Thoughts on Season Finale

Wooh. That episode. I'll start by saying that it was the best two parter since at least The Return of Harmony, so I'll start by addressing the CONS.

Cons:
-Relied a bit heavily on previous episodes when most episodes stand alone, but this has become more common as the series progressed.
-Seemed to rely a bit on fanservice, but like Magic Duel, this didn't impact the quality much.
-All the exposition seemed a bit forced.
-References Equestrian Games, the worst plot arc ever. While some the episodes in the middle where decent, it's start and conclusion were AWFUL.
-Tirek, while an interesting villain, seems to lack any real motivation for becoming an omnicidal maniac, does he really need the alicorn magic that bad?
-An ancient villian defeated by Celestia and Luna and now returned is way overdone, they need a new way to introduce a villain.
-Twilight deciphered the meaning of the keys and the book too easily, I thought the pacing was poor there. Excusable due to the general lack of time for an episode.
-Why the hell is Discord teaming up with Tirek? If he doesn't want friendship anymore and values freedom, he should just axe Tirek and turn the place to chaos town, there is no elements of harmony to stop him. No reason why he should be friends with Tirek over Fluttershy.
-The princesses got a major idiot ball with this one. First they forgot to remove the stained class, but what exactly was the point of their plan? Twilight is just supposed to run away while the rest of Equestria get's pulverized? There plan didn't even mean anything in the end as Tirek found Twilight anyway, all it did was leave them as sitting ducks, though it did serve as a plot device so Twilight could make the decision.
-Fight scene and ending might have been a tad bit over the top.
-Ending was sort of predictable, but still well written.
-Twilight's destiny was too obvious and mundane, but fits with how the universe was shaped after the introduction of Crystal Empire and Magic Mystery Cure.

And the pros!
+Nice continuity
+Answered the question we've all been asking about Twilight's Princesshold and acts as a satisfying to the lame, though as Blueshift said Magic Mystery Cure could be cut and replaced. With the way canon is going since Faust's departure I say this is actually better than her being Celestia's successor, however with original canon I prefer that destiny.
+LUNA SANG!
+Massive world building that actually goes somewhere, unlike a Crystal Empire (or even worse, Equestria Girls, they had to resort to the comics to fix the world-deconstructing made with that). More details in the theorizing section.
+I really like how they had the entire season to build up to this episode
+The full extent of the keys, how they related to the elements, and what they all had in common was actually pretty clever. Anyone else what to see the counter-elements (Discord, Coco, Cheese, Seabreeze, Spitfire, and that one pony from Applejack's episode) get together?
+Discord's role and character development was awesome. I also like how the only pony he is really friends with is Fluttershy.
+The killing of the tree had real emotional impact, I say it might just be the single hardest hitting moment in the entire series.
+Heavily action packed without deviating from the core themes of the show.
+We get a new, meaningful moral that actually relates to friendship itself, sort of building off where we left off with Return of Harmony.
+Dat climax (this the moment where Twilight decided to give up her powers, not when she went super Saiyan)
+Like Return of Harmony, could act as a series finale, or be easily picked up from to continue to series. Or a movie.

Now time for theorizing!

For, the nature of magic. I think this episode confirms a bunch of things about pony magic, namely
1. All ponies possess magic of a similar nature, except for maybe alicorns.
2. Cutie marks are magic based.
3.These magics are still different, and unicorn magic is more "pure" than other pony magics.
4. Pegasus magic allows them to fly
5. Earth pony magic is related to their strength
6. Alicorns can transfer there magic to other alicorns.
7. Discords magic appears to be fundamentally different from the ponies, much darker in nature. If quantized, I think it's adds up to bit more than two alicorns, which makes sense given that the princesses needed the elements of harmony to defeat him.
8. The tree of harmony is more powerful than the magic of all the ponies in Equestria. Okay, I don't think Tirek gains the full amount of magical power from the transfer, but regardless it's shown the tree of harmony is extremely powerful.

From this I've concluded that pony magic is harmony based, and the root of their magic is the tree of harmony. The alicorns aren't goddesses, merely servants of the true goddess, Harmony. This is further supported by the fact that the bearers of the elements of harmony gave Tirek are far greater boost than other ponies of their races, enough to depower Discord (or maybe it's Spike's magic that did it :P). Meanwhile, Discord's magic is based in, well, discord, he is the avatar of discord. This stands in opposition to harmony based magic, and like how Equestria (and possibly the Crystal Empire) stand as the seat of harmony based magic, the Everfree was the home of Discord based magic (though it's been driven back with restoration of the trees of harmony). However, discord is not evil, it's just in opposition to harmony, which is sort of a theme with Discord's character. This means it's not clear if dark magic is based in discord or something else. Tirek's magic may or may not be dark or discord based, considering it's red rather than Discord's purple it may be something else.

Now, since it's been established Celestia is far from omniscient or omnipotent, I'll try to outline Celestia's gambit, or basically how I think the world played upon until now.

Originally, Luna and Celestia were indeed princesses, not monarchs, of the unicorn kingdom in Equestria. They had other siblings, and they had parents. Or something like that, there is still the issue of Princess Platinum being a princess, and the story in Hearts and Hooves day may be involved. Anyway, it was during this time Discord broke free, and he took over the kingdom. As a result of the chaos, Celestia and Luna's parents did die. The council of unicorn which rose the sun and moon also fell apart. Eventually, Celestia and Luna, now forsaken princesses, discovered ancient legends of the elements of harmony. During an unseen quest, they became alicorns through their sisterly love, and each bore three elements of harmony after they found the tree. Discord saw the elements and recognized both their power and their source, so he set up his gambit, which was to continue his magic through the Everfree Forest, gradually weakening the power of harmony until he was able to break free. Because of the fall of the unicorn council, Celestia and Luna had to learn to raise the sun and moon and got their cutie marks.(I'm not taking the events of the flash backs in the S4 opener to be strictly canon, they are a mere memory condensed into a few minutes for the sake of the show). The unicorn royalty lived on, so Celestia is indeed Blueblood's aunt, just with numerous greats.

After this point Celestia and Luna continued to use the elements of harmony to fight other villains who popped up, either Sombra probably took advantage of the reign of Discord to conquer the Crystal Empire, or he had been reigning for awhile as simply no one challenged him. I guess Tirek also coming at this time is just a coincidence. Overtime, the Everfree grew, and Celestia knew of this, but had no power to stop it. Eventually, Luna became corrupted by this magic, and Celestia was forced to use the elements of harmony to banish her the moon, being unable to purge her of the evil magic as she only bore half the elements of harmony. She then abandoned the old castle, which eventually became consumed by the forest, and the capital was moved to Canterlot. From then on, Celestia and Luna were no longer the bearers of the elements of harmony. Celestia knew of the prophecy, so she groomed a successor to her who would be able to succeed where she failed and free her sister. Thus Celestia WAS intending for Twilight to be her successor, that's why she chose Sunset Shimmer first (there will be no further mentions to Sunset Shimmer as her canon characterization is terrible) before realizing she made a mistake.

Now, the reason Nightmare Moon returned was actually due to the Everfree Forest's increasing power and acts on the Tree of Harmony. This led to Discord and Sombra's return, and possibly to other events like the break free of Cerberus. Anyway, Celestia remembered the seeds Discord cast and the spawning of the Everfree Forest and begins to connect it with the coming events. She decides to try to sway Discord in attempt that he would be able to fix the problem he created, leading to Keep Calm and Flutter On. She wasn't sure he could be converted, but she had faith in Harmony that she could. After that success and a bit more, she decides Twilight is ready to be tested as an alicorn in preparation for her destiny and sends her Star Swirl the Bearded's spell, which she knows is intended to turn the user into an alicorn. After she actually succeeds, Celestia realizes that Twilight isn't destined to be her successor after all, but doesn't know what she is destined for. Also, why she suspected Discord knew something about the Everfree Forest, she didn't know exactly what was going on, so wasn't prepared to save herself. After the elements are returned to the tree of harmony, the Everfree Forest is beat back, but not destroyed entirely, so the tree needs to keep the elements.

This leads to the current episode. Celestia sent Discord because they lack the elements of harmony needed to defeat him. However, this time her faith in Discord fails, and she falls onto a back up plan, not releasing what Harmony's plan is. Still she had backup plan, to hide the power in Twilight, yet it wasn't fleshed out enough to actually defeat Tirek, leading to her defeat. In the end the box of harmony unleashes a more powerful version of the power of elements of harmony, and it's a revelation to everyone what Twilight's role is. Hmm, I wonder what the next villain will be, Rainbow Ponies seem a bit OPed.

PS. No one commented on my last blog post, guess I'm not writing anymore stories for some time. :(