My Thoughts on "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?"

I was in a god-awful mood this week. I was so pissed that even my inner monologues and conversations with myself were littered with swear words. I was really hoping this episode would raise my spirits. it most certainly did. Here are my thoughts on this week's episode, Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?

Spoilers. You've been warned.

I don't have much to say about this episode other than "wow". This one was powerful. First off, it stars Luna, who has a criminally low amount of screen time. This episode starts off pretty typical, in a sort of atypical way. Perhaps simple is a better word. The basic gist is that there's some sort of dream parasite known as the Tantabus that is infecting dreams and turning them to nightmares.

This episode starts with a dream. Luna is turning into Nightmare Moon, and the Six come up and do their Super Friendship God Super Friendship transformation to fix it. As soon as she's cleansed of her darkness, Luna wakes up, saying that her dream ended happily, and that should never happen. Already, this episode is right up my alley.

Then, it proceeds pretty much as you'd expect. The Tantabus can only infect ponies in the dreamscape, so it can only spread if the host dreams of somepony. Luna dreams of the Six, then Pinkie Ray Stantz's it and thinks of something she isn't supposed to. Like all of Ponyville, or Stay Puft. It's the first one.

The Tantabus spreads to infect Ponyville, and then Luna does something pretty sick. She uses that power we see her use on the Crusaders in Bloom and Gloom, to create a shared dream, but on all of Ponyville. The Tantabus is huge at this point, and Luna can't help because it takes all of her strength to keep the dream together.

This, my friends, is when this episode really starts.

We all know the concept behind lucid dreams. If you can become aware that you're dreaming, you can control it. I've induced a lucid dream only once, and then I got so excited that I woke myself up. But, since Luna is the one orchestrating this, that risk is null. The Six and all of Ponyville use their combine dream powers to battle the Tantabus. RD turns into Bolt, Scootaloo makes giant wings for herself, Big Mac turns into an alicorn! It was great! So many little jokes and call backs, like Flutterbat making a surprise return (although, I'm still a bit cross about how that particular storyline ended, by which I mean it did not). Twilight repaired Golden Oak, which hit me right in the feels. It was an all-star dream match (pun very much intended) and I laughed every single second of it.

But it's still not enough. They can't beat the Tantabus. Luna is beating herself up, because she's caused this. It's her fault, and she hates herself for putting Equestria in danger yet again. As she laments, the Tantabus grows, and it soon comes out exactly what the Tantabus is. The Tantabus was created by Luna herself. Her plan was to infect her own dreams and cause herself to have the same nightmare over and over, as a punishment for her crimes as Nightmare Moon.

Let's think about that for a second. This show is rated, what? Y-7? In this Y-7 show marketed for little girls, there's an episode about invading people's lucid dreams to defeat a self-imposed psychological torture device, which was created because the victim of the aforementioned torture couldn't live with the heinous acts she committed, and wanted, no, needed to be punished for them. Holy f*ck, that's some dark sh*t right there.

Before I give my rating, I'd like to spitball about the location at the end, the place Luna at in her dreams. Where is that? It looks almost like the Breezie place, if I remember correctly. Also, and I know that's not where she was, but I was reminded strangely of that animation Lullaby for a Princess. I wonder if this place will bear any relevance.

Overall, I rate this episode at a 9.5 out of 10. It was a good mix of down-right hilarious, and straight-up disturbing. My only deduction is from the slightly flaccid climax (heh). It wasn't bad, but after the hype that was the battle, I was hoping for something a bit more explosive.

Got thoughts you'd like to share? Lemme hear them in the comments, and I'll be back next week with my thoughts on the episode... Um... I guess I'm not cool enough to know the title yet. Next week's episode (I think it's next week) will be a mystery to me! I wonder how that will impact my enjoyment.

See you later.