Triple Threat S7E15 Review · 4:04pm Aug 19th, 2017
Waifu Mad Max Dragon Lord vs Technicolor Beatle Changeling King
FIGHT!!!
So yeah, I had a lot of reservations about this episode going in, because it seemed like it would be a lot of cringe comedy and Spike acting dumb, two things I don’t care for much. Fortunately the cringe comedy and Spike stupidity were low-key, and in exchange we got a lot of humor from Thorax and Ember.
Ember has a lot of fun stuff derived from her social awkwardness. Like eating Twilight’s crystal castle, or spewing fire into the air to impress ponies because that’s what dragons do. I howled as her casual racism mixing up Twilight and Starlight because they look the same. “I think I’m allergic to feelings.” Thorax is adorable, and I laughed when I heard “I think my leadership problems began when I was young...” I also caught the foreshadowing to a future episode when he mentioned his brother and a faction of rogue changelings who still want to feed on love.
The episode’s moral was obvious at the halfway point - Spike was so busy trying to run interference between the two that he didn’t have time for either, and was being a terrible friend to them both. The major problem of the episode, of course, is that Spike’s fear of them not getting along is entirely unfounded, he should know enough about friendship by now to know that just because Ember and Thorax have very different personalities, doesn’t mean they won’t get along. That said though I do love that the resolution came about between Ember and Thorax themselves and on their own terms, and now through Spike having to apologize and formally introduce them or some cliche nonsense like that.
The only problem I have with the episode is the map calling Spike. Not the idea itself, to the contrary I got really excited when I saw it was calling him. The problem I have is that it didn’t make sense. The map calls the ponies to other parts of Equestria to resolve disputes elsewhere. Spike was already dealing with the problem when the map called him to solve it. Now, you could say the map calling him was to make the point apparent he was creating a friendship problem, but then he uses the idea of having to look for a problem to solve as an excuse to avoid dealing with the two. Overall you could completely remove the map plot point and absolutely nothing about the episode would change, so it just seems like fanservice to see Spike called. But, still, cool to see it happen.
So yeah, Spike is now on the map’s autodialer and Ember and Thorax become friends. So it is that the Starlight Six takes a step closer to realization.
You're forgetting that Starlight knows Discord, so replace Spike with Discord and you've got a new mane six:
Starlight - Magic
Discord - Laughter
Maud Pie - Honesty
Ember - Generosity
Thorax - Kindness
Trixie - Loyalty (Kind of scraping the barrel here but it's the element that Trixie's personality seems best suited for right now).
4640433
Nah, keep Spike in and Discord can be the group’s Celestia with the reformed Sombra as their Luna. Sunburst is their Spike.
So, all the worst characters? Why would you subject poor Trixie to that? :V
4640466
4640466 You dare call Spike a bad character?!
That's going to keep happening, it's just a problem of the show as a whole for it originally meant more for kids to teach them about friendship. Like with the Fluttershy keeps learning the same lesson about being assertive. It's just easier for the writers to use already established characters for these kind of episodes rather than introducing new ones.
Which is why I think that they made the map in the first place. To have a way to introduce new problems and characters and not reuse the old ones, as much at least because it's still going to happen like with this episode.
I'd replace Ember with Discord for the Starlight 6. Ember and Starlight have no real friendship, even after this episode.