Season 3 finale thoughts (spoilers)

Comments on the episode as a whole:

Before watching Magical Mystery Cure, all I had heard about the episode was that Twilight would be an alicorn at some point during the episode. I was worried that the show creators would mess up that premise. I was worried that they might, for instance, have Twilight turn down alicornhood to be with her friends, foolishly not considering the option of staying an alicorn but remaining in Ponyville. I started watching the episode with hope that they would avoid that.

Everything was so musical, and thus so montage-y. Every problem was resolved very quickly. I thought that everything was going too well, too easily. The way things were going, I thought that the episode was going to be all a dream. That would have been a sucky event after all that had happened, but I didn’t see how else to explain how the episode had no conflict that I actually worried about. Thankfully, everything that happened was not all a dream. But that leaves the episode a series of good events happening with dreamlike quickness and vagueness.

Since the episode had no important conflict within itself, I didn’t really care about it for its own sake. This episode is only significant in what it does to the show; how it sets the stage for differently-framed episodes in the next season.

This episode didn’t totally mess up the premise of Twilight turning into an alicorn. Twilight made no stupid decisions, and the show isn’t too restricted in what it can depict – Twilight can still go on adventures with her friends. But this episode didn’t do much interesting with the premise either – it was kind of a waste of an episode. But far better a single boring, dreamlike episode than a nonsensical episode that messes up future canon forevermore.

Comments on parts of the episode:

The red-green-blue trio of birds sure spirals a lot at the beginning zoom-in shot. You’d think the birds would get dizzy flying like that.

Twilight looks really off-model in her first appearance in the episode – the shape of her eyes is different from normal.

Not a big deal, but I was surprised enough by it to pause the video at that point.

When Twilight was wondering how to fix the cutie-mark swap, I thought, “just write to Princess Celestia and have her fix it!” Maybe I’ve been reading too much fanfiction – that’s too reasonable to be in the actual show. But I was glad that at least Twilight explicitly addressed the solutions from previous episodes brought up by Spike; Twilight wasn’t that thoughtless.

Why did Twilight want to “fix the spell” after Pinkie Pie was cured? All of her friends already had their cutie marks back; there was nothing else that needed fixing.

In this episode, the Mane 6 other than Twilight were pretty flat, and just generic “supportive friends of Twilight”, except for Pinkie Pie. Pinkie stood out because of her spit-take joke.

Twilight’s new hairstyle as an alicorn is cute. It’s still similar to her old one, but slightly cooler-looking. Just like Twilight herself.

Twilight is really cute and ridiculously happy when she’s waving from her chariot.

Although in that shot it looks like she’s wearing a bathrobe, rather than a formal ceremonial cloak or whatever it’s supposed to be.

I really like the song “Life in Equestria” (the one at the very end). It has chords so intricate and triumphant that it gives me shivers when I listen to it.