The Timing of Timelines (S7 Finale Spoilers) · 6:38am Oct 8th, 2017
So, the season finale of MLP Season 7 has been leaked and I have watched. I usually avoid leaked episodes but I've been far too curious about this one to resist. What I discovered was evidence to place most of the major events from history in a reasonable order!
There are spoilers for the finale past the break so read at your own risk! Seriously! No tags, no hiding the truth, nothing. If you want the Season 7 Finale to be a surprise, please save reading this for another day!
Ok! I guess you decided to take the plunge after all! Last chance!
I was quite surprised by what I saw but most importantly, I think it's an excellent season finale. Even more importantly, we now know enough to figure out what order most of the major historical events occurred in.
So the finale only gives us a few small glimpses of past events but it gives a few tiny pieces of information that lets us define a clear order to the events that happened 'over a thousand years ago' in canon timeline. It also establishes the Pillars of Old Equestria from the Legends of Magic comics as Canon characters. How much time falls between each event still remains an exercise for the reader or fanfic writer to establish. There is some flexibility and obviously, writers should be quite happy to head off in their own direction!
1 - Hearths Warming - We know this happens first since it predates the founding of Equestria. Clover the Clever was Starswirl's Apprentice before the migration. The Pillars seem to have appeared after the founding of Equestria.
2 - Arrival of Celestia and Luna - Still not exactly certain when they appeared but we know they were taught by Starswirl so they had to ascend before the Legends vanished. However, it is fairly clear they were not present before the Hearths Warming Migration since Unicorns were still managing the sun and moon.
3 - The other Pillars appear – The individual Pillars gain their power and fame as Equestria is settled. It's all in the comics. While I haven't read them, I expect they could be treated as canon.
4 - Fall of the Sirens - Shown briefly in the finale. The returned Pillars explain that Stygian was the pony who originally gathered them together as a team to banish the Sirens.
5 - Rise of the Pony of Shadows - As per the newest episode, Stygian falls into darkness sometime after the defeat of the Sirens.
6 - Planting of the Tree of Harmony - The Pillars contributed a portion of their power to create the seed that grew into the Tree of Harmony. It was intended as a future way to fight evil after their planned disappearance. Now we know where the tree came from and exactly when it was planted relative to other events.
7 - Defeat of Pony of Shadows & Disappearance of the Pillars - As per the newest episode, the Pillars used their power to trap the Pony of Shadows in Limbo.
8 - Sombra and the Crystal Empire - I believe Sombra showed up in this period. It didn't look like he was defeated using the Elements but by pure Alicorn Power instead. This one doesn't have any particular evidence supporting it, just a thought.
9 - Discord - Some unknown number of years later Discord shows up. It must be a fair amount of time since the Tree of Harmony has grown. Granted, it could potentially grow quite fast like Twilight's castle. We now know for certain that Discord had to appear after Starswirl vanished because the Elements of Harmony were used to defeat him.
10 - Nightmare Moon - This is the last major event in the ancient history before the Elements became dormant.
We know for a fact that events 1 - 7 occurred over the lifespan of an exceptional unicorn wizard (Starswirl). How long that will be is entirely dependant on how long a powerful unicorn mage can live. We just don't know. As for events 8, 9 and 10, they could be hundreds of years apart. It depends on how long you think Celestia and Luna ruled before nightmare moon happened.
Now obviously, this has somewhat thrown my old theories about ancient history off kilter a bit. I've occasionally hinted that ancient history is mildly important to the story. Fortunately, I think I've already reconciled how I'm going to fix the Finding a Place timeline. Actually, just writing this blog has given me a brilliant idea to fix everything without really contradicting cannon! I think that statement is sufficiently vague, don't you?
Anyhow, I'll be curious to hear what you all think about this interpretation. Did I miss anything? Do you think my logic is sound?
I think adding to vaguely referenced lore and combining the various continuities is a good move on Hasbro's part. If the Sirens are the ones I think they are, then that legitimizes EqG that much more as did Mirror Magic. Possible future eps with everyone's favorite bacon-headed unicorn!
Fangirling aside, the logic is sound from just the information presented here. I'm not a big spoiler hater, as I often find myself wanting to see how they pulled it off, but this time...yeah, I could find it and watch, but I think I'll wait this time. I want to savor the remainder of Season Seven since it's done so much world building in my eyes. Plus, I've deviated so far from the canon in my fics that it would actually be MAJOR retcons if I try to retroactively add this much info. So I'll just enjoy it as it was intended, with hot tea and fresh biscuits or cookies.
4691013 - It's amazing how little information it takes to make a world's history more concrete. Just two pieces of information were enough to nail it all down in my eyes. Based on what I saw, I'd be very surprised if they were different Sirens, though it was just a short scene. It looks like we might find on more in the October Legends of Magic comic, which is super awesome. More content that legitimizes EqG is nothing but a good thing in my eyes as well.
I agree there has been some impressive world building this season and it's added a whole bunch of new story and characters for. I'm quite lucky that the history part of my story hasn't quite come into play yet so I still have room to adapt. Truth be told, there really isn't any reason for established stories like Homecoming to even consider a retcon. That's what the alternate universe tag is for after all. We all write our fanfics based on the best information available at the time and if we all stayed slaves to the prime story there wouldn't be any room for creativity anyhow.
Heck, there are amazing stories that barely even acknowledge the canon material other than having the pony characters.
4691319
Absolutely! I may reference the summertime shorts, but that’s just because of the character possibilities. I haven’t mentioned Ray or Juniper because in my timeline we haven’t met them yet.
Additional Equestria history/events just get mentioned as an aside, SU ce season six and seven have been occurring whilst My SunLight exists on the other side of the mirror. If I see something that I like, I can pluck it up.
Spoiler warning: Pear Butter’s anniversary song will be showing up soon.