Season 5 Finale

So I finally got around to watching it today, my partner wanted to watch it with me so I had to hold off a week, and trying to avoid spoilers for a week was no easy task. I had to remove sites like deviant art and FIMfiction from my favourites just so I wouldn't be tempted to go on them and see the slightest thing that could ruin it, although I did catch snippets of blogs and posts saying how incredible it was and the likes (before I quickly looked away) so I went in with high expectation. And the final verdict...

It was absolute shite

Now my partner strongly advised me not to write this, but dammit I will have my angry fanboy opinions justified. Why exactly did I hate it so much? Well my thoughts can be quickly summed up by some of the first comments on this site blog:

Trixie is omitted, Sunset is omitted.
Instead we get new Super Unicorn Deus Ex Machina God Child Glimmer sitting center stage, like she is the new main character.
Able to manipulate Cutie Marks, which was supposed to be impossible.
Able to time travel without restrictions, which was supposed to be impossible.
Able to get away with heinous crimes against entire communities, then the entirety of the planet...
And got a bloody job offer instead of punishment.

The problem was Twilight. The previous episodes have made it clear that Twilight is a genius demigod. Now this episode fights against the trend by having her suddenly be both weak and stupid. The most powerful unicorn in the land ascended to alicornhood only to get her tail waxed by a self-taught unicorn using a spell she poached from Twilight's personal hero. Then, when she can't immediately defeat Starlight, Twilight doesn't take a moment to think, she just tries things randomly until she's exhausted.

I would have been extremely pissed off if they ended like this. This was one of the worst two-parters. Starlight barely even got a slap on the wrist for ENSLAVING an entire village, forcefully taking their cutie marks, ruining a very close friendship, and dooming her entire fucking country.
"Oh, but she had a bad past!"
Actually, she didn't. Sure, she lost a friend, but for God's sake GET OVER YOURSELF. I bet she's the goddamn MILLIONTH person to have that happen to her! I mean, I've had friends who are even WORSE (check out my blog post on this episode for more detail), and I'm still a perfectly happy, and well-functioning human being. When she says, "He moved on and I didn't" that made me facepalm. Get over yourself and move on, you petty bitch.
Also, this season finale just brings up way too many questions [where were Celestia, Luna, Discord, and Cadence during all this; what happened to Cadence in the other timelines; how exactly did Nightmare defeat Celestia, and how was she defeated in the timelines without her (we clearly saw Luna during the Discord future); why was everything functioning for years in Nightmare's future, when eternal night should have brought upon years of famine and drought as well; WHY DID THE MANE 6 HAVE THEIR NORMAL CUTIE MARKS; where was the future Twilight during all this; etc.).

Starlight Glimmer is a complete Mary Sue, the show follows its trend of having Princess Twilight Sparkle being considerably less capable than she's supposed to be, and nothing about the time travel plot felt fulfilling or even made sense. The above comments pretty much cover why Starlight is awful (although that's not a reason for her to suffer ), she's completely OP out of nowhere. "She can remove others cutie marks", fine, it's a unique skill but it doesn't make her pony jesus. "She can time travel as far back as she wants and defy all logic of how time travel should work", well she altered an already existing spell originally made by someone more powerful than her, so... "She can use telekinesis to make herself fly", so surely any unicorn could do that, like Twilight who levitated an Ursa Minor, something far bigger than herself, oh, Twilight is shocked by Starlight's ability to do this, meaning she can't do it, because... "She can go toe to toe with Twilight in a magic duel to the point where they are BOTH exhausted"... WHAT? WHY? Twilight fought Tirek at his most powerful and didn't break a sweat, has she spent the last season binge drinking and slamming her face into a desk repeatedly? Did she not think she was being fair on the villains so she handicapped herself to give them more of a fighting chance? There is no reason Starlight should be able to pull any of this shit off, or if she can then Twilight (heck, even Moondancer) should be able to match her before very quickly decimating her.
Alright alright, Starlight Glimmer is some kind of self taught prodigy, I can't accept that but I will pretend to for a minute. She must have some serious beef with Twilight to go to such lengths to get revenge against her. So what is this incredible pony's motivation? Did she get passed up as Celestia's student (Celestia's students seem to have a theme with their names)? Is she the descendant of Starswirl the Bearded (it could explain both the name and being stupidly over powered)? Is she secretly Twilight's long lost sister (they look kind of similar)? So what is it?...
She lost a friend... one friend... years ago... and this had absoltuely nothing to do with Twilight, her friends or even Celestia...

...

Well that's fucking stupid It reminds me of a rather popular story called 'Secrets Shine Brighter', it had a very similar ending and it got loads of complaints as a result. Now that's fine for a fanfiction... but that is not fine for the actual show. So Starlight Glimmer is powerful and amazing and super (and no really she's just so great you guise), and she has the shittiest motive for becoming a villain in the entire show and beyond, surely such an awful character was dealt with appropriately for her list of crimes...

Becoming the personal student is not being dealt with appropriately! I just knew that's where Twilight was going when she started going on about how awesome Starlight Sue was, and of course that's exactly where it went. Not Sweetie Belle, the filly Twilight literally taught to use magic, not Sunset Shimmer, the pony/girl who writes letters to Twilight saying what she learnt about friendship (although the show would never use her anyway), not even Moondancer, a pony who is essentially just a reflection of Twilight and would therefore most logically follow in her footprints given the right guidance. I'm done talking about Starlight, she was dull in the season opening but I forgave that because the stakes weren't that big back then, but this... the stakes were anything but small, which brings us to the juicy topic of time travel.

First of all, when debating with my friend the logic behind time travel (we're sad like that) I can now point to the finale and say "not that!". Twilight kept going back in time, so then why weren't there half a dozen versions of her running around Cloudsdale? What was the point of Starlight's plan if she stayed in the past and waited for Twilight, surely the whole point would be to return to the future and see the damage she caused first hand? Why is the spell connected to the map? Why does a map, a thing that helps you find where you're going have any effect on matters of when? Why did any of Starlight's changes alter the future in that way? Freezing RD in mid-air causes Sombra to rise up, but flicking her causes Discord to rule? Why did Fluttershy's cutie mark depend on the sonic rainboom at all, the animals just randomly ran away from her for no reason? How the hell did Flim and Flam take over Equestria rather than any of the other villains? But most of all, why was there only ever one villain at a time? Who stopped Chrysalis in Sombra's timeline? Who reformed Nightmare Moon in Discord's? And what the hell happened in the last one? I mean jesus, that was grim out of bloody nowhere.

I really think it would have made way more sense, and made for a far more enjoyable episode if they went back in time ONCE, stopped the rainboom ONCE. Then when they returned to the present all villains were free and ruling over sections of Equestria and warring with one another for absolute control. I felt the constant changing gave the varying timelines very little impact, the last three were literally seconds long, but if we'd had the whole two episodes of experiencing a single dystopian future, changing the past might have carried more weight. Plus we could have got some decent time with each of the villains, maybe seen interaction between them, I mean seriously, they passed up the golden opportunity to have an all out battle royalle between all the big name villains of the series. Plus Starlight could have travelled back to the future with them and seen and experienced it all for herself, that way her change of heart could have grown gradually over the two episodes rather than being like the flick of a switch at the very end. Also I might need a plaster after cutting myself on the edge, my friend told me it was basically Fallout Equestria, and looking at Sombra's timeline he was not wrong. So much felt like it was plucked right out of fanfiction... infact... the changeling armour looked an awful lot like that from My Little Portal, not to mention Dash's cybernetic wing... and the whole time I couldn't help but think Starlight's animation looked an awful lot like Ink Pot's Count of Monte Cristo animatics.

At the beginning when I though it was going in that direction of having all the villains in one timeline, I was starting to get into it, I actually predicted Flim and Flam would have taken over the apple farm at the start so I wasn't overly surprised when they came into later. And now that I think about it, in my hypothetical and fantastical alternative, they could actually have been one of the major players in the warring between the villains. With the various villains vying for dominance over all ponies, and presumably Celestia imprisoned or defeated by at least one of them, the ponies would have little choice but to rely on technology to fight back, and who has a monopoly in that? There have been plenty of games and movies painting private military companies as evil, it wouldn't be hard for Flim and Flam to step into that role and use their technology as a way of holding power over ponies. But I digress...

I mentioned briefly that Twilight was useless, but there isn't much more to say than that. The song was decent, but it did little to make me forget about how much I really hated the episodes, and that last scene of everypony staring like cultists up at the screen was just creepy. I don't think there's much more to say on the matter, I hated the finale, which is a shame because I liked most of the season as a whole, and it had some really good and significant episodes, like the CMC getting their cutie marks and Princess Luna coming to terms with her guilt. So after getting all the anger out through this pointless rant, I'm left feeling disappointed more than anything else, I know there's another season coming but unlike the end of every other season, I'm more dreading what will come next, I can only hope they sweep Starlight Glimmer under the rug or at the very least confine her to a couple cameos like Discord.

Comments

[Chloewhatwatt]

I really hope Starlight Glimmer becomes a member of the main 6! she is magically talented!!!

[Phantom Dragon]

Yeah that was the biggest problem with the Season finale Starlight Glimmer. It was rushed plain and simple, If there was maybe more given to her backstory it would have been better.

As for the different villains taken over at different times, I think the comparison to this is a Simpson's episode. There was a tree house of horror story, where Homer goes back to the past and each time he change something want he went back it was different. I think that was MLP was trying to do.