Cutie Re-Mark Review · 7:06pm Nov 28th, 2015
Well, it's finale time, and it looks like Season 6 won't be here for a whole year.
(Stay strong fandom, we'll get through it one way or another)
With Josh Haber coming back from having written "Friendship Games" to pen this two part finale, did he end the season on a high note, or bring it crashing down?
Well, let's find out.
We begin with Twilight preparing to give a speech at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and she's as nervous as ever. Of course, she tries to mask her fears, with predictable results.
The next day, while giving the speech (with all of her old Canterlot friends in attendence) Twilight thinks she spots Starlight Glimmer amongst the crowd, but when she glances back Starlight is nowhere in sight. However, upon returning home, Twilight finds that Starlight has been waiting for her inside the castle of friendship.
Using the table map, Starlight casts a time bubble spell, and travels back in time. Thanks to Spike, Twilight and him come along for the ride, and find out that Starlight has traveled back to the day Rainbow Dash challenged the Cloudsdale bullies to a race. Using her magic, Starlight prevents Rainbow Dash from winning, completing her revenge, and sending Twilight and Spike back to the future.
Except, in this future, the Crystal Empire has extended to half of Equestria. Upon visting a factory like Sweet Apple Acres, Twilight learns from Applejack that King Sombra has taken over the Crystal Empire, and has waged war on Equestria. In said war, everypony is doing their part to help the war effort. Rarity is making dresses in Manehattan for the soldiers, Fluttershy is sheering sheep to provide wool for blankets and clothes, Applejack is crating cider to send to the frontlines, Rainbow Dash is part of Celestia's forces (and has a mechanical wing), and Pinkie Pie and Maud help to crush boulders that Sombra hurls at his opponents.
Using the table map and spell, Twilight travels back to the past, where she learns Starlight has rigged the spell (which is an adjusted master spell from Starswirl The Bearded) so that she'll go back in time and get there ahead of Twilight, and this is never explained.
This time, Starlight traps Twilight and Spike in a crystal, revealing that she is still furious about Twilight and her friends taking away the village. Old wounds take a long time to heal, it would seem.
Part 1 ends with Twilight and Spike ending up in a dsytopian future where Queen Chrysalis and her changelings are the main threat, and Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy are part of a resistance movement residing in the Everfree Forest. Believing Spike and Twilight to be changelings, they threaten to destroy them!
Part 2 begins with Twilight and Spike trying to prove they aren't changelings, and it takes Zecora's arrival and magic to confirm their story is legit.
Zecora reveals she knows everything when it comes to the effects of time travel (possibly confirming she's a time traveler herself?), and leads Twilight and Spike to the resistence's home in the forest. Hey, it worked for Sonic.
Unfortunately, Queen Chrysalis manages to infilitrate the hideout, revealing that she's had troops in disguise living there for a while now. But for some reason, her voice lacks that echo effect it had in her first appearance.
Zecora and her forces create a diversion, so that Twilight and Spike can return to the table map and try again. This time, Starlight decides to prevent the race from taking place by convincing the bullies not to pick on Fluttershy. And this sends Twilight and Spike to an alternate future where Nightmare Moon rules Equestria, and Princess Celestia has been banished to the moon. Upon learning that Twilight is a time traveler, Nightmare Moon hopes to use the table map to prevent the Elements of Harmony from ever being found, and even decides to use Spike as an insurance policy to prevent Twilight from backstabbing her. Unfortunatetly, Nightmare Moon is still no match for Twilight, who rescues Spike, and sets off again.
Twilight attempts to fight Starlight, who proves to be every bit her equal, and then some.
This has the unfortunate side effect of distracting Rainbow Dash, sending Twilight and Spike to a future where Tirek is in control. After a couple of tries at stopping Starlight, leading to futures where Discord and Flim and Flam rule (though I think Trixie would've made more sense), Twilight attempts to persuade Starlight to give up, claiming that her actions are changing the future for the worse. Starlight refuses to see sense, so Twilight drags Starlight with her to a dystopian future wasteland, where Equestria does not seem to exisit. Twilight's attempts to persuade Starlight here end up making Starlight so angry, that she decides to show Twilight and Spike her past.
And what caused Starlight to hate cutie marks so much, you ask? Well, her best friend got a cutie mark, and went off to Canterlot, and that's about it. I'm not making that up, and I will have to side with the critics and say that this is a really pathetic excuse for Starlight's actions. It seems like Season 5's biggest problem, is justifying the behavior of its villans. That being said, it's a slight improvement over the pettiness of Wind Ryder, Spoiled Rich, and Svengallop, not to mention Principal Cinch.
Starlight decides she's had enough, and threatens to rip up the spell, so that Twilight can't stop her. Effectively meaning she's going to rage quit.
Twilight FINALLY talks some sense into Starlight, persuading her to give friendship and cutie marks another chance, and that seems to get Starlight to finally back down. Twilight, Spike, and Starlight travel back to their own time, and the spell disappears into one last time bubble.
The rest of the mane six walk in, and are shocked to see that Starlight is around and not in chains, but Twilight explains everything. In the end, it is decided that Starlight can become Twilight's student, if that is what she wants. And Starlight admits that nothing can excuse her behavior, but the mane six agree to give her a second chance. This leads into a song "Friends Are There, By Your Side" which wraps up the second part and Season 5.
And that's the story, so do what do I think of the episode? Well, it's not completely perfect, Starlight Glimmer's behavior was kind of overplayed, and only remotely justified. Her backstory clearly needed some adjustments, especially in regards to justifying her behavior in the present. And I feel like Twilight should've tried a lot sooner to talk sense into Starlight, and that Starlight should've remained a villan. But I'm willing to give reformed Starlight a chance, if the show can handle her redemption as well as Sunset Shimmer's, and not as poorly as Discord's (which has been bumpy throughout) and Trixie's (which was added last second, even if it was believeable). So I'll give an A+, putting it above "Slice of Life" since it was admittedly jumping the shark (though it did so on purpose, since it was a fandom love letter) at parts, but below "Brotherhooves Social" which suceeded on its own merits without trying to justify some really reckless behavior.
For Season 6, all I have at the moment is one wish, don't glance over Starlight Glimmer's redemption. Make her earn it.
Now, I'm not going to wait until a Season 6 airdate is announced to do a third What If? series, but that will have to wait until at least the end of January 2016. In the meantime, expect to see some blogs exploring various aspects of Season 5, and the show itself.
This two-parter has been the first episode I've watched since the end of Season 3. I decided to watch it because I'm a sucker for time travel related stories.
I've watched the episodes altogether twice in a row to get an understanding of how the time travel was portrayed in this episode and it just boggles my mind.
Logically and chronologically all of the alternate timelines should of had Nightmare Moon in all of them as the first big event, if the Mane 6 didn't get together and there was no other ponies (that's if Celestia wasn't able to/or decide to look) that were able to rise up to the challenge and use the Elements of Harmony then why didn't the other timelines?
I understand that with the process of going into different timelines and changing the past it may have caused things to have been jumbled around or even entire events not to happen at all. After all, Zecora gave that little bit of information about the river in the Chrysalis timeline.
I think it would've been better if all of the negative events and villains were all appearing together in the timelines. Starting with Nightmare Moon, then jumping forward to an Equestria with the Changeling Army trying to take down NNM with Sombra's crystal army soon stepping in when they re-appear.
And then all this shit happens when it gets to the point where Starlight Glimmer reconsiders her plan about changing Equestria when she finds that she's out of her bloody league when all the big dogs appear, making an equal Equestria impossible.
I was under the impression that Starlight Glimmer was going to travel REALLY far back and equalize the Princesses at an extremely young age and take control from there.
It was nice to watch the show again, I must admit.
Also, what was the point of that Flim Flam timeline?
I didn't notice RD's wing being different. Then again, I wasn't really looking.
This episode continues the trend of having the season finale being my second favorite episode of said season.
It actually felt like a combination of how the previous season finales were. In that, it has higher stakes than the season 2 and 4 finales, yet at the same time, it also feels very SoL'ish, like the season 1 and 3 finales. And I like that fact.
I don't mind the fact that there wasn't much to Starlight's backstory, since there's more that we haven't found out. Specifically, how she got hers and how she felt when she got it.
I also love how Genre Savvy Starlight was, which pushed her ahead of Tirek into my favorite antagonist so far.
And I don't mind the fact that we don't know how Starlight managed to alter the time travel spell, since,well, we still don't know much about how Magic works in Equestria, despite it being an essential part of life there.
And with this finale, season 5 secures its dominance over all of the previous seasons.
It had the best songs, the best episodes, best major antagonist, best premiere, best finale, the highest amount of really funny episodes, best facial expressions, and the highest concentration of feels.
Each season, events happen that cause me to get more and more invested in how the next one handles the changes that the previous one had.
And each season, said changes seem to get more and more important.
I hope, and believe, that trend will continue until the series eventually ends.
I agree that it was totally ridiculous for Starlight to despise cutie marks and frienship, just because her friend got his cutie mark and had went to Canterlot. They could've stayed in touch by writing letters. Little Starlight was cute, though.
3574571 The mechanical wing was there.
Also, I think it's got that hiatus because of the stuff for EG4, if it's really coming.
3574588 I never said it wasn't. Just that I didn't notice it.
I've proposed a few fanfics to make up for this and I want you to see if you can acceptably write them.
- POLICE ADVENTURES: Life within the Ponyville police department is chronicled in this crime program.
- APPALOOSA RESIDENCE: Adapted from Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning 1960 film THE APARTMENT. At a large firm in Appaloosa, an ambitious Realtor learns how to succeed in business without really trying: lending his apartment to his philandering bosses. But the Realtor has his own problems; they involve a nagging conscience and his involvement with a popular mare he found in an elevator.
- A STORY TO TELL: Playhouse 90-style anthology fanfic.
- HOW TO MAKE IT IN MANEHATTAN: Adventures of a newlywed attorney for a law firm living in lower Manehattan with his wife; MLP version of the Neil Simon play Barefoot in the Park.
- SONGSTRESS: Sitcom about a popular singer who struggles to divide herself between her family life and her career.
- THE SUNSET SHIMMER SHOW: Ed Sullivan-type program offering various forms of entertainment; she even participates in the show.
Yes. That's the right way to write a reformed Starlight Glimmer. Perhaps you're more mellow in this type of opinion than LightningSword (who was outright angered about this and devoted a blog post to voicing his frustration.)
How are you sure its going to be a whole year, could be shorter, but I guess time will tell, I haven't even seen the episode yet.
3574622 K.
You know I might be the only brony who hates this episode just because of how badly they handled Starlight's redemption. Funny thing was had the ending been different I would have gladly given this episode an A+
3574567
Because each timeline was one possibility of what could have happened. Each one involved a different villain winning the all-out clash.
The possibility that Twilight took Starlight to involved every one of the villains wiping each other out.
Although, why did you stop watching the show between season 3 and now?
3574807 Simple. By the time of Season 3, GlitchyProductions apparently got tired of this show.
3574839 Ah
I'm probably one of the very few fans that didn't have a problem with Starlight's reformation.
3574807
I stopped watching the show because I started to lose interest in it. I found it's enjoyability waning on me and a ton of personal stuff started happening to me and I just didn't have the time for it anymore. College, looking for jobs, stuff like that y'know?
I watched it again because a friend suggested I do so, watched it at his place and then watched it at home.
3575304 That's certainly understandable.
Apart from a few glitches that you mentioned, I think this was a great way to end the fifth Season. I too would give Starlight's redemption a chance, as long as they get the writing team for it, right.
With this Season finished, I can finally update my top ten lists in the next few weeks.
Honestly, I don't mind Starlight's redemption.
There were moments where I really saw what they were going for. It felt like they were going to show a bunch timelines but I could have just settled for one changed timeline. The moral is strong for sure but did I wanted Starlight to be imprisoned or punished? Admittedly yes. But I'm okay with this direction.
8/10 is my final score. Now for the wait of season 6.
3574764 I thought the redemption was handled badly, but it didn't ruin the episode for me.
Glad you enjoyed the episode.
While I don't mind that Starlight Glimmer got redeemed, my only problem about the episode is, I just think her freudian excuse to be weak.
3576028 I hope they at least pull a sunset shimmer on starlight's character
3576549 Me too. It would've made more sense if it was in the same vain as Diamond Tiara, in that she didn't understand her cutie mark, and thus believed cutie marks were evil because of the trouble they'd caused her.
3576668 I like Diamond Tiara's redemption better because she got a good reason to be a bully, while Starlight Glimmer in the other hand, just not a good enough excuse to made her become a villain.