Comic Review - Main Series #45 · 9:25am Sep 3rd, 2016
Time to end this three-issue arc.
Luna has turned back into Nightmare Moon and immediately turns on Pinkie, being she's a bright and wacky chaos-maker and Nightmare Moon wants a dark and dreary kingdom of order. And the comic immediately heads downhill. While the Nightmare and Pinkie kill time fighting, Zecora pulls a magic powder from her flank that turns blue in the presence of healing magics, and she immediately figures out Spike is immune to the water so she mixes up a cure from his scales. The panels where they discuss this are pretty much Photoshopped in over the panels of Nightmare Moon and Pinkie. The reveal they have a cure for the water is treated like a footnote to a pointless action scene. Nightmare Moon zaps Pinkie and goes to confront "the two in the castle" as Zecora and Spike cure Pinkie. Time to find the others.
At a telegraph, Applejack is trying to tell Appleloosa she's taking over the town and making it a subsidiary of Sweet Apple Acres. Apple Bloom sabotages the telegraph wires to provoke her into a chase, and leads her into a trap where she's bombarded with curative water. Why not just take the water to her in the first place? The group then turns their attention to Fluttershy's animal army as they prepare to march on Ponyville, and realize they'll never get through them to cure Fluttershy. Realizing the water twisted the virtues of the Mane Six into vices, they set up a target and shout taunts Rainbow could never hit it, relying on her being a show-off. She takes the bait and trips a bucket of cure water to fall on her.
Restored, Rainbow takes buckets of the cure water into the sky and makes the clouds rain the cure, healing everypony. An embarrassed Fluttershy apologizes as her animals run off grumbling. However, Zecora points out they forgot to account for ponies inside, and the Friendship castle is ablaze in magic. Inside Twilight and Rarity face off. Twilight offers order, Rarity offers fashion, but Twilight declares she will create a new world free from such trivialities. "And yes, there will be uniforms!" "You monster!" Nightmare Moon arrives and declares she recognizes the use of allies, and that Equestria is big enough for all of them. They agree to split up the land and Nightmare Moon produces wine glasses to toast their alliance.
Rarity drinks and is cured, but Twilight says she's too smart for this. She blasts Nightmare Moon declaring she anticipated all of this; it's really Luna, faking being evil to get close to them and using a glamor as a disguise. Twilight unveils a chalkboard where she had planned all of it out and walks out of the room declaring nothing can stop her now. She then opens the door and has a bucket of water fall on her - Pinkie prank, Twilight was smarter, not funnier. Twilight is returned to normal and reverses her intelligence-draining device to return everypony to normal. The story ends with Zecora purifying the the hot springs, and Luna flies off, ominously saying it's a good thing the hotsprings turned them against each other, because an evil Mane Six united would have been unstoppable.
So overall this arc was a great idea that led to a great letdown.
The evil Mane Six by themselves were fine, the decision to base them on comic villains is random but works to give them all a theme, and they do mostly act as corrupted versions of themselves would. However, beyond that, the arc is a load of wasted potential, unanswered questions, and plot contrivances. Zecora is not a character, she is a plot device brought in to pull a cure out of her ass and do nothing else. The CMC and Spike are there just to be the heroes to restore them and get no development or arc of their own. The CMC do show a bit of cleverness in their plans to cure the Mane Six, but that's it.
The reveal that Luna was faking Nightmare Moon was unexpected and works, but in hindsight there was no need for it, Nightmare Moon did nothing that would have been out of character for Luna to do, she could have approached Rarity and Twilight with the same offer and done the same trick to them as herself. The promised return of Nightmare Moon was nothing more than a publicity stunt for the issue.
Finally, they never explain the origins of the hot spring magic, just a vague explanation from Zecora about magic polution that she purifies because Zecora might as well be an alicorn for how powerful she is in this issue. No explanation for the hot springs, hot they resist alicorn magic, where they came from, what Celestia was doing angsting over sending Luna if she didn't know anything about the hot springs. The hot springs were just a plot device to make the Mane Six evil and nothing more.
The ending seems to be hinting this arc is setting up something else down the road, as Luna is rather ominous when she alludes to an evil version of the Mane Six being unstoppable if they worked together. I'm not sure where they're going with this if so. Reflections being revisited in the obvious thought but otherwise, not sure.
Overall, this is a three-issue arc that needs a fourth part to properly flesh out its story and potential. As-is it's not terrible, just lacking in substance. "Something turns the Mane Six evil, they act evil for a little bit, Luna, Spike, Zecora and the CMC turn them back to normal." That's it.
Personally I think this one needed to be six issues to properly tell the story. Maybe even seven. As-is? Yeah, major disappointment.
4189097 I agree, why we do need a "Trump v.s Hillary" two parter parody? No one wants to be reminded of the worst presidential election in U.S. history, and the fact that the system is going to gurantee one of them comes out on top. People don't read comics for politics.
Oh I agree this needed another issue. Luna turning into Nightmare Moon ruined this story, and I stand by that it was bad attempt at fanservice and/or executive meddling. If anything her NOT turning into NM would've better to her as part of the cure instead of Spike's scales which I called BS on since we never saw him go in the water, show don't tell, and they could say the cause of the water's effect was a meteor with NM's evil like in Night of the Living Apples. Think about it, Luna went evil because of her desire to be admired like her sister, and under the water's influence the Mane Six carried out their desires with their moral inhibitors gone, so having the water be laced with NM's evil would've worked. I also they used this chance for Celestia in join and fight Twilight to save her former student, would've been a better conclusion than what we got. For me this is the second worst arc in comics following Siege of the Crystal Empire.