SPOILERS? Mariusioannesp Reviews: "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" · 5:34am Jul 13th, 2015
Just so you know, there are spoilers here for "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?". Probably doesn't matter that much since it’s a day late.
Anyway, without further ado, here is my review of "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?"
Princess Luna becomes Nightmare Moon again! Luckily, the Mane 6 are there to Rainbow Power the Nightmare away. Luna seems rather shocked by this. Suddenly, she awakes. It was all a dream, but Luna doesn’t seem very happy it ended on a good note. Also, Luna sleeps in her full regalia as well. When the Mane 6 start having nightmares, Luna determines that a nightmare she created called the Tantabus has escaped her dreams and is now plaguing the Mane 6’s dreams. Luna has to go into the Mane 6’s dreams to stop it before it becomes too powerful and tries to escape into the waking world where it will turn the world into a living nightmare. Will Princess Luna learn the importance of self-forgiveness?
So, what’s the verdict?
Introducing MLP’s first mid-season finale!
This episode was kind of a mixed bag, and it kind of went all over the place. But in the end, I still really liked it.
So, we begin with the Mane 6 having gathered at Carousel Boutique, where they’re having a pet grooming day. Hey, Tank’s here! Must be spring already. However, all the Mane 6 are rather tired and keep messing up on their pets. Well, everypony except for Pinkie Pie. Fluttershy admits that she had trouble sleeping because she had a really scary nightmare. Everypony else realizes they also had nightmares. Twilight notes that her dream had a blue smoke monster in it, and everypony else is shocked because they all had nightmares with a blue smoke thing! Twilight decides they should consult a dream expert, and has Spike write a letter to Princess Luna. “Dear Princess Luna…” it starts. How long have you been waiting to hear that? Once Spike sends the letter, Luna arrives immediately. Luna tells them that a nightmare she created called the Tantabus escaped her dreams the night before. Because Luna had been dreaming of the Mane 6, it has sought out their dreams. If it becomes powerful enough, it can escape from the Dreaming and enter the waking world and turn Equestria into a living nightmare. It’s now up to Princess Luna to go into their dreams and stop the Tantabus.
That night, the Mane 6 are going to sleep together in Twilight’s bedroom while Luna follows the Tantabus in whichever dreams it seeks to infest. Twilight wonders if perhaps they should call in Princess Celestia for assistance, but Luna says she has no power over dreams. So, apparently Princess Celestia has no power over dreams; that’s something we didn’t really know before. Either way, Luna doesn’t want any assistance, even from the Mane 6. They’ve already suffered much at her hand when she was Nightmare Moon, and she doesn’t want to add to that. Anyway, the Mane 6 all go to sleep, and Luna does her thing where tendrils of magic go from her horn into the Mane 6’s brains.
First up is Rarity’s dream. Rarity is dreaming she’s in a room full of flying dresses. The Tantabus arrives and turns a dress into a monster dress that begins to attack. Luna pops in, exploding out of a dress. The Tantabus turns more dresses into monster dresses and escapes to another dream. Luna follows the Tantabus, leaving Rarity to fend off the rest of the monster dresses herself... Hopefully.
Next up is Pinkie’s dream where she’s randomly jumping between places throughout Equestria. Luna’s there when she jumps to Cloudsdale. She comes to a stop in her room at Sugar Cube Corner, which is filled with cake! Yay, cake! The Tantabus enters, turning the cakes into monster cakes. Oh no, cake! Luna pops in once again, exploding out of a cake. She destroys the monster cakes and is about to follow the Tantabus through a cake box when Pinkie accidentally jumps to the Crystal Empire. Luna exits Pinkie’s dream, and Pinkie jumps to Ponyville and invites everypony to partake of her giant ice cream cone.
Next up is Fluttershy’s dream. She dreams that a giant angel is brushing her mane, so she gets to be the pet. 
So, Fluttershy dreams she’s a pet. Yeah… that’s not weird. It’s not weird at all. Anyway, the Tantabus comes and turns Angel into a giant, demon killer rabbit.
Luna swoops in and saves Fluttershy, depositing her safely in a tree. The Tantabus escapes through a birdhouse, and Luna follows it out through a door to the Dreaming.
Next up is Applejack’s dream. She’s at Sweet Apple Acre, polishing that giant apple she grew in “Bats!”. She notes that this is an incredible dream. So, Applejack has lucid dreams. Anyway, the Tantabus strikes, withering all the apple trees on Sweet Apple Acres. Luna pops in through a flower that suddenly blooms on an apple tree. I just love all the ways Luna pops into all these dreams. The Tantabus flies into and withers Applejack’s giant apple, and Luna follows through a hole in it.
Luna then finds herself in Rainbow Dash’s dream, where she’s fighting off a horde of Changelings. Luna assumes the Tantabus has already turned Rainbow’s dream to nightmare, but Rainbow explains this is actually her favorite dream. So, Rainbow has lucid dreams as well. Anyway, the Tantabus strikes once more! It turns Rainbow’s dream into a bright, sunny field populated by smiling, happy (yet terrifying) sunflowers singing about how cute they are and playing a solo on a flute to the tune of “This Old Man”. Rainbow Dash is quite perturbed by this. 
Is it me, or don’t they look like little florid Powerpuff Girls? It’s the eyes I swear!
It’s funny how Rainbow Dash’s nightmare would probably be a nice dream for Fluttershy.
Anyway, Luna gives chase to the Tantabus as it flies high up into the sky. This leads to Twilight’s dream. She’s sitting in a giant library where the books fly of their own power to her. The Tantabus enters through one of these books and transforms some of them into monster flying books. 
Here we have the very rare followup to The Monster Book of Monsters: The Flying Monster Book of Flying Monsters.
The monster books chase Twilight until she comes face to face with the Tantabus itself. Luna swoops in and encases the monster in crystal.
Luna is also a crystalbender. Still should be a thing.
Twilight is still being attacked by books, but the Tantabus is breaking out of it’s crystal prison. Once it cracks, everypony awakes again. Luna laments that she was unable to stop the Tantabus; it will be back to haunt their dreams once they sleep again. She can’t bear the possibility of Tantabus escaping into the waking world and causing havoc after all those she hurt as Nightmare Moon. She takes solace though in the fact that if nopony dreamed of anypony else, Tantabus will remain in their dreams, and she will still have a chance to stop it. That’s when Pinkie admits that after Luna left her dream, she dreamt she was sharing an ice cream cone with all of Ponyville while taking a test they didn’t study for. This is a problem. Tantabus can grow with enough power to escape to the waking world feeding on all these dreams. Luna couldn’t catch it when she only had six dreams to go through, let alone all of Ponyville. Twilight suggests what if everypony in Ponyville was having one dream. Luna admits she can create a shared dream for all of Ponyville.
However, it’s going to take a lot of power. So much so that Luna’s not sure she can actually pull it off. Luna tries nonetheless, extending her magic tendrils to the minds of everyone in Ponyville.
That’s when this episode get’s weird. I mean that’s natural given that this is supposed to be the dream made up of the collective id of an entire town of ponies. But, it’s not just weird. It’s like really weird. Like weirder than it has any right to be.
Firstly, Derpy dreams that she’s a giant pony that meows. 
If you were wondering if we’d be seeing Derpy again, well, there she is. You can’t miss her.
Also, we have Lyra and Bon Bon dreaming that they’re attached to each other.
Yeah… I have no words.
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body. (Genesis 2:24)
Now, I’m just scaring myself!
The Mane 6 run into Big Mac, who dreams of being a Unicorn conjuring magical, talking apples. 
If I were my sister, I’d say something about “internalized oppression”, but I’m not a liberal so I don’t care.
In the center of it all is Princess Luna, holding this Inception-style shared dream together. Luna warns the townsponies that a great evil for which she is responsible is coming, but she will stop it from bringing more harm to them. That’s when the Tantabus rears its ugly head. Luna however is using so much of her magic to hold the dream together, she can’t do anything else. She calls upon the Mane 6 to stop the Tantabus, despite her sorrow of bringing them into this. But, the Mane 6 are already on it! The Tantabus starts turning houses into monster houses. One of them attacks Filthy Rich. Another attacks Crescent Moon, and Fluttershy transforms into Flutterbat (you know, from “Bats!”) to save him. Applejack is taking care of some carnivorous plant when she spies Big Mac being attacked by a swarm of winged muffins. She reminds him that in a dream, you can do anything. He then turns into an alicorn princess to fight them off.
Yeah…
Moving on! Rainbow wonders when they’ll know that Tantabus is powerful enough to escape into the waking world. That’s when it starts cutting open the Dreaming in an attempt to escape. The Mane 6 try what they can to stop it, but it’s not enough. They beg the townsponies for help. They remind them that this is their dream, and in a dream you can do anything. Then, Spike by the power of Grayskull becomes He-Spike and mounts Derpy and rides once more into the breach as the beast tries to scissor its way out.
This is the second time we’ve seen He-Spike in just this very season. That’s what I call him now. He-Spike because he’s like He-Man.
Anywho, the Cutie Mark Crusaders show up, and Scootaloo grows giant wings to fly up and blow the Tantabus away from another hole it has created. Second time we see her dream this season where she opts to fly.
Methinks she’s compensating for something.
Rainbow Dash becomes Zapp (you know, from “Power Ponies”) and tries to trap the Tantabus in a tornado. It works, but it’s not enough. Pinkie cries out for everypony to dream bigger. Twilight goes to the burnt out husk of the Golden Oak Library, restores it to its former glory, and sends the books flying after Tantabus.
Yay! The Golden Oak Library is back!
Applejack becomes Mistress Mare-velous (you know, from “Power Ponies” again) and lassoes the Tantabus as Rarity sews up the hole it opened. Fluttershy rides in on a giant, demon killer rabbit Angel. 
Luna though is having a hard time holding the dream together. She fears the worst that Equestria will fall because of her. The Tantabus then grows in size, throwing off everyone attacking it. Spike notices immediately that this happened in response to Luna’s despair. Twilight realizes that the Tantabus is feeding off of Luna’s guilt! Luna realizes this must be how it became powerful enough to escape her dreams. She created the Tantabus to give herself the same nightmare every night to punish herself for the evil she caused as Nightmare Moon. She did this so that she would never forgive herself for the suffering she caused Equestria. As Luna laments the renewed suffering she’s has brought upon Equestria, the Tantabus morphs into a giant silhouette of Princess Luna and starts marching out the latest hole its created. Rainbow Dash points out that all Luna has to do is stop feeling bad about what she did as Nightmare Moon, but Luna can’t. To her, she is no better now than she was then. Twilight points out that Luna isn’t. Luna is doing everything in her power to stop the Tantabus. That proves she’s not the same. Everypony who knows Luna knows that Nightmare Moon is in the past. They all trust her, and she just has to trust them to believe they’re right. Just as the Tantabus is about to walk out of the Dreaming, Luna comes to her epiphany and agrees with Twilight. The Tantabus immediately recedes. It shrinks back down to Luna’s size and walks back into her heart. Luna thanks them vociferously as the dream collapses around them.
They wake up the next morning though they’re not sure what Luna did. Twilight explains that Luna created the Tantabus to punish herself. The worse she felt, the more powerful it became. Once she finally forgave herself, the Tantabus was gone. They find Luna asleep on the floor of Twilight’s bedroom. They wonder what she’s dreaming about. We get to see that Luna is dreaming of sleeping the peaceful sleep of the justified. 
One of the things I liked about this episode is that it deals with the topic of guilt. As a Catholic, I am very familiar with guilt. Guilt is often an indication of a healthy awareness of one’s sinfulness. However, there is a mean to everything when living virtuously. Being consumed by guilt like Luna is in this episode is very spiritually unhealthy.
...Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…
Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself. But once you do, then your spirit can truly be at rest. That’s what Luna learns in this episode, and it’s a lesson I can stand behind.
Speaking of Princess Luna, this is the first episode that focuses primarily on Princess Luna. The Mane 6 are here sure, but they’re just along for the ride. This is Luna’s episode. Sure, I was hoping this would be more in the vein of the Luna Micro-series comic, but this is still great. We really got the chance to delve into Luna’s psyche here. She is really is torn up over Nightmare Moon. At least now, we can be at peace that Luna is finally at peace with herself.
Speaking of firsts, this is also MLP’s first midseason finale. Yes, MLP will be going on a little break for… Actually, we don’t really know how long. This episode does have a certain epic finale-ness to it, crammed into a slice of life framework. It’s something I’ve noticed a lot these days on TV. Most shows are breaking up their seasons into two parts, and each half of the season is usually reserved its own story arc. They also really hype up these midseason, or “winter”, finales, too. I wonder why that is though.
As I noted throughout the review so far, there are a lot of callbacks to previous episodes, some as recent as Season 4. This really is the season of the callback. Also, the title is obviously a reference to Philip K. Dick’s short story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” That was the inspiration behind the film Blade Runner.
Now, for the things I didn’t like. I feel this episode’s pacing was all over the place. There seems to be a lot of time spent in the Mane 6’s dreams and then in the shared dream of Ponyville, and then the climax with Luna’s epiphany is kind of just squeezed in there. Also, the Mane 6’s dreams seem too short. There isn’t enough time to just dwell in them. It just seems to me that this could have been better executed if they could have done a two-part episode for this. The first part could have been the Mane 6’s dreams and the second part could have been the Ponyville dream.
Back in “Slice of Life”, we saw the show celebrate what the Brony fandom has done with those background ponies we’ve come to know and love. In the Ponyville dream part of this episode, we go a tiny bit of a look at some of what I consider the shadowy parts of the fandom, the parts where things can be really messed up. In my prattling about on Derpibooru… I’ve seen things. Things that cannot be unseen. I’ve seen that conjoined ponies were a thing long before the conjoined LyraBon of this episode. I’ve seen that giant, or “Macro”, ponies were a thing long before the giant Derpy of this episode. I don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing seeing in an actual episode.
Overall, “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?” was a pretty good episode with a valuable lesson about learning to forgive yourself.
What did you all think of “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?”
As you no doubt already know. MLP will be going on a hiatus of indeterminate length. In the meantime, I will continue blogging each week or so. I’ll continue speculating about new information on MLP as it comes. Perhaps, I’ll take the time to discuss other matters concerning the fandom. So, stay tuned. Same pony time. Same pony fansite.
As always, God bless you all. God bless America. And God bless Equestria.
As you know from already reading my review, I had a bit more of a positive reaction to the episode than you did. But I can understand how the crazy Ponvyille dream sequence could be a bit too much to swallow for some people.