ago, but again, I wanted my thoughts more visible. After this, I feel satisfied in how I’ve discussed this animated mishap. I loathe it, and that’s not going to change, but I don’t intend to keep ranting about it for another 5 years. At this point, my message is crystal clear and I don’t have the tiniest shred of things left to say.
Remember, I don’t mean to shame anyone associated with the creation of it. If they’re proud of it, I can’t say I see how or why, but I wouldn’t dare take that away from them. And if you love this two-parter, good for you. I hope you always love it. Just accept that I don’t and won’t be swayed.
Oh, and don’t take me for one of those fools who is hopelessly campaigning for Season 9 to be revised and thought the finale ruined the entire show! First of all, to the ringleader behind that campaign (you know who you are), it has been 5 years, and all you’ve said and done has changed nothing. Admit defeat already and find something, anything else to do with your life, because there can’t be that little else going on with it! As for me, while my hatred for this two-parter burns with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, and I’d rather it not be a canonical part of the ending, I’m not going to pretend I can change that, especially after this long. It’s a permanent part of T.V. history. All of the staff members have since moved on to a variety of other endeavors, and we can't force them to drop everything and go through all the processes required to resurrect a project they were content to lay to rest just to cater to a handful of unsatisfied fans.
Plus, to say all of Friendship is Magic is ruined by the finale is nothing short of ludicrous. Only the Season 9 arc is ruined. To say it soiled everything else would be admitting I never had any joy with the series worth soiling. Even after this piece of trash earned my ire, it could never take away the fun and excitement I had for my favourite episodes and specials. The Perfect Pear, Twilight’s Kingdom, Forever Filly, Hurricane Fluttershy, The Mane Attraction, Pinkie Pride, Rainbow Rocks, Forgotten Friendship, The Best Gift Ever, The Movie. All animation pieces I will go back to again and again, even if I’m not watching through the series in order, and for the beautiful, dramatic and adorable journeys they take me on, they’ll never cease to make me happy.
Consensus of fandom opinion says this farcical train wreck is on par with any of those? Ya'll could've fooled me. The Ending of the End may not be the only episode I’d prefer to never rewatch as long as I live, but it holds a special place as the textbook example of how an MLP story can fail miserably at everything in an honest attempt to tell a story as impactful as the ones I mentioned above. There lies the great tragedy of this two-parter's production: they wanted to make something worthwhile, but it came across like they were tired of the show and wanted to move on to different jobs as quickly as possible, ergo quality being sacrificed.
I watched this in another language when it was new, I watched it for my whole series rewatch from early 2022 to late 2023, and that’s more than enough for me. If somebody gives me an invitation to watch Friendship is Magic episodes and this is one of them they want to view, I won’t refuse because it’d be impolite to, but other than that, I never want to touch this accursed waste of 44 minutes ever again. It can go rot in a damn ditch. My cents are spent.
Honestly, I’d rather rewatch Spike at Your Service 50 times over. It’s pretty bad, but at least it’s bad to the degree that it’s funny, rather than insulting.
Thank you for reading this blog entry. I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest to hopefully, with luck, feel the relief of freedom from all these thoughts in my mind and achieve the closure I’ve sought since 2019. It shouldn’t have taken so long, but if you’ve been following me on here, you know what I have been all about. I know this is has been pretty scathing, and I don’t want this to be a regular thing I do. When I talk about the things I’m a fan of, I’d prefer to be talking about what I love about them and have fun with the concepts they give me to work with for my own stories. That feels far more fulfilling.
I hope one day, My Little Pony will get back up on its hooves and produce something close to the most glorious parts of Friendship is Magic. It deserves to have great stories with lovable and memorable characters, and it has had them. But, even if it’s in an uncertain place right now, with G5 seeming to be at death’s door, I’m going to continue believing in this universe of small, lighthearted, candy-coloured, English-speaking equines, no matter how much older and closer to every living thing’s inevitable fate I get. I made some of my best adulthood memories with MLP, and they will last forever.
I haven’t fallen out of love with these ponies, even after 12 years, and 5 years after its greatest, most monumental book has closed, I still wait for the next big one to open with a twinkle of hope.
To close this out with an update: I still have a lot of work to do for my Make Your Mark rewrite/re-imagining, Re-Make Your Mark. I’ve got the roughest plot progression outlined for the 26-episode Opaline Arc, but it could take a really long refinement period to get it into the perfect condition for typing down and publishing.
For the size of the project as I whole, I intend for it to be a saga spanning 78 episodes across 3 seasons (or 6 chapters), plus a few specials. So, after the Opaline Arc wraps up with the obvious outcome, Episodes 27 to 52 will have an arc with a new adventure, and then Episodes 53 to 78 will be about a final, climatic conflict for Sunny Starscout and her friends to resolve.
That’s the roadmap for now. Also, take note that I won’t always be working on Re-Make Your Mark, as I do have other creative priorities to keep me busy and prevent MLP burnout. Be patient and enjoy yourselves however you can.
Enough talk, time to walk. Here be Stache Hand the Clutcher, out and about!
Yeah, even some of the most critically-lauded pieces of media have their issues. I think a majority of that is because the creators didn't think far ahead enough, were not as imaginative as the fans, or had trouble executing something the way some audiences wanted it to be executed. Sad as it is, even those who wish to give out ambiguous ends to things will be met with hatred as humans will find anything to spit on. Thankfully, this is what fanfiction is for: providing the great "what if?"
There was actually a much more different order for Make Your Mark before the canon ones were released:
Tell Your Tale was also supposed to have a third season along with the 25 and 3 other episodes and specials before Hasbro pulled the plug. The Tell Your Tale specials even had different release dates:
Greetings, I read part of your post, well I think I understand your position regarding the end of MLP. In my case, I really didn't expect more and many of the episodes were quite weak and unnecessarily self-contained. However, it is a family series (with a budget that was running out) and I don't think the show could do any more. (9 seasons + specials + movie)
From my critical point of view, if I had been in charge of that Titanic, I would have concentrated my efforts on more memorable goals. To start with, reduce the number of episodes of that season (4 episodes less) and I would have concentrated that saving of resources on improving the quality of the really important episodes (animation, story... more interesting things). The rest would remain as is with one or another alteration.
Of course that is my opinion on the matter. I hope I don't make you too angry with my comment. Ahh right, although the television series didn't make me angry because of its ending, the comics did. That really made me almost as angry as it did you, so I started writing a fanfic. LOL