A disclaimer and some opinions

So, first things first and warning people straight up, I'm a Brit and so I have seen the S6 finale (because it aired on a foreign channel legitimately. That's not a leak, FimFiction.). I'll be discussing how it stands in the Quickverse here so if you're still waiting on it and want to be spoiler free, avoid anything under the spoiler tags.

When I first came up with the concept of the Quickverse a year ago, in the wake of Crusaders of the Lost Mark shredding any chance of Rising Above being canon, I realised that I could work on a lot more aspects of what the world was like 20 years down the line. That included the changelings. I had a major brainstorming session shortly before the season began and solidified what I had in mind for what the changeling homeland was like. Granted I had to make some adjustments after The Times they are a Changeling aired to take Thorax into account but still. That session dragged out a bit but by June I'd established what I wanted to do, which I can't discuss here without dropping major spoilers for my next fic. All I'm going to say is that To Where and Back Again Part 2 echoed it a little too closely for my liking. Ok so I didn't do anything crazy weird like the 'good' changeling form but several other aspects made me feel like I'm going to be accused of copycatting when I finally reach that stage in my stories. So, I just wanted to put this out here while there's still time. The finale and the Quickverse take on the changelings are completely separate. Some of my ideas may match it a little closely but I came up with them before we knew about the finale, I'll post pictoral proof if I have to.

Speaking of all this, the finale itself was...I don't know. To be honest, right now it sits between S1 and S3 as my second least favourite. The pacing was really weird, considering pretty much all the detail of how Ponyville, Canterlot and the Crystal Empire were lost to the changelings were skipped over and it suffered the same problem as the S5 finale by trying to force both the whole resolution and aftermath into the final five minutes. How exactly does that dark stone throne work? Where does it come from? If it works the same as the changelings, what does that say about their origins?! So many chances for lore on the changelings were wasted and it's pretty much all been swept aside by redeeming the entire race out of freaking nowhere (though points back for Starlight failing to redeem Chrysalis, even if it ties into the 'too close to my own ideas' thing).

I'm not saying it was all bad though, having an all new team was glorious to behold and they worked off each other well (though given the ties we've seen formed, I'm almost surprised they weren't joined by Gilda and Ember). Starlight having to step up and show what she can do without magic was great, if a little overdue, Trixie and Discord were such a good matchup that I'm sure people are gonna ship it even through the pure TrixStar on display in part 1, and Thorax getting to step up and be a hero was something I'd hoped to see. The animation was right on point (even if the 'good' changelings look weird as hell) and the emotions felt were right on point throughout, from Starlight's anxiety strike showing again she didn't consider herself worthy of all the redemption she'd been given, to the sight of Trixie being engulfed by the swarm that I'm pretty sure was in my nightmares last night. Chrysalis was back on top as a villain too, managing to pull of a coup against an entire continent without anypony in the waking world catching on was frighteningly efficient and seeing her just throwing Starlight around was tough to watch. So yeah, I probably have more positives than negatives about this episode, it's just that like with P.P.O.V, the final act is filled with so much what the fuck out of nowhere that it drags everything else back down to average.

Still, if nothing else, it's better than the last episode Haber and Vogel wrote together. Not that that's hard to do..........Stranger Than Fan Fiction is the worst episode of MLP:FIM to date, just saying how I feel on that.

Edit: Now I've seen it, Top Bolt felt like a much more upbeat, better closing episode for S6. It doesn't affect my opinion of the finale however.

If you're still reading and haven't been reduced to an incandescent rage by my views, thank you for your time and I hope you still enjoy my work.